Once Upon a Time at Cliveden (Photo)

Описание: There are call girls, and then there is Christine Keeler, whose dalliances with a Soviet naval attaché and the British war secretary helped bring the government of Harold Macmillan crashing down in the early 1960s. Excellent fodder for a musical, especially if the composer has already shown what he can do with a clutter of dancing, singing felines. Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber has approached the scandal of Keeler and John Profumo from the angle of Stephen Ward, the swinging (remember, this is the 60s) osteopath who introduced them one weekend at Cliveden, the famed country estate of the Astor family, whose parties had drawn the likes of Winston Churchill and Charlie Chaplin. Stephen Ward, which opens in London this month, stars Charlotte Spencer as Keeler and Charlotte Blackledge as her fellow good-time girl, Mandy Rice-Davies. Spencer played Whore Number Three (yes, that's the credit) in the film Les Misérables, so she has walked the walk, so to speak. She sees Keeler as an abused child in search of a father figure or two, while Blackledge plays Rice-Davies as a wild child from a good family who yearned to find fame in London. Ward, who bedded Rice-Davies but saw Keeler more as a sister, is played by Alexander Hanson, a West End veteran who has played Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar. "In both shows, the title character is sacrificed," Hanson notes, though Ward's death is brought about by more prosaic means: sleeping pills. Did we mention this is the 60s?
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/201...