Sail Away

... Director	Noël Coward
... Musical Numbers & Dances	Joe Layton

Cast

... Joe, the ship's purser	Charles Braswell
... Barnaby Slade	Grover Dale
... Maimie Candijack, his wife	Betty Jane Watson
... Elinor Spencer-Bollard	Alice Pearce
... Nancy Foyle, her niece	Patricia Harty
... Alvin Lush	Paul O'Keefe (i)
... Mrs. Lush, his mother	Evelyn Russell
... John Van Mier	James Hurst
... Mrs. Van Mier, his mother	Margalo Gillmore
... Mimi Paragon	Elaine Stritch

Act One

Act Two

Additional Musical Numbers Lists

These song lists document any changes that the production went through aside from the opening night song list.

• Philadelphia Song List

See More

In the September 1961 issue of Theatre Arts magazine, Noël Coward was quoted as follows:

“Two years ago I had the idea of doing a musical, and I wrote the whole first act of one, and it wasn’t any good. I scrapped that. But bits of it still remained in my mind, and last November I had a new idea. At Christmas-time I went down to Jamaica, and suddenly found I was in a musical phase. Tunes kept on appearing every time I went to the piano. I began to write a score, not complete, but rather rough. I wrote several numbers, and then began to think of the connecting stories to go with them. When I had done about twelve numbers, I came to New York in February and gave some auditions. At that moment I’d had the ideas of the characters I wanted to write. When I’d heard some people sing, and seen some people dance, and decided which to engage and which not to engage, I then went back to Jamaica, this time with Oliver Smith, who came to stay with me, and he planned all the sets and I did the book, more or less simultaneously. Meanwhile some more numbers appeared. Then we came back to New York and held some more auditions. And got everything under way for the production. And that’s the way it stands now. It’s finished. Obviously, there may have to be some changes when we get out of town, but perhaps there won’t be so many. The major part of the work is now done, except for the actual rehearsing and the putting on stage.” (The complete article may be found on this page at the Noél Coward Society website.)

As it turned out, there were some major changes out of town. As recounted in the booklet for the Broadway Angel CD release of the Broadway cast recording, the version of the show that opened in Boston had Elaine Stritch as cruise director Mimi Paragon “presiding over the shipboard comedy—bratty children, spoiled dogs, insufferable tourists—with a pair of romantic subplots swirling around her.” One of the subplots was primarily serious, while the other was comic and lighthearted. The more serious subplot involved Verity Craig (played by opera singer Jean Fenn), an unhappily married woman contemplating divorce from her husband (William Hutt), who has a shipboard with a handsome, younger man named John Van Mier (James Hurst). The other subplot involved Barnaby Slade and Nancy Foyle, two youngish people who meet and become romantically involved. More time and more songs were devoted to the tale of Verity and John.

By the time of the show’s next pre-Broadway engagement, in Philadelphia, it was clear that the Verity-Johnny plot was draining the show of energy every time the couple appeared. As recounted in the Broadway Angel CD booklet, the show’s choreographer, Joe Layton, “suggested a radical move — eliminating the role of Verity and having Johnny fall in love with Mimi. Coward agreed, though he regretted cutting the score.”

The specific cuts involved two songs — “This Is a Changing World” and “This Is a Night for Lovers” — that Coward had interpolated from his unsuccessful operetta Pacific 1860, which had played London in 1946 but had not been produced on Broadway, and one new song, “I Am No Good at Love.” One of the new songs that Fenn had been singing, “Something Very Strange,” remained in the show, sung most effectively by Stritch.

The title song for the show was also interpolated from a previous Coward musical, Ace of Clubs, though the lyrics were revised for Sail Away.

Main Run

• Broadhurst Theatre (New York, NY)
  October 3, 1961 - February 24, 1962

Tryout

• Colonial Theatre (Boston, MA)
  August 9, 1961 - September 2, 1961
• Forrest Theatre (Philadelphia, PA)
  September 7, 1961 - September 30, 1961

Commercial Recordings

• Original Broadway Cast (October 8, 1961)
  Charles Braswell , Keith Prentice , James Pritchett , C. Stafford Dickens , Margaret Mower

Private Recordings

• No private audio listed yet.