(Dominic Cavendish’s article appeared in the Telegraph, 8/17.)
It has been a good – nay a golden – month for musicals: a robust revamp of Half a Sixpence in Chichester, a knock-your-socks-off adaptation of Groundhog Day at the Old Vic, and up at the Fringe, genius is firing on all cylinders in a show that demands a longer life, not least because it’s about an aristocrat whose existence was scrubbed from the family history books as the blackest of black sheep.
The great crime committed by Henry Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey (1875 –1905)? He loved cross-dressing, theatricals, extravagance and spending money, so much so that he was declared bankrupt within six years of inheriting the title. “The Dancing Marquess” died penniless in Monte Carlo – but has been reborn in a fittingly fabulous performance by writer-performer Seiriol Davies, who grew up on the island of Anglesey, north Wales, and developed an early fascination with this “odd man out” from visiting the Pagets’ ancestral lair.