Your eyes are the eyes of a woman in love
(Words and Music: Frank Loesser,
Sung in the film version of 'Guys and Dolls')
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When the Thorpe Players Amateur
Dramatic Society (Hon. President and co-Founder F. Muir) reached its thirtieth
birthday, the members decided to celebrate by staging an ambitious
musical-comedy. It was the time that the National Theatre had put on a stunning
production of Guys and Dolls and thus legitimized musical shows as perfectly
respectable fodder for serious amateur societies, whose idea of a frivolous
birthday production up to then had been to do King Lear in seventeenth-century
dress.
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Fired by the enthusiasm of the
Thorpe Players, I promised to write them a musical comedy. Not a show based
upon a short story as was Guys and Dolls but a wholly original concept, a treat
for the ear and the eye devised, created, conceived and written by me.
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I am going to call it Guy and
Doll.
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A wonderful title, you must
admit, which came to me out of nowhere one night in bed as I lay sleepless
after two helpings of take-away Mexican lasagna in a cheese and onion sauce.
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The Guy in question is an English
naval officer on secret service in France during the Napoleonic Wars. His full
name is Lieutenant Guy Woode-Wynde. Woode-Wynde is a somewhat quieter version
of his uncle, who is the British Admiral, Hornblower. The Doll whom Guy falls
in love with at the end of Act One is Doll Duvet, a continental version of
Shakespeare's Doll Tearsheet, that is to say plumper and warmer.
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The plot - which will be laid
down in Act One, scene one, in a dialogue between Admiral Hornblower and his
comical bo'sun - is that the British navy is beseiging the port of Le Havre in
order to make it surrender. Horrific tales are coming out of Le Havre of the
shortage of food and the French inhabitants starving and being forced to eat
things like shepherd's pie and high-fiber muesli.
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But Hornblower is cautious.
Before attacking Le Havre he sends a signal to his young nephew ashore, Guy the
Spy, saying 'How hungry is Le Havre? Please reply as briefly as possible as the
Admiralty is cutting down on expensive signals and I have now only a small
allowance per war. And I would be most grateful if, in your travels, you could
get hold of some of that Normandy cheese that I like, not the kind wrapped in
leaves but the sort which has the picture of a grinning cow on the label. Your
aunt's leg is better and she is thinking of getting rid of her chrysanthemums -
such a bore the rest of the year - and going flat out on azaleas. I counseled
caution but she is so headstrong, God bless her little secateurs. Well, cheerio
for now and don't do anything I wouldn't do, ha-ha! Uncle Horatio.'
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Scene two is set in the Latin
quarter of Le Havre (red lights are shining over squalid doorways reeking of
vice. And, of course, over dentists). Guy enters disguised as a non-combatant,
an American on the Grand Tour. (You can tell because he wears tartan cotton
trousers and looks exasperated.) From out of a doorway marked 'Sailors'
Mission' comes a huge, beautiful young woman.
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'Oiiiiiiii!' she bellows in a
lovely voice which carries over most of sleepy Le Havre. 'Oiiiiiiii! All you
young sailor boys! Come and get eet! I got 'ere what you want, eh?
Oiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! Ze mission she is open for ze night - all night!'
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It is Doll Duvet, chucker-in at
the Sailors' Rest Mission. The disguised Guy, duty bound, enters the Mission to
see what supplies they have managed to get past the English naval blockade. Do
they buy food from foreign sailors? Guy casually asks Doll whether the Mission
is open to sailors of all nations.
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'Oui,' says Dol, 'Always we got
plenny Scandinavians.' And she goes into the show's first musical number:
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I gotta Norse right here,
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The name is Paul Revere
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Guy realizes that he is
fascinated by every aspect of this enormous lady, from her fine chins to her
petite, beclogged feet. He feels he might be falling in love with her but if so
would it be a case of too much, too early?
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On impulse he offers her a lump
of the cheese with the grinning cow on the label which his uncle Horatio asked
him to get.
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'Zat processed muck!' said Doll
bridling. 'Zank you, non! You see, my charming friend - I 'ave my pride.'
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'Mother's Pride?' cried Guy. Here
was potential trouble. It meant that the siege was being broken by unscrupulous
English supermarkets floating their cut and wrapped loaves across the channel.
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'Non,' said Doll. 'I do not like
ze English plastic foam. I like ze French country bread. Like a crisp, golden
cow-pat. And when you guillotine it into slices ze bits of crust ricochet off
the walls like bullets. Listen, mon ami - ' she lowers her voice into a
whisper. 'Demain - tomorrow - ma tante, she smuggle me a fresh loaf baked in ze
communal oven in ze poor but proud leetle village of
Verneuille-des-trois-eglises-entre-les-deux-lacs-en-haut-de-Bugey-sur-Epiney.'
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'But surely,' Guy mumbles,
'Chewing a piece of grinning cow cheese now won't do you any harm?'
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'Patience, dearest,' says Doll,
taking his tiny hand in her vast fist and looking deeply into his eyes, 'Leave
us not rush destiny.'
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And she begins to sing her second
number:
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'I'll gnaw when my loaf comes
along . . .'
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While she is singing, Guy writes
out his dispatch with his other hand, reporting that the Le Havre populace is
coping well in spite of a worrying lack of stewing steak and glace cherries for
the gin-and-Its.
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As Doll finishes her song there
is a disturbance. Three Chinese seamen have set fire to a small chair and are
balancing on the flames a domed metal dish. All three are busily cutting up a
riding-boot and stirring the pieces of leather about in the bowl.
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Guy realizes that he must get
away from this temptress or he will forever rest a captive in the fiefdom of
her heart.
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'My love, you have not eaten,'
cries Doll. 'Dinner will be served soon.'
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'Must go!' cries Guy, thickly,
leaping to his feet.
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'No, you mustn't!' cries Doll,
pointing dramatically to the Chinese and breaking into her third song, a lively
spiritual:
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'Sit down, they're wok-ing the
boot . . .'
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The action gets v. exciting at
this point. A messenger rushes in to announce that Nelson has won the battle of
Trafalgar Square, a signal is flying above the square which reads 'England
expects that every man will do his washing' and the War is over. There is
dancing and singing in the streets. Guy and Doll are separated. Guy stumbles
around trying to find Doll in the crowds of revellers but only hears her in the
distance calling to him: 'Oiiiii! 0iiiiiiiiiiiii!!'
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The last act shows Guy twenty
years later, now stinking rich, having won the concession to import French
cheese with a picture of a grinning cow on it into Britain. He has hardly ever
married, just a couple or so times, because his heart has always belonged to
Doll.
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At the age of sixty he decides to
make one last effort to find his Doll and books himself a voyage round the
world in a balloon left over from a Jules Verne story. A grand ceremony is
planned in Portsmouth for the balloon's take-off. The Mayor of Portsmouth has
decorated the balloon with signal flags which he has rented out to Guy for a
large sum of money. But a sudden sea-mist descends and take-off is postponed
until the morning.
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Guy wanders into town to while
away the evening. He is strolling through the port area, the mist getting
thicker and swirling round him, when he hears in the distance 'Oiiiii,
Oiiiiiii'. 'Tis my Doll!' he cries, sprinting in the direction of the beloved voice.
He falls into the water quite a few times but as he gets closer to her the cry
gets louder and louder until - 'Offiiiiiiiii! 0iiiiiiiiiiiiiii. - and there she
is, a massive silhouette in the mist.
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'Doll!' he cries, clasping her to
him and slipping a ring upon her finger.
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'But,? cher Guy, it is dark - and the mist - you
can't see - how do you know it is me after all these years?'
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And the show ends on the big
waltz number, this time sung by Guy. 'How do I know it is you?' cries Guy,
leading her down to the footlights. 'Because, my dear . . .'
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'Your oiiiiiiiiis are the
oiiiiiiiiis of a woman in Le Havre ...'
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Frank Muir, "You Have My
Word" (1989)
