The Royal Mail in the UK have just issued a set of 8 stamps featuring successful musicals. Obvious choices such as "We Will Rock You," "Blood Brothers" & "Oliver" in there... but it's really nice to see recognised: "The Rocky Horror Show" & "Return to the Forbidden Planet."
The latter was a very successful show that I saw back in the early 1990s and was the only non Lloyd Webber or Cameron Mackintosh show to make it then into the top 10 most successful London musicals. Obviously a few decades later it will no longer be ranked in this position, but it does go to show that a quirky tribute to the classic film Forbidden Planet (which itself is a tribute to Shakespeare's Tempest) filled with late 1950s/early 1960s Rock 'N' Roll numbers can beat the mawkish, bland and over-commercialised rubbish that's out there.
Saturday 5th March 2011
