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Dateline: 22nd June, 2006
Julian Slade (1930 - 2006) Julian Slade, composer and co-writer with Dorothy Reynolds of the musical Salad Days, has died of cancer at the age of 76. Salad Days, written in just six weeks, opened at the Bristol Old Vic, where Slade was musical director, opened in June 1954 and was scheduled to run for three weeks. However it proved so popular that in August it transferred to the West End's Vaudeville Theatre where it ran for 2,288 performances over more than five years, overtaking not only its great contemporary rival, Sandy Wilson's The Boyfriend, but also the longest running British musical of the time, Chu Chin Chow. It actually ran for longer than another hit of the time, My Fair Lady (1956). Salad Days was Slade's greatest hit, none of his other shows - which included Follow That Girl, Wildest Dreams and Trelawny - had anywhere near the same success. Although it did play on Broadway, it did not have the same kind of success in the US as it had in Britain, where it had West End revivals in 1976 and 1996, in addition to television and radio productions. It has also become a staple of amateur operatic societies' programmes throughout the UK. Born Julian Penkivil, he was educated at an Oxford prep school and then Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. While in Cambridge he wrote his first two musicals, Bang Goes the Meringue and Lady May, the latter, commissioned by John Barton, for May Week. He intended to become an actor after leaving Cambridge and joined the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He appeared in a few productions at the theatre, but soon became its resident musical director. He had more success with his incidental music for plays and TV than with his later musicals. These included music for The Merchant of Venice at Stratford, The Comedy of Errors for television (alter on stage at the Arts Theatre) and Two Gentlemen of Verona. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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