At the suggestion of Julian Slade’s family, I have adapted the script of his and Dorothy Reynolds’s 1957 hit musical Free as Air, with the aim of making it suitable for 21st century audiences. Its music is every bit as lovely as that for Slade and Reynolds’s much better-known Salad Days, but the few professional revivals to date have been hampered by the need for a very large cast and, perhaps, an overly 1950s atmosphere. Now, without attempting to make it ‘contemporary’, I’ve tried to refashion the show for 12 actor-musicians, so that its charm and glorious melodies can come alive again. That’s the idea anyway!
