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[excertped from a Radio 2 program of the radio presentation of this musical]
Reno Sweeney - Tyne Daly
Moonface Martin - David Soul
Billy Crocker - Tim Flavin
Hope - Helen Way
... the first scene is set in a smokey Manhattan bar where the nightclub singer Reno Sweeney is trying to cement a relationship with the young Billy Crocker who is an assistant to Mr. Elisha Whitney, a wealthy tycoon. Despite turning on the charm she doesn't accomplish this. The next day the scene has changed to the deck of the ship where the passengers are embarking for the voyage to England and the press photographers and reporters are in attendance, much as they are nowadays at film premieres in London's West End.
Elisha Whitney is one of the passengers sailing to England as is Reno herself, also on the passenger list is the young and extremely beautiful Hope Harcourt, accompanied by her mother Evangeline and her fiance Lord Evelyn Oakleigh. Following them up the gang plank is someone who is not on the passenger list but who is set to make the voyage along with them, a gangster by the name of Moonface Martin, disguised as a vicar, but with traditional farcical licence there is of course a genuine vicar on board and he's the one dragged off to jail.
Billy in the meantime has also come aboard because he has something for his boss, Whitney. He spots Hope and already realises that she is the girl of his dreams (they've already had a little liason) and before anybody knows what's happening, the ship is at sea with it's full complement of crew and passengers, plus two extras who spend the rest of the show assuming different identities and creating farcical situations in order to avoid detection. Somehow during the course of the voyage the various romantic liaisons that were introduced at the beginning of the show are all switched around and everyone, surprisingly, lives happily ever after (we assume)
John Langridge
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