Crest of the Wave (musical)

[1] It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London, on 1 September 1937, starring Novello as both hero and villain, Dorothy Dickson, Olive Gilbert, Walter Crisham and Edgar Elmes.

Directed by Novello's frequent collaborator Leontine Sagan, it ran for 203 performances.

The story concerns an impoverished nobleman, The Duke of Cheviot, who is shot by a lover and pursued by the villainous Otto Fresch.

The staging featured a spectacular train crash, one of several Novello musicals featuring a spectacular disaster: Glamorous Night has a shipwreck and Careless Rapture depicts an earthquake.

[4][5] Alan Bott wrote in the Tatler of the production and of Novello: "Once a year he delivers the formula, the story, the tunes, the ideas for spectacle, the personality, the profile, the archness, the attitudes, and the variegated goods; and that once a year is enough to fill London's Largest Theatre until half-way through the next year.