The best-known songs from the musical are "Rose of England", "Why isn't it you?", "Haven of your heart" and "If you only knew". 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.[3]
Original cast
The Duke of Cheviot ("Don") / Otto French (a Film Star) - Ivor Novello
The production was designed by Alick Johnstone.[4][5]
Critical reception
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. He draws to the Lane thousands who enter a theatre hardly ever. As to his formula, it has given pleasure to a million or two."[6]