Chorus Girls was a musical written in 1981 by The Kinks

The Kinks

The Kinks were an English rock band formed in Muswell Hill, North London, by brothers Ray and Dave Davies in 1964. Categorised in the United States as a British Invasion band, The Kinks are recognised as one of the most important and influential rock acts of the era. Their music was influenced by a...

 lead singer and songwriter Ray Davies

Ray Davies

Ray Davies, CBE is an English rock musician. He is best known as lead singer and songwriter for the Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave...

, who collaborated with The Long Good Friday

The Long Good Friday

The Long Good Friday is a British gangster film starring Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren. It was completed in 1979 but, because of release delays, it is generally credited as a 1980 film...

screenwriter Barrie Keefe.

It opened at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 starring Marc Sinden

Marc Sinden

Marc Sinden is an English theatre producer, documentary director and actor. His father is the actor Sir Donald Sinden.-Theatre:...

 and also had a supporting cast of Michael Elphick

Michael Elphick

Michael John Elphick was an English actor. Elphick was known in the UK for his trademark croaky voice and his work on British television, in particular his roles as the eponymous private investigator in the ITV series Boon and later Harry Slater in BBC's EastEnders.Robust and ruggedly good-looking...

, Anita Dobson

Anita Dobson

Anita Dobson is an English television actress and singer. She gained her highest profile while playing Angie Watts in the BBC soap opera, EastEnders...

, Lesley Manville

Lesley Manville

Lesley Manville is an award-winning English actress.-Early life:Born in Brighton, Manville was raised in Hove, East Sussex, one of three daughters of a taxicab driver. Training as a soprano singer from age 8, she twice became under-18 champion of Sussex...

, Kate Williams

Kate Williams

Kate Williams is an English actress from London who trained at London's East 15 Acting School.She remains best known for two television roles: Joan Booth in the 1970s sitcom Love Thy Neighbour and Audrey Withey in the crime drama Widows...

 and Charlotte Cornwell

Charlotte Cornwell

-Life and career:Cornwell was born in Marylebone, London, England, the daughter of Ronald Cornwell. She is the half-sister of spy novelist John le Carré . She describes him as "the best brother a girl could have"...

. Directed by Adrian Shergold, the choreography

Choreography

Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...

 was by Charles Augins

Charles Augins

Charles Augins is an American actor, dancer and choreographer for stage and screen. Born in Virginia he won the Laurence Olivier Theater award in 1991 for Best Choreography in Five Guys Named Moe. He had a small role in Revenge of the Pink Panther as Vic Vancouver. He is best known for playing...

 and Jim Rodford

Jim Rodford

Jim Rodford is a musician who played with The Kinks, The Swinging Blue Jeans and was a founding member of Argent...

 of The Kinks played bass with the theatres 'house band'.

The plot was set around the story that Prince Charles (played by Sinden) was kidnapped by activists wanting to save the theatre building from demolition. Dobson played the girl who falls in love with him and Elphick played Sinden's inept bodyguard.

According to a contemporary interview, Sinden only accepted the role on the condition that he did not have to sing a solo, however Davies wrote the reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

-style song Everybody's Slagging Off England specifically for him and gave it to him with two days to go before the shows First Night

Premiere

A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...

. Sinden did sing it and later recorded it with Davies.