Mountbatten sex scandal: the raunchy musical!

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Lord Mountbatten's personal life will be dissected in the show

As the Queen and Prince Philip prepare for their historic appearance at Baroness Thatcher’s funeral next week, they will be dismayed to learn of a controversial and intimate portrayal of the Duke’s uncle, Earl Mountbatten of Burma — in a raunchy musical.
Lord Mountbatten, who was killed by an IRA bomb in 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher became PM, is having his famously open marriage to effervescent wife Edwina exposed and dissected on stage.
Billed as ‘a story of illicit love, racism and betrayal’, the show — Hutch — focuses on the relationship between Philip’s ‘Uncle Dickie’, the last Viceroy of India, and Edwina, whose affair with the West Indian-born singer, pianist and cabaret star Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, humiliated Mountbatten — and riveted London society in the Thirties.
Based on Charlotte Breese’s 1999 bestseller of the same name, the production will feature a diamond-encrusted sheath which Edwina supposedly commissioned Cartier to design as a gift for her lover.
It also refers to claims which have surfaced over the years that Edwina and Hutch were discovered in flagrante delicto, intimately locked together through a rare medical phenomenon. They had to be taken naked, from Brook House, the Mountbatten residence in Park Lane, to a private hospital, where doctors separated them.
The musical is certain to cause huge embarrassment not only to the Royal Family but to the Mountbattens’ two daughters — Countess Mountbatten of Burma, 89, and Lady Pamela Hicks, 83.

The relationship between Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma and his wife Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, fascinated London

 

Hutch, who died virtually penniless in 1969 (his grave and tombstone were paid for by Lord Mountbatten), is being played by the 6 ft 4 in Sheldon Green at the Riverside Studios in West London.
Edwina, who died in 1960, is portrayed by young actress Imogen Daines, and the man said to be Hutch’s gay lover, composer Cole Porter whose songs such as Let’s Do It are featured in the show, is played by Sid Phoenix.
Writer Joe Evans says: ‘We have still to finalise the casting of Lord Mountbatten. We are down to a shortlist of two.’
Adds author Charlotte Breese: ‘I haven’t seen the script, but I shall be attending the first night on May  17, and am giving a party afterwards.’