Sail Away

A bona-fide star vehicle with a slew of fun character parts to boot, the original Coward book centers on divorcee cruise director Mimi Paragaon who attends to a typically oddball assortment of passengers while delicately balancing a shipboard romance with a dashing, younger passenger, Johnny Van Mier. The Coward score includes two songs which outlived the score, the wistful title song and the hilarious eleven o’ clock number “Why Do The Wrong People Travel?” as well as such other Coward charmers as “Later Than Spring,” “Useless Useful Phrases,” and “Something Very Strange.”