Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Stephen Ward" which opened on Thursday in London is a musical with a mission: to clear the name of the high-society osteopath of the title, who was at the centre of the Profumo sex, spies and call girls scandal that brought down a British government in the 1960s.
The main characters, in real life and the show, are party girl Christine Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies as the women who cause all the trouble, a vodka-swilling Russian military attache who was one of Keeler's lovers, and John Profumo, Britain's Secretary of State for War, a married man and also one of Keeler's lovers.
When his affair with her came tumbling out, courtesy of the ever vigilant British tabloid press, it was suspected that Profumo in "pillow talk" may have leaked nuclear secrets to Keeler, through her to the Russians and from that stemmed the scandal that brought down the Conservative government.
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