THE ACT OF MURDERING A MUSICAL

If there is one thing I’ve learned in this post-modern-post-ironic-post-everything era, it is that you can append an exclamation mark, add a hyphen and tack on the phrase “The Musical” to just about anything. Then you can take it to the Edinburgh Fringe. Try it. Flick through the TV Times (do they [...]

If you want to get bums on seats then a sure fire way is to have a banner flash across your poster – “Best New Musical”. Winning the coveted Oliver Award for Best New Musical or Best Musical revival is, at least, a guarantee that a panel of experts believes in the quality. [...]

Legend has it that when Sondheim met the great Richard Rogers he asked him countless questions about why and how he did something in particular. To every question, the maestro would only reply “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
So – what makes a great musical? “I haven’t the faintest idea”; how do you write [...]

I could have mentioned Bad Girls, which ran at London’s Garrick Theatre for just two months in 2007. The joy that comes from hearing female prison inmates singing that they are “all banged up without the bang” is one that should have been appreciated by more people. Nicholas de Jongh, in The Evening [...]

Perhaps my tap-dancing nuns would not be the greatest idea in the best possible taste. Certainly it doesn’t seem to be a good idea to mix musical theatre and religion. Look at the furore over Jerry Springer the Opera, which was picketed by members of Christian Voices, a UK pressure group which calls [...]

At what point in the process of putting on a show do you think – ‘this is just ridiculous’. Is there a tipping point for musical theatre, when you realise you’ve crossed into some no-mans-land. Director Ernest Maxin was well respected, having directed The Morecombe and Wise show and The Black and [...]

Once, at a party I accosted the fantastic lyricist Don Black and accused him of writing the lyrics to The Barrier. He looked at me askance and moved away. That’s because it wasn’t internationally famous lyricist Don Black from Hackney, It was actually Don Phillips, also from Hackney. You can see where [...]

May I say, this blog is not intended to be definitive, objective, authoritative or anything else ending in ive. Nor is it meant to be insulting or derogatory. It’s affectionate if anything. I’ve been in my fair share of bad musicals, odd musicals, and downright crazy musicals. And what constitutes musicalicide is [...]

At a preview show of an off West End musical, the director got up in front of the audience at the start of the show and apologised, saying “We’re not quite ready for you.” We thought he was referring to the half hour delay in starting. He wasn’t. He was talking about [...]

My mother, in recent years has taken to placing a piece of kitchen towel under every single object in her kitchen. We can’t for the life of us work out why she does this. It’s not as if anything in the kitchen ever gets used. My mother, never the best cook at [...]