Honestly, don’t tell him. (I’ll get on to why later).
The first thing you need to know is that I had no desire to write a musical. None whatsoever. Then something happened. Or, to be more precise, someone happened. Charlotte Swarbrick happened.
Charlotte was one of the actors who got in touch as a response to my badly thought through post on Facebook ‘launching’ The Lockdown Theatre Company. Often the actors who did this would send me a link to their showreel. Charlotte didn’t have a showreel, but she had put a song up on Facebook that she had filmed in her flat.
It was a song from ‘Oliver’ and she delivered it as if she was on stage at The London Palladium. I mean, full on, full force, musical theatre focus and energy. Really quite impressive.
Then I scrolled down a bit further and there was another song. And another. And another. And she was putting out these blasts of positivity, and explosions of talent, as her way of doing something in the face of soul-sapping dread of The Pandemic and The Lockdown.
I can’t do much, but I can do this. Fuck you, Covid. (Or, at least, that’s how I read what she was creating).
I found what she was doing inspirational.
And three years later I still do.
Also, and this was another reason why I wanted to work with her, she was really good. She had a voice that was a joy to listen to. And a joy in performing that came at you out of the screen, and that gave you no choice but to go along for the ride.
Charlotte lived in a small town in Derbyshire called Moira. And how can you not love a town whose name is a name? It’d be like living in town called ‘Keith’. Or ‘Angela’.
Moira’s other claim to fame is that it is, apparently, the home of what may well be the world’s only Furnace Museum. And typing that just now I realise that maybe it’s no coincidence that Charlotte lives in the town.
I won’t push that analogy too far, but it’s something to do with intensity, and fire and steel being forged.
So, anyway, I wanted to work with Charlotte.
Better write a musical.
The major drawback to this plan was that I couldn’t write music. So what I really needed was a collaborator to write the score. But who should I collaborate with?
Might as well start at the top, I thought – Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber.
Unfortunately, getting hold of him, what with The Lockdown and everything, was a tad difficult. But I was on a tight schedule here, I was making a film a week, there was no time to hang about.
Best just crack on, using one of his existing songs, and work it into a pivotal moment in a script. Also, while I’m at it, why not use other existing musical theatre tunes and drop in some new lyrics?
Obviously, this may well be illegal.
But at the time, no theatres were open, and who knew when they would, if ever, open again? I realise that sounds melodramatic, but at the time it wasn’t. There was no live theatre.
Also, if theatres did open up again, musicals where the performers sang out into a closed auditorium were going to be really problematic in face of a virus that killed people and could be spread by the droplets of moisture that people breathed out even when they were just talking.
So my mind set was, fuck it, just do it, because musical theatre might never happen again.
So I wrote a musical.
Best watch it now before I have to take it down.
Coming next week: A despatch from the Front Line – a doctor speaks.
But before that please take your front row seats for ‘Mavis From Moira & The Dawn Of The Musical Theatre Zombie Apocalypse!’ starring the fabulous Charlotte Swarbrick.