Something strangely unheralded is happening in Liverpool at the moment. Not just that the city’s celebrations of its European Capital of Culture status, that they are now halfway through, has been barely noticed by the cultural commentators in London (myself included), though you could justifiably ask if the programme has until now been one that is worthy of such wider commentary.
Unlike last year’s Manchester International Festival, which made an immediate splash on the artistic consciousness (in an admittedly much more concentrated time period) - and which sees one of its hits, the Damon Albarn scored Monkey - Journey to the West come to the Royal Opera House later this month - Liverpool has felt, at least from afar, as if its concerns have been more about local branding. It feels like there’s a lot of brightly-coloured packaging, but not a lot inside.
But yesterday I went to Liverpool and unwrapped a perfectly-formed gift inside that packaging.
Not that everyone, at least from the people I stopped on the way to ask for directions, could help me to find it: there may be a vast hoarding announcing the Capital of Culture directly opposite Lime Street station, but looking for the Liverpool Playhouse, I first came to the Royal Court, and stopped a woman standing outside its stage door in curlers. Although I could have sworn she must have been an actress - or a comedy plant - even she couldn’t tell me. “I’ve lived all my life in Liverpool and I couldn’t tell you,” she said. The next man thought I was there already - and then realised we were outside the Royal Court. He steered me right - or rather, left, through the gap in the shopping arcade - to the Playhouse soon after, where I was seeing the matinee of Once Upon a Time at the Adelphi.
This is that frighteningly rare thing: an entirely original new British musical, not based on a pre-existing film story and/or existing pop catalogue, receiving its premiere by one of a regional producing theatre. As writer/director Phil Wilmott says in a programme note, “This musical represents extraordinary courage from the management here. These days it is virtually unheard of for a theatre to commission and commit to producing a large scale musical on this scale, particularly one based on an original story and with new music rather than with pop songs for a score.”
As Gemma Bodinetz, the artistic director and Deborah Aydon, Executive Director, admit in their own programme note, “We have never produced an all new, all singing, all dancing musical before and it has been an all-encompassing experience that has had ever member of staff humming tunes and honing our high kicks.”
Creating new musicals is indeed all-encompassing; but few dare to encompass that possibility. For most regional theatres, musicals occupy the panto-slot: a place for the already tried and tested - in other words, for one of the classics, like Oliver!, My Fair Lady or Little Shop of Horrors (only if they’re trying to be hipper) - to operate as a theatrical cash cow and subsidise (whether by money or just by beefing up the annual percentage attendance rates that justify their grants) the more adventurous fare elsewhere in the year.
But while, as I’ve often said before, American institutional and regional theatres will routinely offer a musical development space as part of their annual programme, and actively pursue new expressions of the form, there isn’t a single funded British theatre - the National included - who are committed to guaranteeing that new musical work is exposed in this way. That’s partly, of course, because musicals cost money - and can therefore lose money, too. But they also require the kind of developmental processes that British theatres just aren’t equipped to support. (Even when the National took on Jerry Springer - the Opera for full production, it only arrived at the final hurdle, after the developmental work had taken place at BAC and then the Edinburgh Fringe).
But Phil Wilmott has broken the mould. For a long time he was king of the classic-revival-on-a-shoestring, at places like the Drill Hall and BAC, which of course has given him a grounding and appreciation in just what makes those great musicals tick (and have also helpfully demonstrated that he knows how to bring them in on little or no budget, too). He’s also lately been working with students, as associate director now for the degree courses in Acting and Musical Theatre at Arts Ed, where an earlier version of this show was workshopped. As at LAMDA, which is building an ongoing relationship with Conor Mitchell, drama schools can provide an invaluable talent pool for British musicals to draw on in their development.
The result? A musical that has arrived at the Liverpool Playhouse that is actually ready for proper public exposure. Too often, musicals are shown too soon; it doesn’t do anybody any favours to offer infinite resources but not the developmental support (Gone with the Wind in the West End was a spectacular example of money being squandered instead of time being spent on doing the more fundamental structural work). I hope that Liverpool’s experience here will lead them to be more adventurous with developing new musicals; and that other theatres may follow suite.
Leave a comment