"In 2006, Jeanie O' Hare at the RSC approached me about adapting Roald Dahl's Matilda into a musical. This was strange for two reasons: the first was that musicals generally start with the director or composer, not the person who's going to write the script"
Although technically it started with Jeanie O'Hare, the "commissioning dramaturg" (I'll bet you don't get them in the commercial theatre). But it's true: the book writer is not usually the primary consideration. Until the show flops and then they're first in the firing line.
"The second reason was that I had absolutely no knowledge of musicals whatsoever. Far from believing this was a problem, I think it was actually what she was after."
Well, ignorance is bliss, as they say. But is this a risk that the commercial theatre would never take? Let's take a look at some of the book writers with commercial musicals currently or soon to be playing the West End:
David Greig (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
Catherine Johnson (Mamma Mia)
Lee Hall (Billy Elliot)
Bill Oakes (From Here to Eternity)
Harry Hill (I Can't Sing)
All of whom, as far as I can tell, are first-time musical writers. And for good measure let's chuck in a couple of old hands:
Christopher Hampton (Stephen Ward) - a playwright whose first musical was the commercially successful Sunset Boulevard.
Ben Elton (We Will Rock You) - a screenwriter/novelist/playwright whose first musical was the commercially less successful Beautiful Game.
The point is that the commercial theatre seems quite happy to take a punt on first-timer musical book writers. That's probably because most people aren't primarily musical book writers. They are lyricists or playwrights or award-winning 70s Hollywood soundtrack supervisors who, for whatever reason, have found themselves with the unenviable task of writing the book for a musical.
"Then to make things even riskier, instead of getting a tried and tested composer to write the songs, the RSC went for a comedian, Tim Minchin"
Nope, the commercial theatre would never get a mere comedian to write the songs for a musical. Oops.
Whilst not an obvious choice, Tim Minchin was not completely left-field. For starters, he is/was not merely a comedian but is/was a songwriting comedian. For mains, he is/was a Roald Dahl fan and had even tried writing a musical of Matilda ten years earlier. For desserts, his dark and slightly twisted sense of humour is/was a perfect match for Roald Dahl (something that perhaps didn't quite work with Charlie and the Choclolate Factory with the more campy optimism of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman).
"Could all of that have happened outside of a subsidised organisation? The answer is simple: no."
Actually the slightly more nuanced answer seems to be: possibly. I'm not saying that Matilda was risk-free. Far from it. It must have taken some far-sighted imaginings to bring that creative team together and nobody could have known the outcome. The point is that exactly the same risks are being taken in the commercial theatre. As Viva Forever proved, even the sure-firest kind of crowd-pleasing jukebox fare can go belly up.
Ah, but it's a different kind of risk.
"It's just that there is a different ethos when a theatre is largely funded with public money, a different sense of what it is you're responsible to and it allows for a different kind of risk, a risk that can lead to unexpected and peculiar things."
Well, this is an edited version of a longer speech, so I'll have to give Mr. Kelly the benefit of the doubt and assume the details have been lost. But if all you've got to show for the riskiness of subsidised theatre is "unexpected and peculiar things", then this is no case for more funding. Is Matilda any more "unexpected and peculiar" than Cats? Or We Will Rock You? Or Billy Eliott? In fact, "unexpected and peculiar" would make the perfect subtitle for my monumental yet-to-be-written masterpiece on the history of musical theatre.
I'm sure there are differences between the subsidised and commercial worlds but I'm not convinced it's to do with risk. I suspect it's more to do with process. Subsidised theatre offers longer development periods and ensemble casts which, I imagine, means more workshops and improvisation. The commercial world favours shorter rehearsal periods which, I imagine, means getting the script finalised before you start hiring the actors.
Really, I'm just guessing. The point is that, whatever the process, the final product is indistinguishable. Personally I would struggle to discern the subsidised qualities of Les Miz and Matilda from the commercial ones of Phantom of the Opera and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They are all risky in their own ways.
Then again, so is all musical theatre.
No comments:
Post a Comment