Interview with Niamh Perry

My interview with Niamh Perry, who is currently playing in the revival of Ben Elton and Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Beautiful Game, is now available over at the ever-beatific Musical Theatre Review.

Looking back at my old review of the original London production I don't think I paid enough attention to the music. It's a very interesting score. Everything is quite sparse. The harmonies generally stick to the triad notes making them sound 'cleaner', less romantic and more folksy ("God's Own Country"). Sometimes harmony is ditched altogether and we just get a single unison line. The verse of the title song is simply a rising chromatic melody which is repeated four times:

"Buy the ref a flippin' guide dog
D'you call that a bleeding pass?
Kick it out mate! What a ball hog!
Dozy plonker shift your arse"

It's upbeat and sarcastic at the same time. The effect is quite unusual, a bit like a lumbering football chant.

A single unison line is used again in Act II in the middle section of "I'd Rather Die On My Feet Than Live On My Knees". But this time it's an altogether more sinister falling chromatic line as the hero is pressured into joining the violent struggle:

"Insects crawl, a man stands tall, he has to risk it all
Men dictate their final fate while fools negotiate"

Yep, still not convinced by Ben Elton the lyricist. Ben Elton the book writer is far better. It's a shame he hasn't done more of it - musical comedies, in particular. There seems to be a skills shortage in this area.

However I did get one thing right. The big ballad "Our Kind of Love" always felt out of place in this score. That's because it belonged to another one. The tune became the title song from Love Never Dies and isn't making an appearance in revival.

One final memory from the original production. At some point in Act II one of the players from the football team, having been falsely accused of betraying an IRA member, gets crippled by being shot in the kneecap. On stage, as the gun was fired, the stage went black except for a single spotlight on the victim. In slow motion the actor mimed kicking a football whilst a ghostly whisper of "goal!" went through the auditorium. It lasted about 5 seconds. Then the lights came back and the story continued. It was so unexpected, so surreal and so uniquely theatrical, that it's a moment I'll never forget.

Definitely a show worth a second listen.