
So. REANIMATOR, a zombie musical. Remember that? We had our bold opening salvo at Progress Lab 1 in December. Huge excitement to hear wonderful singers singing my songs under the formidable musical direction of Tim Sutton. And people really liked the whole concept and the material…
…but…
Constructing a musical is a fearsome business. It’s always about the Book, it seems. A great story with some okay material might fly but even with the best material in the world, a dodgy story won’t. Not that our story is or was dodgy. But the clear message from our insightful Lab 1 panellists and MMD attendees was that it just didn’t get it going quick enough.
Jeremy Sams, who knows a thing or two about quite a lot, kicked off the discussion boldly and made the point that story is a “hungry monster” that needs constant feeding: until the story has kicked in and got its hooks into an audience any amount of sumptuous harmony and witty lyricism is only going to get in the way. We want to know who we’re following, where it’s going and what’s at stake first – and only then can we enjoy its being heightened and celebrated through well-wrought songs. Without this clarity and muscular story and character action taking place within the first ten minutes what we had created was effectively (in a phrase that will haunt me for years to come I fear) “all tinsel and no tree”!
So our feelings were very mixed after Lab 1. There was the thrill of hearing the songs done well and a clear endorsement of the project and the writing from pretty much everyone – but the challenge was a biggie. I’d already been back to the drawing board several times with this project and what was being forcefully argued meant just such another return.
So the last few months have been fairly tortured. Always asking the same damn questions: who are these people (the protagonists) and what do they want? And cutting away, cutting away till you have only what you need to get that story rolling. My co-writer Susanna and I met and thrashed it out repeatedly. We’d get to a point of consensus and then one of us (generally me) would have qualms and undo the whole structure again. It reached a point where we seemed to take quite different roads with the story and Susie said to me: “well, if you want to write it that way, that’s fine, you do it”. As in, so long partner. Not in a mean way, just making the point that having started the whole thing off on my own I was free to take back ownership of it. But I wasn’t having any of that. The last thing I wanted was to lose my collaborator. So I got back on the same page and we thrashed it out some more.
The story seemed at last to take on some better shape and I consoled myself for the loss of several of my favourite songs by writing some new ones to fit the redeveloped story-line.
We took our work to show our mentors at George’s stylish Clerkenwell pad in mid February and had a cheery sing-through round his dining table. This turned into a great story session with bold suggestions from the mentors that really got us fired up…
But of course that meant bold changes to make – and now with only short weeks to go until we put it in front of our Lab 2 audience. I feel I have to share with the world, Ancient Mariner-like, the tale of woe that probably only a fellow-writer will give the slightest monkey’s about: I have now cut from this show an estimated 30 songs (a further 5 songs remain in the show). Killing your darlings, they call it, and it’s not pretty or pleasant. Ultimately it feels great. But when you’re not sure if you’re even making anything better it is merely torture. So three of the new songs got the chop. But one remained and seemed to promise well…
These last couple of weeks have been hard work, unsurprisingly, and required the kind of tunnel vision that has never been my most noted characteristic. But having got the new script written and the new scores out to the singers before the weekend I’ve felt an enormous sense of release. And talking through the script with our director Adam Lenson on Sunday I started to get quite excited….
So, who knows? Here it comes: REANIMATOR at the Stiles and Drewe Progress Lab 2 at the Umbrella Rooms 4pm on Friday 16th March (narrowly missing the Ides, note). I had hoped we could show the next bits of the story, up to our THRILLING Act 1 climax. But it will be, once again, the opening scenes that we perform, albeit in a totally revised form. We also have some new cast members, mainly as the two lead characters changed quite radically in the course of the re-writing. So, once again, it’s a top-notch cast and, having put in the work, I’m cautiously hopeful…