Newsletter

January 2008

In 2007 we opened two new shows. Picasso & Me opened in Harlow in March and then Garibaldi! opened in Edinburgh in August. Picasso & Me might have been all sex and sunshine in the South of France but it turned out to be a meditation on fathers and sons. Garibaldi! might have been all swashbuckling adventure in Sicily but it turned out to be a homoerotic love poem from a soldier to his general. And I don’t know why. We just do what we do and see what happens. It hasn’t got much to do with success - but then it hasn’t got much to do with failure either. And I enjoyed both those tales so much, the Picasso and the Garibaldi, that I thought I might spend some time during these long winter nights seeing if I can turn them into short stories and publish them.

Why not?

The real work in 2008 will be the Chet Baker story. I’ve been dying to get started on this story about the trumpeter and singer from Oklahoma who interpreted the American songbook with such consummate taste – a theatre show that we could take to jazz clubs, maybe even jazz festivals, oh yes, maybe even the Umbria Jazz Festival.

Why not?

Chet Baker was really big in Italy where he did time in jail in Lucca in the early sixties for drugs related offences. It’ll be set in the prison where the inmates and warders will all be Chet Baker fans. The prison library will be full of Chet Baker albums and everyone will know every word of every song. Outside the prison, while strolling around the old town walls, the evening passers by pause during their passagiata to hear the sound of his golden horn wafting through the prison bars. Chet was released after 16 months for good behaviour and great tunes.

I wonder how this one will turn out! The music will be played live on stage by two wonderful players – Colin Steele on trumpet (he played in our production of The Little World of Don Camillo) and Dave Milligan on piano (he played in our production of ‘Did You Used to be R.D.Laing?’) – both Colin and Dave played in our production of Novecento. So now you know how good the music will be! And me? I’ll just be my usual self, of course. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll all get to Perugia in July for the Umbria Jazz Festival!

Who knows?

Our first engagement in 2008 is at The Rosemary Branch in Islington where ten years ago we did a show called Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! – a science and samba show all about the Nobel Prize winning physicist and bongo player. (And didn’t we do well! Packed out every night! Reviews in the Evening Standard and Time Out and all.) Well, we’re going back now for two weeks with Picasso & Me and Did You Used to be R.D.Laing in repertory.

We went to New York with the R.D.Laing production earlier in 2007 and sold out a small theatre off Broadway for two weeks. It was reviewed in The New York Times! And you know what they say – if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere! So, Islington, here we come!

Wonderfully, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin just goes on and on. The characters are all very young at the beginning of the story and very old at the end – and it’s just the same with us! Now I can’t remember where I left my walking stick!

Ho hum!

Mike