Our Story So Far…
Shrubshall entered the college canteen with an air of disdain, greeted as usual by the familiar sounds of musicians jamming, actors declaiming and dancers loudly comparing bulimia stories; across the expanse of tables, plates, food, drinks and students in various states of outlandish performance sat Free, hunched over a particularly tricky piece of syntax. Their eyes met. They knew immediately. They started to sing…
No. Sorry. Performance Art at Middlesex Polytechnic wasn’t like that at all. And, really, we hardly went to the canteen. We met on a comedy writing module.
Indeed. Run by the much-missed Sid Palmer.
I didn’t know he was dead.
He isn’t. He was just always much-missed - especially by his students.
Can you please take this a little seriously?
Sorry.
Okay. Go on.
Shrubshall wrote fast and wrote funny, but wrote alone. Free was a punk kid with a hot head, a hungry belly and a desperate need to learn. When they met, there was bound to be sparks, but who knew that pretty soon the whole town would be lit up like it was Christmas, Diwali and 4th July all rolled into one…
Hm, we first worked on a musical version of the popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Top Cat. It was written for a 6th Form College in Cardiff and subsequently was performed at Arts Ed School in Chiswick. When we entered it for the much lamented Vivian Ellis Prize the judge’s comments suggested we should maybe turn it into a children’s musical. Duh! You think? We didn’t much lament the passing of the Vivian Ellis Prize.
Shrubshall strode into town, a mean, menacing look scarring the normally placid features. From the saloon came the sound of Free leading the regulars in a drunken chorus of See What the Boys in the Backroom Will Have. As Shrubshall burst through the swing doors 50 heads turned sharply towards the intruder and all noise stopped short. Free spun around on the piano stool. They stared hard at each other. As one, they went for their pens…
Alright, we once wrote a crazy, cross-dressing cowboy musical called YEE-HAW!! but, honestly, the rest of that has very little basis in fact. It was a big hit on the London Fringe and got glowing reviews in Time Out and critic’s choice in The Independent. It got picked up by ATG and promised the earth. Then it was cruelly spurned. Boy, there are some stories there which, oiled by alcohol, we’ll gladly divulge. Now, sober and mindful of our country’s swingeing libel laws, we keep shtum. Happily, now it’s been licensed by Watershed Productions who actually like the show. Amazing what an effect that can have.
Shrubshall’s thrust pierced the sturdy leather of Free’s jerkin with an ease that suggested worse for the skin should another parry be misjudged. The tyrant countered but, flick-flacking backwards, landing on a handily placed trampette, vaulting into the air and swinging on a chandelier, the dashing young rebel managed to get round the back of the usurper’s defences. Free turned, but only to find the tip of Shrubshall’s quill held ominously at the throat…
Yes, yes, our swashbuckling romp, The Rampant Blade.
Sex, swordfights and songs. Who could resist? Quite a lot of people as it turned out.
But really, if we don’t tell this right people won’t have a clue about our history.
Do you honestly think anybody’s going to read this? They’ll land on our website, realise there are no dirty pictures and go and find something way more interesting.
Yeah, probably. But just try and stick somewhere near the truth. Okay?
Shrubshall awoke on a hard cot in a Flanders hospital, certain that the hand shattered by a German mortar bomb was a lucky ticket home. Unfortunately, the cruel sneer curling Dr. Free’s lips seemed to signal otherwise - the Welsh medical officer seemed to take inordinate pleasure in sending young English writers back to the muddy, murderous trenches to continue their tortured verse…
Yeah, er, yeah, First World War, our musical pantomime, Gay Poets In Mud, - I get the link - but that bears as much relationship to the truth as does this account. Oh, but I suppose that’s the point - the distortion of truth through the filter of history and recollection.
Get on with it – or else I’m taking over again and writing this story the way it should be written with some thrills and spills and a tiny bit of invention…
Or rather a whole load of lies.
Possibly…
Gay Poets was a big success. Well, kind of. Hell, it was chosen for a Sony Showcase at the first International Festival of Musical Theatre in Cardiff. It received a showcase at Musical Futures in Greenwich Theatre. John Sparks at Theatre Building Chicago asks us to submit it for the Stages festival every year – we do, and every year it is rejected as being too British. But everybody loves it. And yet no-one can do a thing with it. Anyhoo…
Chicago? Now there’s interesting. Glamour, showgirls, gunfights, gangsters…
Or rather a showcase of our one-act musical The Big Ending. It was written as a double bill with a show by American team Scott Guy and Ross Källing. We finally got to play the Stages festival, and with the same show got to do a rehearsed reading at the 45th St. Theatre, NY, NY and at Century City Theatre, LA. The LA cast also came over to do a reading at the Theatre Museum, London. We’re in the process of a major rewrite, extending it as a stand-alone piece and are going to produce it at the Rosemary Branch Theatre, Nov-Dec 2006.
Shrubshall rode off into the sunset with fat, faithful friend, Free, as amanuensis and all-round comedy fodder. Their exciting adventures can be read in the forthcoming Samuel French Ltd. musical of Around the Pond in 80 Days.
Hey, you know that’s pretty nearly right. Except it’s not really about us. It’s about a couple of frogs. And they’re called Phileas and Pass. And the adventures are made up. And it’s not really a zoologically accurate description of…
Forget it.For the pack of lies that masquerades as our CV, click here.