Tim Minchin – Is He Out of His Mind?

Very worried about Tim

Which should comes first – the show or the title?

When I recently sat down to write an original piece of children’s theatre, I knew that I had an uphill battle on my hands. Why?  Because almost all commercially successful theatrical productions these days are adaptations of existing well-known material.  Usually a book or a film.

In support of this belief is the current gossip that Tim Minchin (composer and lyricist of Matilda) has been warned off attempting an entirely original work by the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim!

No doubt this is complete tittle-tattle.  Here is dramatic reconstruction of their fictional conversation:

Nighttime. Interior of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s boudoir.  A phone rings and waking from fitful slumber, ALW wearily answers.

SS:          Andrew? Steve Sondheim here.

Tim Minchin – Not worried but a bit bonkers?

ALW:    Steve it’s the middle of the night!

SS:          We need to talk to about Tim.

ALW:     Tim Rice?  What’s he done now!?

SS:          No Tim Minchin. I’ve heard he wants to write an original musical.

Sharp intake of breath from ALW. He switches on the bedside light.

ALW:   You mean like a completely original piece. Not based on ANYTHING?

SS:         Yep.

ALW:    I knew he was eccentric with all that bare footed piano playing nonsense – but he must be completely bonkers!

SS:          Now I know you and me are oceans apart…

ALW:   Yes, you live in American and I live in Britain…

SS:         I mean artistically Andy.  However, at times like this  succesful musical theatre composers – and I use the term loosely in your case Andy – need to stand together and give sound advice to the future generation.

Stephen Sondheim – mildly concerned

ALW:    (ignoring the insult) I suppose so…

SS:         He’ll listen to you Andy because Australians have a grudging respect for the British.

ALW:     But what should I tell him?

SS:          Try and put him off.  Tell him the world has changed – writing an original musical is commerical suicide. He needs to adapt something people have heard of or it will bomb at the box office.

ALW:     Have you any suggestions?

SS:           Well I was thinking that…Oh no, you don’t catch me out that easily fella! Come up with your own ideas for adaptations!

ALW:      Okay, I’ll see what I can do – these kids are all the same – think they can change the world with…ideas.

SS:            And Andy, if he does insist on this crazy crusade for originality – at least tell him not to put any of his own money into it, or he’ll end up as broke as Lionel Bart”.

They both laugh a lot.  ALW hangs up and redials Tim Minchin’s number. We cut to Tim who is sat in the bath painting his toenails… etc, etc, ad infinitum.

For my own part, I hope that Tim Minchen  sets to work on an original musical straight away. I’ll be going to see it  at any rate, so there’s one ticket sold right there.

In the past, in my own low-budget way I’ve enormously enjoyed adaptating and composing music for a number of well-known children’s shows including Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland, James and the Giant Peach and The Wind in the Willows.  However, I too, like many foolish writers before me, have felt the need to write something original ‘from scratch’.

But here’s the problem. When you come to sell or promote a new piece of theatre, all you have to go on is the name of the show. When the word ‘Moginogi‘ popped into my head one day about two years ago (I was in the bath painting my toenails at the time) I knew that I might potentially have a name that would get sufficient interest to drum up an audience.’Moginogi‘ has turned into a family musical about Cats and Dogs living in the mythical world of Catatonia.  Like all the best children’s shows it tackles a broad range of issues including prejudice, cultural identity, and how stories are told and evolve.  There’s also quite a lot of jokes about dog poo.  So there really is someting for everyone!

It’s due to have its premiere in July in a run of open-air performances at The Museum of Welsh Life in St Fagans and is directed by the fabulously talented Richard Tunley.

The performances are all for groups from South Wales Primary Schools.  We’ve already sold more than 2000 tickets, but if you’d like to come along, either as an interested individual or with a group, please subscribe to my blog and drop me a line.

Moginogi will also be available for performance by other companies from later this year.

Best wishes

Tim

P.S.  This blog has been sent via my old website.  I’d be grateful if you could follow this link (which will take you to the same article, but on the new site) and re-subscribe. http://tim-riley.co.uk/?page_id=321

Pinocchio, Bravissimo!!

Okay, okay – it’s a long time coming.  But for those of you who saw or worked on Pinocchio – Black RAT Productions’ excellent Christmas show at The Gate -you can now relive the experience by listening to the music whilst admiring a few photos.

I’d like to say we recorded it all at Abbey Road (or even Shabby Road in Caerphilly) but time was tight,  so I captured the vocal performances on my laptop between the last two performances in the corridor between the dressing room and the stage. Oh, the glamour!

I think it sounds pretty good.  Click here to go to a page about the show and further links to the songs. Don’t forget to leave nice comments at the bottom of the page.  By leaving a comment you can also subscribe to my blog which means you’ll be the first to receive sneak previews about my forthcoming musical with Frank Vickery (Another Bite of the Apple) and possibly the world’s first musical about curry (Half n Half) due to ‘hit the pass’ later this year.

Happy Days!

Tim R

Tell me your Tikka Tales

It has been a tricky few months as I’ve wrestled with the realities of bringing a musical about curry and Indian restaurants to life…

 

 

Happily there is light at the end of the tunnel as many scenes, songs and characters from Half ‘n’ Half are now starting to take shape. I do love the way that a character moves from being a name on the screen to taking on its own life. My aim is always to have characters that are so real in my mind that I feel that I could sit down and talk to them. You start to get to know what they might say and do in any given situation – obviously this comes in handy when you’re writing the scenes!

One of the big issues for me has been deciding what era to set the musical in. I think I alway knew it would take place in an Indian Restaurant in Cardiff.  Originally I was thinking that the first act might be in the late sixties and moving forward to the present day in the second act. However, as the story has developed I have found myself drawn to set the whole thing in the mid eighties. I’ve been justifying this on the grounds that there was a lot going on in Britain. Certainly it was a big time of change for Indian restaurants with the start of the Balti Boom.  Perhaps for the first time, Curry Houses started to be a place to visit for the food and not just somewhere to go once the pubs had shut.  It’s also an era in which I started to go to Indian restaurants for the first time. I have many memories – both good and bad – of these visits.

Although much of my research is done and I’m well into the writing phase, I’d still love to hear from people with anecdotes and memories of visits to an Indian Restaurant up until the eighties. Here are a few questions:

What was your favourite restaurant?

What was it called?

How was it different from the Indian restaurants of today?

What stories, situations or anecdotes stick in you mind?

For example, chatting to my father recently; he recalls that his favourite Indian restaurant in Birmingham in the sixties used to have a queue of people around the block waiting to get in on Saturday nights. He also recalls a man on the next table instructing him on the correct way to eat curry. Apparently it was important to mix the sauce on your plate with the rice. This would have been fine had he not then leant across and used his finger to mix up the food on my father’s plate as a demonstration!

So don’t be shy. Please feel free to ‘comment’ on this blog and share your memories. I look forward to hearing from you.

Tim Riley