 |
Putting It
Together
March 24: It is often said that musicals aren’t written, but they are
re-written. There are famous stories of songs being lost in Boston and exactly the right
song replacing it – or not. RATS – with book and lyrics by Pete Greenaway and
music by David Church is one of the 10 mini musicals that make up this year’s Short,
Sweet & Song. It is a dark comedy about a streetwise rat – Jarynx (Vincent
Hooper), Synthia – a lab rat (Anita Margiotta) and Daron (Andrew Threfall) who is
hopelessly in love with Synthia. AUSSIETHEATRE.COM, through the diary of Pete Greenaway,
has tracked this show from page to stage....
6 Feb 2008
I won't say the name of the play, or the name of the reviewer who savaged it. But my entry
in Short, Sweet & Song 2007 was described as lame, amateurish and the worst play of
the evening. I already knew the piece had problems. With no composer to work with, I
dusted off a few songs I'd written with a friend in the mid-90s, and fabricated a story
around them. Avigail (Herman) must have been particularly altruistic the night she
assessed my submission, for I somehow snuck in. A year later, I have the chance to redeem
myself. This time I have a composer in the form of David Church, of Brisbane's
Conservatorium of Music (I convinced him my last piece was "existential"). And
festival director Michael Huxley is aware of the reviews I got last time, but has still
taken the time to offer mentorship and support…. I can only assume he bet someone he
could turn a nobody into a success story, like with the movie Trading Places, or
Kylie Minogue's career. Suits me. I should be so lucky.
24 Feb 2008
Being on the Shortlist is no guarantee of a performance. It's happened to me before. It
would almost be better not to be listed, because at least then I'd know it's all over,
rather than being strung along until the inevitable heartbreak. But then David found the
audition notes on the website. Rats was listed among the 14 plays they were
holding auditions for! But we still didn't know if it was in the Top 10, to receive nine
performances, or in the Wildcards, to be performed only twice. Michael tried to distract
me from such trivialities. He asked me to contribute to a weekly online diary about my
"journey" during the process. I countered that I could only do that if I started
getting some feedback about what's going on, otherwise I wouldn't have much to write
about. He replied that our play now had a director, a cast, a musical director, and a
"slot". Plenty of fodder to sustain me for a couple of entries at least!
3 March 2008
When David and I arrived at AIM to workshop our songs, I assumed it would be a simple
matter of tweaking the odd lyric or two, but no. While we waited for the Director James
Lee and talent to arrive, Michael suggested that the structure of 'Sanitised' should be
changed to verse/chorus. We chose two sets of four lines from the song, and my job was to
rewrite them so they had the same rhythmic structure. So I began a hasty rewrite of the
lyrics while he and David worked on arrangements. I did spend some time cursing myself for
not bringing a rhyming dictionary, but had soon coddled together some dummy lyrics for us
to work with. When Vincent (Hooper) arrived, I recognised him immediately from Life's
a Circus in SS&S last year. In 2007, he played the role of a circus performer,
but how would he handle playing a streetwise rat? But he belted out the songs with such a
healthy shade of Artful Dodger, it was clear he had the character nailed. Then James
arrived, a Director so full of ideas that he hardly had time to take a breath. From the
page-bound perspective of a writer, I'm pleased he has a number of bold plans for staging
and costumes that hadn't even occurred to me. Without spoiling any surprises, I'll just
say he's lifting the piece from "black comedy" to "Black Comedy". But
for now our focus was on changes to the script. We decided that Jarynx should hassle Daron
a bit more before launching into 'Twitchin' and Itchin', and this should come through in
the dialogue leading up to 'Life's Sweetest Reward'. Not only that, but now we decided
that this lovely romantic duet should be peppered with interjections from a disapproving
Jarynx.
With yet more rewrites to be done, I felt like we were hardly making any progress at all.
But then David pointed out that at least this time we only have to rewrite two songs, not
four!
13 March 08
Nobody likes getting up at 4am on a Sunday morning. But when I found myself unable to
sleep over the events of the day before, I felt compelled to write a few notes putting
forward my case. Saturday had started out promisingly enough. David and I headed off to
AIM to meet the full cast of Vincent, Andrew and Anita for the first time. Andrew
performed Daron with just the right level of likeable gullibility, and Anita's Synthia was
suitably creepy-content. (ED NOTE: The song being discussed here is as duet between
Synthia – the Lab rat and Daron – a street rat who has fallen in love with her
– to tell you anymore would reveal a key plot point). James announced that Michael
suggested a change Synthia's lyrics from "beyond these bars" to "within
these bars", but didn't press the point when I questioned him about it. Of course,
Michael himself wasn't so easily put off. He explained his reasons for the change. I
didn't agree with him, but the cast did, and even - horror of horrors - et tu David!? (the
composer) After Michael said the current lyrics belong in "a different song", I
decided to cave in to the majority. But at 4am I awoke with a new conviction that the
original lyrics were correct. I wrote an impassioned email stating my reasons, and sent it
off to all concerned. But will it be enough to win them over?
20 March 2008
The sitzprobes turned out to be a huge relief. Under Bev’s expert guidance, all the
songs are coming together really nicely. Vincent had decided not to adopt my suggestion of
playing Jarynx with a “Fat Pizza” accent, but who could blame him. James had a
quiet word to me at one point to say that “beyond these bars” still wasn’t
working. I suggested “behind these bars” (plus a couple of other minor changes),
and he was happy with them, instructing the cast to adopt these new lyrics. We did a
couple of run-throughs and got to the point where we were only running one second
overtime. One of the actors joked that it was because he’d flubbed a line, and it
should all be OK. That night, I had the best sleep I’d had for about a month. But the
following morning, I started to feel that the tempo of 'Life’s Sweetest Reward' had
been a little too fast. I sent an email with suggestions of edits I could make to the
script, hoping to redistribute some precious seconds.
To Be Continued....
Short, Sweet & Song opens at the Seymour Centre on March 26.
Bookings: (02) 9351 7940. |
