Did you know that I wrote 70% of a musical once, a long time ago? Maybe 60% of a musical, actually.
Oh wait, I did that bit.
Rehearsals for Down the Plug Hole were ongoing. We were forced to rehearse things out of order as I was writing scenes out of order, filling the gaps in the script. Things only slowed down when they were waiting for me to write new scenes. And I was waiting for me to write new scenes as I was in some of these scenes. I thought me should pull his finger out, to be quite honest.
In between that I was listening to our band’s output, trying to think up lyrics for the songs. Between us we came up with yet-to-be-discovered future classics like “You Want to Have a Bath Right Now”, “Drainpipe Battle” and “Vince (was a Water Vole)”.
Yes, I was going a bit out of my mind now you come to mention it.
I got very tired. I lost my shit at the guy playing Harry Lake at one point. There was a gag, early on in the first scene. It was a shit gag, I freely admit that. A stolen gag at that.
“I just flew in from Chicago… and, boy, are my arms tired.”
And he didn’t like the joke. I didn’t like the joke. But it filled a joke-shaped hole in the script. So he repeatedly complained about the line. But the director told him to get with it as we were running out at time.
And so he got the line wrong every time we ran the scene, deliberately. And he look at the director and roll his eyes.
And it was after he did that for about the twentieth time that I threw the page of script I was writing to the ground, called him some very bad words and had to be physically restrained by the rest of the cast.
A break in rehearsals was called.
I wasn’t the only one working hard. Sets and props were being built. Costumes were being made. To replicate the look of the Dick Tracy movie a load of second-hand suits, ties, hats and shirts were bought from charity shops and they were painted with brightly-coloured gloss paint. The suits look great…
…to begin with.
Eventually, with much relief, I finished penning the last scene of the show. Literally penned, I wrote every word long hand on whatever scraps of paper I had to hand. I’ve still got them in a folder in the house somewhere. I wouldn’t say I was proud of it – most of it had been thrown together and some of it had missed – but I did feel a sense of achievement. I’d written most of a musical, mostly on my own.
Having finished writing I had the luxury of only having to worrying about rehearsing and learn my lines. Bliss.
And once that was finished all we had to do was tour a physically-strenuous comedy musical about water round ten Wiltshire Primary Schools in a week in the middle of a blazing hot summer.
Piece of piss. What could go wrong?
The Flog 