For regional theatres like the New Wolsey in Ipswich, musicals can play a crucial role in delivering audience development targets. Peter Rowe cheers on the actor-musicians who make this possible.
As I write, we are in the middle of rehearsals for ?Sugar?, the musical of ?Some Like It Hot?, with a company of fourteen actor-musicians and Musical Director Greg Palmer doing full justice to a rich brassy Broadway score by Jule Styne. A co-production with Clwyd Theatr Cymru, this is the latest in a series of musicals and plays with music that have become a central strand in the programme of the New Wolsey Theatre since its re-opening in 2001. The house-style of using versatile actor-musicians, incorporating the instruments within the stage design, and including the players within the staging of musical numbers so that the band replaces a traditional chorus, has proved popular with audiences.
The New Wolsey programme deliberately offers a wide range of work to attract audiences from all cultural and social backgrounds and all age groups within our community. In a typical year we produce four main house shows, within an eclectic mix of touring theatre, operetta, music, comedy, dance and other events. It often seems to me that we no longer have such a thing as a core audience, but rather a series of different constituencies that we serve with different strands of our programme.
When we produce a show ourselves, and run it for four weeks within this mix, the task is to create an event that has enough popular ?grab? to attract all our various audiences. Our musical work has achieved this difficult task extremely successfully, pulling in people from right across the spectrum and creating what, for us, are the most thrilling nights of all: when you feel that the whole community is represented inside the auditorium, experiencing together the immediate enjoyment that the musical at its best can provide.
That musicals are popular is not exactly news. But for a regional theatre, the actor-musician style adds icing to the cake. Contrary to popular belief, the use of actor-musicians is not a sneaky way of avoiding Musician Union rates but a deliberate artistic choice. Audiences love the sheer display of skill involved. Also, the quality of actor musicianship is now so high that a show with a cracking cast of fourteen actor-musicians will be much more rich, lush and textured musically than a traditional pit band of four or five dedicated musicians. Watching people play musical instruments is, in itself, theatrically exciting: it bonds a company more quickly and completely than anything else I know and the pleasure of actors playing together quickly communicates itself to an audience.
This house style has even invaded our Christmas show, the ?rock ?n? roll panto? that has now become a fixture in our programme. The format was created by Bob Carlton, who wrote pantomimes specifically for the Liverpool Everyman. His idea of taking a traditional pantomime story, picking twenty carefully chosen rock and soul classics to fit the plot, and using a company of actor-musicians has proved extremely and enduringly popular. I directed one of Bob?s scripts as a freelance director at the Everyman and was amazed at how the audience turned up ready to party. The show felt like all the best bits of pantomime combined with a fantastic covers-band gig. Parents know the songs from first time around and their children often from covers or adverts. Teenagers, often short changed at Christmas, have a great time. Enforced song sheet participation is out and spontaneous dancing in the aisles is in.
For many of our audiences, a trip to the rock ?n? roll pantomime is the first step on the loyalty ladder at our theatre. We offer all new bookers an incentive to come back soon in the form of a redeemable voucher and we currently have an audience-development drive aimed at encouraging panto-only bookers to broaden the range of what they see. Our audience development plans are bearing fruit: since 2001, we have retained 8,600 people from the previous mailing list and have also attracted 17,300 new ones ? two-thirds of our audience are new attenders.
This type of work is being performed up and down the country. And yet it still feels as though it is a well-kept secret within the British theatre economy. For those of us who have been working in this style for many years, there is simply no more exciting, artistically satisfying means of creating music theatre. For me, personally, the very best music theatre, where music, character and action are all completely integrated, provides some of the best theatre there can be. I wouldn?t take a pit band if you paid me.
Peter Rowe is Artistic Director of The New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich.
t: 01473 295911; w: http://www.wolseytheatre.co.uk