New Musicals Network

NMN's co-founder Peter Auker gives his personal account of the launch at London's Pigalle Club. Photography by Matthew Ager.

“They’ll definitely come,” my co-producer Katy had said to me several months before. “Trust me – there’ll be an audience.” Last week, advance ticket sales had picked up a bit and I was beginning to think Katy’s optimism might not be misplaced after all. But we were still short of a full house.
This was the thought going through my mind on the evening of Snappy Title just before we opened the doors of the Pigalle Club. Our Front of House supervisor Marion called me up to the foyer so that I could let one of the composers in early as arranged previously – and I saw with astonishment that people were queuing up around the block to get in. Katy had been completely right – they did come. Lots of them. If you’re reading this and were in the audience that night – many thanks for coming!

The afternoon rehearsal (above) was hard work but enjoyable.

Being one of the producers, I clearly cannot give an unbiased review – just this personal account of the evening. And what a magnificent evening it turned out to be!

A few nerves as I got up on stage to welcome everyone to Snappy Title and give a few brief details about New Musicals Network…then, introducing the cast to sing There’s Something In The Air Tonight from Stiles and Drewe’s Peter Pan, settled down to let the artists do what they do best – entertain us in the most lively and professional manner imaginable. This song builds from a quiet, mysterious opening into a multi-layered texture with some fantastic spine-tingling vocal harmonies – it was a perfect opening for the show.

(L to R) Katy Auker, George Stiles, Anthony Drewe, Peter Auker

Stiles and Drewe took over the introducing duties deftly and turned out to be the wittiest and most entertaining of hosts. The evening was a little unusual in that most of the songs had their respective composers present, and if this added any extra pressure for the performers, they never let it show.
A few months earlier Katy and I had spent many hours listening to about a hundred mp3 demos of songs submitted for inclusion in the programme. It was a difficult but enjoyable task, and somehow we managed to whittle the songs down to a manageable programme for our launch event. There are details of Snappy Title’s programme after this article, so I won’t list them all here, but I would like to briefly mention a few highlights in what was an extremely strong field (although in no sense was this a competition of course, more a celebration of new musical theatre writing.)

So for me, the highlights were:

Jeremy Legat’s performance of Alexander Bermange’s A Trainspotter’s Tale. Jeremy entered through the audience, fully dressed for the part in duffle-coat, bottle-bottom glasses and clipboard, distributing Oyster card leaflets left right and centre. The song is deceptively difficult, being essentially a list of London underground stations delivered at break-neck speed, and Jeremy gave a superbly assured and comic performance.

Jeremy Legat as The Trainspotter

It was great to hear Julian Chenery and Matt Gimblett’s song, To Be A Man again, after its performance at the Sondheim Society event earlier in the year. The performance was again given by talented RADA student Michael Peavoy. Transforming Hamlet into a modern musical without it sounding embarrassingly self-indulgent is no mean feat – both for the writers and the performer – and they all passed the test with flying colours. A moving and powerful piece of music theatre.

When planning the evening, we wanted to put in a couple of longer excerpts in order to prevent things from being too “bitty”. As Austentatious was the first musical we featured on the website when it went live earlier in the year, it was a natural thing to also feature an excerpt from this highly entertaining and erudite musical in Snappy Title. Cassidy Janson and Lucy Mills were in fine form, as they brought the first half to an end with three songs.

Cassidy Janson and Lucy Mills in Austentatious
Commencing the second half was another longer excerpt – this time from Matt Brind’s wartime story Only The Brave and again featuring Cassidy Janson. The powerful group song Letter Writers created a tangibly emotional atmosphere which was maintained by two solo songs – Cassidy again (in When I Close My Eyes) and Gerard Bentall, presenting a powerful performance of the title song, Only The Brave.

The time had come for some more comic relief, and this was provided in spadefuls with Verity Quade’s hilarious depiction of a TV presenter’s on-screen breakdown in Olly Ashmore’s Wake Up TV.
My next highlight was Charles Bloom’s song You’re As Good As It Gets, sung by Richard Dempsey. As Charles lives in New York, he was unable to be present, but I think he would have been delighted with Richard’s performance, which was elegant, stylish and sophisticated.

(L to R) Verity Quade and Richard Dempsey

Having spent twenty years of my life as a music teacher, I am always intrigued to hear works by young composers. If I Stay Here, from the musical Reduced,  was written by Joe Robinson, who is just seventeen years old. One might think that a song by someone so young could not stand comparison with songs by much more experienced composers, but If I Stay Here stood up perfectly well on its own merits. Lucy May Barker (herself very young) gave a fantastic performance, and really brought it to life.

(L to R) Lucy May Barker and Kirsty Hoiles

My last highlight was Kirsty Hoiles’ beautiful singing in Just Beyond The Stars, the lullaby from Stiles and Drewe’s Peter Pan. It was simply exquisite, and provided a lovely point of reflection and quietness before the show’s group finale – Anything Can Happen from Mary Poppins. This was simply but effectively choreographed by Damian Sandys, and gave a lovely exuberant Broadway-ish glitziness to the end of the show.

The Finale - Anything Can Happen

My thanks obviously go to my partner-in-crime Katy for her unwavering optimism, to Peter Huntley for directing so wonderfully and creating a show which just ran like clockwork, to musical director Christopher Mundy for managing fistfuls of semiquavers so brilliantly and to Damian Sandys for his musical staging. And of course thanks to Marion, Denis, Chris, Tim, Glen, Jess, Matt and Al (I think I’ve remembered everyone). Finally a huge thank you of course goes to the performers who gave up their Sunday and spent hours learning new material to make Snappy Title such a roaring success.

(L to R) Katy Auker, Peter Auker, Christopher Mundy, Peter Huntley, Austentatious composer Matt Board

 Click HERE to read the full list of songs and performers.