Feisty ladies and mystic powers challenge over-development
New musical
Ropetackle Arts Centre chairman Martin Allen offers his first full musical in a workshop performance at the Shoreham venue on Wednesday, June 10 at 8pm.
Called Spirit of the River, it is being produced by Simon Gray – the tale of a small estuary town under threat when a dastardly developer, in cahoots with certain local councillors, plans to build along the unblemished banks of the town’s river.
Rising to the challenge, townsfolk are rallied by two feisty houseboat-dwelling ladies who summon the river’s mystic powers to protect their sacrosanct environment.
“It's a slightly satirical story about a fictional place,” Martin says. “Any resemblance to actual people or places is entirely coincidental, I say with an exclamation mark! It is about a little estuary town threatened by development and about the local response with the two feisty ladies rising to the challenge.
“If you look at Shoreham, you can see straight away the connection with what is going on around here, the extent to which there has been over-development and the heritage has been degraded by the scale of that development. You can connect it to the threats and to the wider environment and to the damage that has been done.
“Over the years I have written a lot of songs. There were several of them that I had in the back of my mind. There was a thread to them. I've always enjoyed musicals. There are musicals, and there are musicals. Some are frothy, but some of them are very powerful with songs that are part of a narrative.
“So I pulled together a few threads from the musical side and wrote the story around that and then threw in a few twists and a little bit of romance, stuff to make it a bit jolly.
“Having done that, I thought maybe it might be something we could do in alocal pub but then I spoke to a number of people, in particular Simon Gray. I sent it to him and I sat with him while he listened the songs. He then said he would like to produce it. He found a cast. In fact, he has found a wonderful cast. I have lined up a band that I play in and we are up and running. We're going to be doing a workshop performance. I wanted to run it just to see how it worked.
“We're going to have a bit of feedback after the show. We have invited a number of our patrons along, our core membership, to bounce off. Obviously I'm looking for West End and Broadway! But realistically it's just going to be a bit of fun but I do think I've got something to say with this. Two or three of the songs are songs that I've played quite a few times and are very environmental in theme. Really we just want to see how it works.”