New Wolsey’s Peter Rowe ‘gets it on’ to stage Marc Bolan musical

He and close colleague Bob Carlton pioneered the development of actor/musician shows with such productions as the Olivier-winning Return To The Forbidden Planet. At the New Wolsey, he has continued this approach with such shows as Sweeney Todd, Good Companions, Company and the recent anniversary production of Guys and Dolls.

But, his most high profile work has been the creation of his incredibly popular rock’n’roll pantomimes which are staged each Christmas at the New Wolsey. Written and directed by Peter Rowe, the pantomimes are a deceptively clever mixture of farce, theatre and a celebration of rock and soul classics.

What makes these productions so much fun – more than a straight forward recitation of rock’n’roll covers – is the intelligent way that Pete uses the lyrics to tie the songs to the action or to the emotion of a scene.

It’s a skill more usually witnessed in a West End musical than in an end-of-year knockabout panto.

As with any theatrical production, the creation of laughter and comedy is a serious business and needs to be constructed with the utmost care – which is why Pete’s rock’n’roll pantomimes have that added sheen. It is clear they are put together with the same love and diligence that he invests in an expensive musical.

It’s more than a collection of corny old gags and catchy pop songs. The songs help advance the story, even with absurd, larger-than-life characters in an outrageous scenario.

Having written seven rock’n’roll pantos thus far, Peter Rowe has also been gradually extending these same skills into full-blown musicals. The New Wolsey has a strong reputation for pioneering new work and the shaping of new plays is something which forms part of the skill-set of any creative director.

Rehearsals for It’s A Wonderful Life saw Pete directing a world premiere and relishing the opportunity to work closely with writer Steve Brown to revise the show once the show was in rehearsal.

Pete has just finished the umpteenth revision of the script for 20th Century Boy – a new musical which explores the life and career of T-Rex front man Marc Bolan.

The New Wolsey artistic director has a passion for popular music and loves exploring the forces that shape the creation of some of our best-loved rock songs. Last year the New Wolsey explored the life of Ian Drury in the play Reasons To Be Cheerful. In the same season Pete supplied the book for Songs From A Hotel Bedroom which set Kurt Weill’s American songbook in its proper film noir, post-war landscape.

His knowledge of pop songs and pop lyrics is encyclopaedic. “It’s handy to be able to tap into song lyrics and have them echo something which is happening in the play. It can provide a very powerful, very emotional kick to a play or to a scene. It’s far better than just dropping a famous number into a scene just because you need a song in here.”

Speaking during a break in rehearsals for 20th Century Boy, Pete said that he doesn’t see himself as a writer so much as a dramaturge – someone who helps shape, structure and refine an existing piece of work rather than a fully-blown writer – but he does admit, after some pushing, that much of the dialogue in 20th Century Boy is also largely his work.

“I am doing more of that work now but I prefer to work on something which has some existence before hand. I think if I was confronted with a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen, I would be staring at it for three weeks not getting anywhere.

“So it’s great to breathe new life into an existing fairytale or to take a look behind the scenes at the life of a great artist.”

He said that his writing started while working for a youth theatre project when he was training to be a director at the Thorndike Theatre in Leatherhead.

“It was called Stealing a Smile and designed to be put on in a shopping centre. Because it was for a specific bunch of people, I decided I would write something for them.

“For a long while that was it. I didn’t do much other writing until I came to start writing the pantos.”

He said that part of his work as a director meant that he has spent a lot of time looking at the structure of plays and how things flow on stage – particularly with new works.

“Quite often I was working with writers on new pieces, looking at the structure of works, particularly commissioned works destined for a particular space and that continued at The Bubble (theatre) where I commissioned pieces in a musical/ cabaret style and I had a lot of dramaturgical structural input but I didn’t write the actual words. I was usually cutting and pasting and re-arranging or suggesting but that falls into lots of directors remits.

“I found that after a first draft I was suggesting to a writer, why don’t you write this scene? Or what about this character, can’t you do more with him? Then when I first started directing rock’n’roll pantomimes they were written by Bob Carlton for The Everyman in Liverpool and when I went back there as artistic director Bob decided he couldn’t write any more, so I was persuaded to have a crack at writing them and I’m still going.”

He said that some while later he was approached by Gerald Armin who had an idea for a show called Leader of the Pack, based on the life and career of New York songwriter Ellie Greenwich who alongside such notables as Phil Spector, Jeff Barry, Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller – not to mention Carole King and Gerry Goffin, provided the soundtrack to much of the 1960s and 70s.

“He had a revue version of the show which was done in New York and he was looking to expand it into more of a story and he asked me if I would have a look at that.

“I ended up taking that on as a rewriting job really. Quite a lot of structure was there so I went away, did a lot of research and ended up writing a new script for that show. That was my first non-panto piece of writing.”

He said that, for him the move between dialogue and song, is one of the most important transitions because it dictates how the show is perceived. It turns a show into a piece of proper theatre with a dramatic heart instead of being a tribute act with words?

“What I try to do is find songs that tell the story and to help work the scenes towards the natural inclusion of those songs. You try and find songs that fit the story and the characters moods and emotions in that scene.”

He said that the process was enhanced still further with the use of musical motifs and underscoring which tied the songs and the scenes together.

“There’s a lot you can play with and then it’s just about the rhythm of the show. There’s often a lot of editing that goes on once the show is stitched together you can see where there is a lull in the show.”

He said that until 20th Century Boy, he has been the director of his own writing, so he knows what he meant with his stage instructions and what he wanted to convey by the sequencing of scenes.

“What I found in the script-writing for 20th Century Boy is that I am having to be much more explicit about what I actually mean. The script instructions and stage directions have become much more specific because I’m not there to interpret them. The director isn’t me and therefore can’t see inside my head.”

Songs From A Hotel Bedroom was another show which had a life before Peter Rowe was brought on board to turn what was more of a cabaret performance into a fully-fledged musical.

“It’s helpful having a framework then I can set my imagination to work on how we can construct something that would be fulfilling for an audience and will take us on that journey to those places and can include the required songs.

“Like all creativity you do need a framework, you need a way into the story you are going to tell.

“I think that the writing that I do is more closely allied to directing – it is more interpretive. I am still in awe of those who can write original plays and novels, completely from scratch.”

He said that one of the aspects of writing which has surprised him is the fact that writing silly comedy sequences for the panto is no different to writing a big emotional scene in a play.

“The approach is exactly the same. It occurred to me as I was re-writing one of the panto scenes. The feel of writing the panto is no different to the feel of writing 20th Century Boy. The level of immersion and concentration is exactly the same – whether you are writing bad rhyming couplets for King Rat or an emotional exchange between Marc Bolan’s son and his mother.

“When you’re writing, you are still imagining yourself into the scene and hearing the voices of the characters in your head. For me, it’s all about the rhythm of the lines.”

He said that he spends what some may say is too much time polishing scripts, so he can get rhyming couplets which sound good in an actor’s mouth.

“What the music does, even in the pantos, is give you an instant emotional depth. So you can play an emotional scene – even if it is between Jack and his mother or Wishee Washee and The Princess. If you get them singing Tracks of My Tears then you are giving the scene some tremendous added power.

“Amid all the other nonsense going on suddenly that scene will become ridiculously moving. Often the songs will set the tone of the scene.”

Pete said that the emotional scene-setting worked very well on a show like Leader of the Pack. “When the show moved into deeper, more emotional territory in the second half, then because the songs had such an emotional weight to them, then the scenes were about what was being repressed. The marital breakup was happening but the emotions were not being let out. It was all coming out in the songs.

“For me it was a gift because there were all these fantastically rich songs in which she could really let go.”

When it comes to choosing which song goes where in a show, he said some songs choose themselves while on other occasions there are two or three candidates which could easily fill a slot.

“There’s one song in the middle of act one of 20th Century Boy which feels so right that there was no other song that would do. It was so upbeat and poppy that I’ve ended up using it as the moment when Marc’s relationship with his first wife Jean, really ignites. It’s an irresistible uptempo stomp and it serves the purposes of the story perfectly.”

The ordering of songs however can be quite a problem. The natural structure of a musical demands a strong opening number for each half as well as a powerful first half closer to send audiences happy into the interval and then there’s the show closer and the encore.

“As for which song you use where, then there has been a lot of discussion about those because you also need songs which relate to the emotional truth of the scenes. In a show like 20th Century Boy we have lots of big cards in our hands and what goes where is partly dictated by chronology of events and partly the rhythm of the show.”

He said that 20th Century Boy is very much a play with music rather than a traditional musical. “I think that is something that has evolved during the writing process. It came to us as a vehicle for celebrating the life of Marc Bolan as his music – which I hope it still is, but it has become much more of a play about him as a person and as a performer.

“There’s much more about him wanting to become famous and successful even from an early age. Most people want to be musicians and rock stars and the fame goes along with that. Marc Bolan just wanted to be famous. It was a little bit random at the beginning as to what he was going to be successful at. It wasn’t always the music that was the driver – certainly at the beginning. The same is true of David Bowie. Again he could have been famous as any number of things. I think they both wanted to stand out from the crowd.”

20th Century Boy by Peter Rowe in association with Gary Lloyd is at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich from September 8 to October 1. Tickets are available online at www.wolseytheatre.co.uk