What were your initial discussions with the director
(Nicholas Hytner) about the role music would play in One
Man, Two Guvnors?
The first conversations I had with Nick were about time, place and
style. He told me it was set in 1963, Brighton, and mentioned
Ealing Comedies [a series of films produced at Ealing Studios
between 1947-1957], Carry Onfilms [low-budget comedies,
1958-1978] and early Beatles music. Later, he abandoned the above
in place of skiffle music. Later still, it was Variety acts.
Finally, we decided we would make our own rules up and create a
hybrid of all the styles we wanted to incorporate. Nick began
sending me YouTube clips of crazy Variety acts; people playing car
horns and xylophones. We decided there would be music in between
scenes, but we didn't know if that would just be incidental music,
or actual songs, or if there would be underscoring during the
actual scenes. Before rehearsals began, we did a workshop and
decided the band would be on stage and that would be the skiffle
band that the character of Francis mentions in the play.
What was your process for writing the music once you knew
what the director required?
Once I knew the type of instruments I needed to incorporate then
the line- up of the band formed in my head. We did some workshops
and I got the band playing all kinds of crazy stuff that hasn't
actually ended up in the show; bones, paper bag, musical saws. This
inspired me to write the first song, My Old Man's a
Gannet, which was about food, a major theme in the play. Nick
liked the idea that all the songs should incorporate various ideas
from the play, without actually being about events which occur on
stage. He told me to write a series of songs based on that concept
and we would decide at a later point where those songs might fit in
within the structure of the play. I had written about six songs
before we started rehearsals and it was only then that we started
talking about where in the show they might fit and who would sing
them.
The musicians are very versatile. Was this
important?
Yes. One plays the double bass and the electric bass. The
guitarist has learnt the musical saw and the ukulele, although we
don't use them in the show now. The drummer learnt the washboard,
paper bag, bones and spoons. The tricky bit is to keep it
realistically 1963. How people perform now on stage is very
different from then. 1960s performers stand in a certain way and
bob their heads. It comes from a dance band tradition. Even the
instruments that rock groups played in the 1960s came from dance
bands. The performance style is more polite. It's very different
from the rock that's played now. Any time our drummer throws in a
fill or plays a bass drum pattern that doesn't feel like it comes
from the early sixties, it takes the audience out of it. And that's
been a real challenge. The bass drum is just keeping it really
simple, keeping it to the 2 and 4 counts, not pushing beats and
syncopating. The bass player's problem is not to funk it up,
because he is usually a really funky bass player. The guitarist has
had to do lots of research into country music. For me as a
composer, the big challenge was writing three chord songs,
something really simple, real pop songs. No middle eight, just
verse and chorus, two sections. Two or three chords at the
most.
Which do you write first: lyrics or music?
I always write the lyrics first because I come from a musical
theatre background. In a musical the music is always driven by a
character, and therefore by lyrics. Saying that, most times when
I'm writing a lyric I do actually hear the rhythm of the song in my
head, so I have a vague idea of how the melody might go and then
I'll refine that. Sometimes, when I get on to writing the melody it
takes over and I have to go back and rewrite the lyrics from
scratch again. Many of the skiffle songs in the show are story
songs, they have a plot progression. I often work out the story of
the song first, where in the plot I have to get to in each verse
and chorus, before I start writing.
How does writing music for plays differ from writing songs
for musicals?
The main difference is that in musical theatre you tend to be in
control of the whole show; in plays, you're trying to serve
everyone else. In a musical, the emotional journeys and themes, and
therefore the structure of the show, are driven by the composer; so
you're dictating where the underscore goes, how you're going to get
into a song etc. In a play, the director gives you a list of what
music they need; for example, scene change music or underscoring.
If a scene change takes longer than expected, then they will ask
you to write an extra twenty seconds of music. In One Man, Two
Guvnors, there's only one piece of scene change music which
tells you something about the emotion of the characters [the blues
music before the pier scene in Act Two which depicts Stanley and
Roscoe's depression]. The test is that you could take the visual
picture away and still tell, by the music, the way the characters
are feeling. That's more like musical theatre.
You've worked with Nick Hytner a lot. Can you say
something about the collaboration?
We've worked together on five plays, and we have a common
language; he doesn't have to take ages explaining an idea to me. I
like to be in rehearsals a lot so I can feel like I understand the
production and Nick encourages that. I like to get to know the
actors and what they're doing with their character; the actors'
physicality tends to influence the music you're writing for that
character. Nick is brilliant at guessing exactly where the music
should start, how long it needs to be to cover the scene change,
and what the mood should be. Not many directors have that level of
instinct.
Interview by Adam Penford for the National Theatre education
department.
One Man, Two
Guvnors, Sydney Theatre, 30
March - 11 May, 2013.
Q&A: Grant Olding
Date posted: 10 Jan 2013Author: STC