YORKSHIRE’S OWN MICHAEL PARKINSON INTERVIEWS GARY BARLOW & TIM FIRTH
AHEAD OF WORLD PREMIERE OF THEIR NEW MUSICAL IN LEEDS
Yorkshire Broadcaster, journalist and author Michael Parkinson met with Gary Barlow and Tim Firth this week to talk to them about their new joint venture The Girls. The Girls is a brand new musical based on the hugely successful stage play and film The Calendar Girls (both written by Tim Firth) that tell the story of a group of ordinary women from Yorkshire who did something extraordinary and took the world by storm.
The musical makes its world premiere in the heart of Yorkshire at Leeds Grand Theatre from Saturday November 14th to Saturday December 12th this year.
Tickets are on sale now priced from £10 to £45.
Book online at leedsgrandtheatre.com or call box office on 0844 848 2700.
PARKINSON MEETS BARLOW AND FIRTH, THE CREATORS OF “THE GIRLS”
When it comes to writing popular songs Gary Barlow has few equals – 50 million records sold and still counting. His mate Tim Firth is a childhood friend who hit the jackpot when he wrote the film and the play of The Calendar Girls. For the past two years they have been collaborating on a musical version of that inspiring story of the 12 members of the Rylstone & District Women’s Institute in Yorkshire who took off their clothes to produce an alternative calendar in memory of a friend, which became a worldwide sensation and made a shed load of money for cancer research.
The show opens in Leeds in November which maybe explains why Gary and Tim seem in a hurry. If they set our lunch to music it would be a quick step.
Tim’s original idea was to collaborate on an album of ‘blowsy, witty, big songs for English Divas.’ Gary who has penned hits for Shirley Bassey and film was interested.
At this stage, the idea of turning Calendar Girls into a musical was far from Tim’s mind, indeed he thought that after the play and the film there was little a musical adaptation could add to the story.
But then Tim began to think that perhaps these series of songs ‘Could become special moments that you achieve in a musical that you can’t achieve in a play, where the character actually sits and inhabits their own thoughts and we share those thoughts, deep thoughts.’ Moreover, he began to think, these songs could be married with the story of Calendar Girls. And so the idea of Calendar Girls the Musical was born.
The dynamic of Tim and Gary’s collaboration was unusual. Tim would send Gary a line indicating a facet of the woman’s character such as ‘So I’ve had some work done’, or a title such as ‘Mrs Conventional’, or an anthem to Yorkshire, and Gary would set about writing a 3– minute song about that.
Tim would then take all the songs that Gary produced and mix and match them – a verse here, a chorus there, to create new compositions to fit the story of the piece.
The result is a musical score that is a patchwork quilt of songs that incorporate different bits of different songs as well as both of Tim’s and Gary’s lyrics.
For Tim, though, the additional challenge was to make the musical a fresh take on the original story. It couldn’t just be the story of the play with a few songs in it, but a completely different take on the same theme.
Tim calls it a Village Green Musical in that it is as much about the life and the people living in a small town as it is about the extraordinary story that took place in it.
Yet, although, in Tim’s estimation, he’s changed 90% of the story, the essential honesty must remain because ‘every so often the daughter and son of John – the cancer victim who inspired the calendar – turn up and its always a kicker, and you think yeah that’s someone’s dad you’re dealing with here, it’s not just a character in your musical, this is a living issue for those people.’
They took the production to Burnsall Village Hall, the place where the story began, for a weekend of concert performances with the cast reading off book.
For Tim, this was a necessary and important process. Firstly, because he wanted the local community, and in particular the ladies themselves, to get a first look at the intended production, and secondly, because he wanted the honest Northern feedback from a real audience that he wouldn’t get in a sterile rehearsal room.
He has spent most of his career writing songs and then in his words, ‘dressing them up to make them sound better.’ For these performances the songs had to stand up to being played in a village hall on a piano and guitar which made him think about how he writes songs in a way his career in pop never did.
He also had the novel experience of revisiting his songs and re-working them as the piece developed in rehearsal.
He is by nature a writer of hit records and yet he knew above all that the songs must in style and tempo serve the narrative of the script first. He believes there are 2 or 3 songs that people will be singing as they leave the theatre. For him the ‘complete luxury of living with these songs, rethinking them, re-branding them, changing the tempo, it’s been so beautiful to watch it and I do believe we’ve now got the best versions of our songs.’
The play will open in Leeds just before Christmas and Manchester just after, before hopefully transferring to the West End. I’ll be there.
MICHAEL PARKINSON