Features
Moooving moments
Phoenix is rising again
with a piece of work which
almost featured live cows
and which converted a
music and lyrics writer to
the language of ballet.
Steve Pratt reports
THE idea was first mooted over
a drink between a composer
and choreographer. They'd
never met before, but they had
something in common as
Olivier theatre award winners, choreographer
Javier De Frutos for the current
London revival of the musical Cabaret
and Richard Thomas as co-creator, with
Stewart Lee, of Jerry Springer The
Opera.
There was some talk on Thomas's part
of wanting to do a show with real cows.
"I said that the only way I'd do a ballet
was if it featured live cattle. That's the
only thing that would get me on the
dance scene," recalls Thomas.
Someone mentioned cattle calls, the
name given to open auditions for actors,
and it stuck, becoming the title of a new
piece of work by Yorkshire-based
Phoenix Dance Theatre.
A visit to the Great Yorkshire Show at
Harrogate put paid to the idea of using
live cows or even dancers pretending to
be cows. As Thomas has recalled:
"That's when we realised that cows don't
move."
The auditions theme remains in the
first full-length piece Phoenix has produced
from concept to stage, with De
Frutos as director and choreographer
and Thomas writing music and lyrics.
For Thomas, this excursion into dance
represents the latest twist in what may
be viewed as a bizarre career path. After
leaving Cambridge, he went on the comedy
circuit for a decade and, with no formal
compositional training, wrote music
for TV.
One of his first stage musical successes
was Tourette's Diva, a series of operatic
put-downs sung by soprano Lore
Lixenberg in response to hecklers.
THE idea, so the story goes, arose
from an early Thomas comedy gig
that got out of hand. A group of
bored prostitutes stripped a member of
a stag party and threw him at Thomas,
who was performing in a boxing ring, in
an extreme example of heckling.
His interest in dance was minimal, although
his partner is a former dancer.
"I never saw any ballet until my mid-
30s," he says. But writing Cattle Call, he
found that dance has such a different
language to other theatre. "You have to
give away quite a lot of control, which I
don't mind, but is quite strange," he says.
"I do the book and lyrics and am usually
involved in pretty much everything
for a show. With dance, it's different.
Javier, with his insight and flair, is my
security blanket. It's interesting to see
what a hybrid Frankenstein thing we've
have created."
Thomas has been travelling to Leeds
for rehearsals two or three days a week
for the past month or so for the show, the
biggest undertaking in Phoenix's 27-year
history. The cast of 11 dancers is backed
by a soundtrack, pianist and two singers
in this fusion of contemporary dance,
performance art and opera.
Cattle Calls is, to his mind, a cross between
A Chorus Line, Waiting For Godot
and The Kids From Fame. "Or The Kids
From Shame, I call it," he adds.
The first scene is set in a waiting room
and corridor outside the audition room,
the second in the wings of the stage. "We
did workshops and got all the dancers to
improvise audition pieces. We got them
to wait in the corridor and Javier filmed
them. That was useful," he says.
The progress of Jerry Springer The
Opera has taken up much of his time in
recent years. What began as a one-act
opera developed into a full-length show
staged at the National Theatre, on BBC2
and on tour amid much controversy.
Thomas is just back from New York
where the show had a two-day run at
Carnegie Hall, with Harvey Keitel starring
as Jerry Springer. "When the hooha
happened people felt a bit nervous
about putting it on," he says, hoping that
a Broadway run might follow eventually.
He also developed a series of operas
putting familiar programmes to music
for Kombat Opera on BBC2. They included
parodies of The Apprentice, Wife
Swap and Question Time.
He sees his move from comedy to composer
as an attempt to write "serious
music that was funny". Opponents of
Jerry Springer The Opera didn't get the
joke, complaining about the bad language
and religious imagery.
"Say musical comedy and most people
want to kill themselves, think it's the
least funny thing," says Thomas, who
lists his musical loves as Bach, Miles
Davis and the Sex Pistols.
"I saw Guys And Dolls at the National
when I was a teenager and it was the
most incredible night. That blew me
away. There were some brilliant songs in
it."
His plans include an opera about Anna
Nicole Smith for the Royal Opera House.
Another about Britney Spears is muchmentioned
on the internet.
First, Cattle Call has to open. It's the
longest thing he's ever written. "I hope
it works, it was fun to do," he says.
* Cattle Call is at West Yorkshire
Playhouse, Leeds from April 9-12
(tickets 0113-2137700 or online
www.wyp.org.uk) and at Northern
Stage, Newcastle, on May 23 and 24
(tickets 0191-2305151 or online
www.northernstage.co.uk)
11:07am Monday 31st March 2008
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