On Sunday 13th July, The Confession Room is being staged at the St James Studio for one night only.
Described as an “outrageously funny new British musical”, Dan Looney (pictured right) and Patrick Wilde’s show is about a group of people who come together to spill their most embarrassing secrets and stories.
I recently met with Dan and the show’s leading man, Jon Robyns, to discuss the creation of The Confession Room, what people can expect from the show and the state of new writing in British musical theatre.
Dan, who is also an actor and singer, has appeared in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's production of Guys & Dolls (Cadogan Hall), Darling Of The Day (Union Theatre), Get That Beat (Tristan Bates Theatre) and The Concrete Jungle (Arts Ed). SimG records worked with Dan on the concept album of The Confession Room last year which was released to huge acclaim. As a composer and lyricist, Dan is currently busy working on various projects.
Jon (pictured left) created the roles of Princeton and Rod in the original West End production of Avenue Q. His theatre credits also include: The Last Five Years (Greenwich), Dickens Abridged (Arts), Sir Galahad in Spamalot (Harold Pinter/Playhouse/UK Tour), Hollis Bessemer in Road Show (Menier), Enjolras in Les Miserables (25th Anniversary UK Tour), Marius in Les Miserables (Queen's), Mark in Rent (English Theatre Frankfurt) and understudy Chris in Miss Saigon (UK Tour). Later this year Jon will alternate Huey in the West End premiere of Memphis.
Dan, following the success of the concept album, how are you feeling about The Confession Room's staging at the St James Studio?
Dan Looney: Excited! It’s a strange one because it’s been a long time coming. We’ve done a couple of test performances in front of audiences before and it’s gone down really well, so to get it in front of another audience at a really nice venue with the cast we want is really cool. A lot of the songs come through on the album but sometimes they don’t work without an audience out of context. It will be good to get them out there properly.
As a writer, how does it feel to see your work brought to life?
DL: It’s always strange hearing people sing your songs – it’s the oddest thing, but it’s also the coolest thing. It’s a really cool feeling, certainly when an audience enjoys it and you’re sitting at the back thinking ‘this is nice’!
Jon, The Confession Room is a crazy musical! How did you come to be involved?
Jon Robyns: Dan and Robin (Rayner), the producer, approached me about doing it and I’m also friends with Simon Grieff who produced the CD. I had listened to the CD, because I’m just about as stagey as they come, and I’m also a massive advocate of new British writing. Dan is one of a new group of our generation of new writers who are really starting to utilise the infrastructure that’s being put in place. The St James is a brilliant space, particularly for new writing. Obviously Perfect Pitch has been running for years and there are more and more competitions for new writers out there. If I’m given the opportunity to do new writing, especially new British writing, I will try and do it! Plus the calibre of Dan’s writing is just so high that you kind of go, ‘wow, ok – great!’
What do you think about the state of new writing at the moment? Commercially we don’t see as much, but there certainly seems to be this inner hunger and, like you’ve already mentioned, we now have these amazing organisations like Perfect Pitch!
JR: I think social media and things like SoundCloud and iTunes have changed the accessibility of new writing. The fact you can now produce a very professional sounding demo very cheaply these days and get it out there very easily so you can grow a fanbase quickly helps when producers want to try and put on a concert for revenue and profit. From the business point of view I think things are getting better. From the artistic side there has always been the writing there, but I think the West End our generation is part of is trying to model itself more on a Broadway set-up where you have new writing coming through off-Broadway – and off-West End is starting to be ‘a thing’.
DL: A lot of thanks needs to go to places like Leicester and Sheffield because they’re starting to advocate new musicals. Tim Firth’s new musical was just put on in Sheffield recently and Leicester Curve have obviously just had Water Babies so there now seems to be a lot of regional theatres producing new work. I remember when Plymouth did Lend Me A Tenor a few years ago which transferred, and then Loserville transferred from the West Yorkshire Playhouse. There are a lot of new musicals starting their lives outside London with really high production values which I think is really important.
JR: I’ve got to say that if we knew the blueprint for success in musicals we would bottle it and sell it, but nobody does. However, the talent is there and the desire is there in this country to do it, so I think producers and theatres are picking up on that now. From a performing point of view, we always want to do new work because a lot of musical theatre is re-production rather than production. New writing and being able to put your own stamp on something and make it yours is kind of like the holy grail of musical theatre. It’s great that the West End has so many long running shows – Phantom and Les Mis, and I guess you could now add Wicked and Billy Elliot; we’re all very happy they exist because we all have mortgages, but to do new writing is where we all want to be.
Going back to The Confession Room, what do you think people can expect?
DL: The first thing I say to anybody when talking about The Confession Room is that when I started writing it, it was a joke – it was literally a joke! When I was seventeen, me and my friend Sam were in a monologues lesson and, as usual, I had done all of the work and he had done none of it. We decided to go outside and write a song which became the song ‘In Bed’, which is now one of the opening songs in the show. Then we thought we would just write a load of comedy songs and put them into a revue. When Bobby Cronin came over from America to work on The Concrete Jungle, which I was in, I just played him a couple of songs and he threw it out there. It started to go places and suddenly the musical theatre community started going ‘we like this’. I just want people to know it is as silly as it’s meant to be!
It’s brilliant fun and brilliant escapism!
DL: Yes, and I think there are great shows which have done that! I’m not really sure that every time I saw Avenue Q I came away thinking ‘I really learnt something today’ [Jon laughs], I came away thinking ‘I just had a brilliant night of entertainment.’ Sometimes new shows don’t do that, but all we’ve tried to do is create a show that makes you enjoy yourself. It is escapism!
How along ago was it now that you wrote that first song and how would you describe the musical influences?
DL: We wrote the first song six years ago but the musical only really started taking shape about two years ago. It’s very pop/rock and very Laurence O'Keefe-ee, like Legally Blonde sort of style.
If you had to go to a desert island and could only take three musical theatre songs with you, which three would you take and why?
JR: Gosh
DL: Umm
JR: You can go first!
DL: It’s trying to say these without sounding like the stagiest person! You might have to give me a second, this is really tough!
JR: Ok, I’m going to take ‘One Day More’ (from Les Miserables) just ‘cause! It never gets dull or boring. You can see it being performed by schools and it’s still good, you can see it performed by the O2 cast and it blows your mind. I don’t think there’s a better end to act one in any show I’ve been in! Next I’m going to take ‘You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)’ from Avenue Q, I obviously have a different memory of it; my main memory is doing the show and seeing people pointing with their mouths open. I can’t help but smile when I listen to it, and it’s just a rocking out number which is good. I think I’m going to need a ballad now! You should have asked me this with a week’s prep! I’ll take ‘Moving Too Fast’ from The Last Five Years. I just did it in Greenwich and getting to perform it has really opened it up in my mind. I’ve always loved the song, but now I have a greater appreciation for what’s involved in it.
And what about you, Dan?
DL: I’m taking ‘The Juggernaut’ from The Wild Party (by Andrew Lippa) just because it has the sickest orchestration ever and it just makes you go ‘yeah, this is amazing!’ Then I’m going to take ‘Legally Blonde’ (the ballad) from Legally Blonde. I think the song is beautifully written and I think Laura Bell Bundy sounds amazing on the album. It’s a really well-crafted, beautiful song. Finally I think I’m going to stick in ‘Why God Why’ from Miss Saigon!
Interviewed by Andrew Tomlins (Editor)
Please visit www.confessionroom.co.uk for further information and tickets.
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