Notes from the Beautiful Girls

In the first of our series of "Notes from...", Paul Scott talks about next month's production of BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, a revue of the songs of Stephen Sondheim, the composer-lyricist of musicals such as Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Into The Woods and Company.

"A lot of people have asked: ‘What is Beautiful Girls about?’ and ‘Where does the title come from?’

The answer to the first question is that it is basically a cabaret of 27 of Stephen Sondheim’s best songs, all on a theme of women. When we decided to mount an evening of Sondheim, it quickly became clear that the women nearly always have the best songs - and the best of the men’s songs are about women! In fact, it’s fair to say that his musicals contain unusually good roles for women. So, we found ourselves some unusually good women to perform this fabulous material and who could be said provided the title (it’s actually a number from Follies): Judi Allan, Juliet Ascroft (formerly Wills), Kate Bennett, Rachel Prudden, Joan Self and Jackie Adams on piano, along with myself as token male.

The more you rehearse it, the more you realise what an incredible talent Stephen Sondheim has. No one else can write such an honest lyric and haunting tune as ‘Not a Day Goes By’ one minute and the wonderfully witty innuendo-laden ‘Never Do Anything Twice’ the next. It is exceptionally rewarding material to work on; actors who can sing usually adore it, possibly because the lyrics are often one-act plays in miniature, revealing more about the character, situation or plot than preceding dialogue.

Generally, the majority of the songs haven’t caused too much concern, but there are one or two pieces that are deceptively tricky, such as the trio ‘You Could Drive a Person Crazy’ from Company, written as a pastiche of an Andrews Sisters’ song. Some of the harmonies are very intricate and take a lot of practicing and I suspect Jackie will be quite pleased never to play that one ever again. Actually, Sondheim uses pastiche quite often, and there are several songs in this revue that point this up, including the Gershwinesque ‘Losing My Mind’ and a very funny spoof of ‘The Girl from Ipanema’.

Some people feel that Sondheim doesn’t write memorable tunes. The truth is, he writes music to fit the character and situation for that scene and doesn’t set out to write hit songs and bang them into your head by reprising them umpteen times in the course of a night. We think he is the best theatre composer and lyricist alive today and hope our show proves the point!"

BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, THURSDAY 9 - SATURDAY 11 OCTOBER at 7.45 pm
All seats £8