Positively his last appearance? – Musical Stages
David Shannon in conversation
by Lynda Trapnell
We’ve been trying to sort out a suitable time to run an interview with David Shannon for a while and this proves to be just in time! After his role as John in The Beautiful Game, he is, he says firmly, giving up musical theatre to concentrate on a career as a rock musician. Well, what a blow! There are many readers who have asked us to talk to David, so I sit looking at him in his dressing room at the Cambridge Theatre taking in this announcement. But then I remember Steve Balsamo (a friend of David’s) declaring that he would also drop out of musical theatre and he’s already back – albeit in more of a rock-type show, but nevertheless, he’s in Notre Dame de Paris so perhaps all is not lost.
Machinations
David’s career started off in his home country – Ireland- where he began joining one or two am-dram productions as a featured (and paid) player. He answered a call for actors for the Dublin production of Les Miserables at The Point, succeeded in being one of only three local performers employed and then became caught up in the machinations that move our musical theatre performers around from job to job.
West End roles under his belt to date are Marius in Les Miserables, Guillaume in Martin Guerre, Chris in Miss Saigon and Rum Tum Tugger in Cats. He also played Captain Walker in the German tour of Tommy and in his home city, Frederic in Pirates of Penzance, Danny Zuko in Grease and had a spell in UK repertory as The Scarecrow in The Wiz at Watford’s Theatre Royal.
Blue-eyed and brown-haired, all six feet of David is relaxed and at home, sitting in his not over-large dressing room and giving me a comfortable reclining chair from which to interview him. Because he is an Irishman, I am particularly interested in his take on Andrew’s and Ben’s view of The Troubles in The Beautiful Game.
‘I come from Drogheda, about twenty miles north of Dublin and around fifty miles from Belfast. I went to school in Dundalk which is not far from the border so it is something I grew up with. What you don’t learn at school in the UK is all the eight hundred years of Irish history which is first and foremost on the school curriculum there.’
In the negotiations for David to take on the role of John, he was anxious to ensure that the cast understood the historical background to the story and said that they did, indeed, familiarise themselves.
‘The show is not about religion, it’s about these young people and how The Troubles affect them. The young guy is a fantastic footballer – a potential George Best – but because of his loyalty to his friends, everything goes wrong. But it is also about the redeeming power of love. It is good that it is written by someone who is not Irish because he can take a more objective point of view on it all.’
Fighting
‘No matter how objective you think you are, if you grew up with it, you are bound to come down on one side or the other.’
I asked David if he could see a solution.
‘I have no idea. I’m very non-political and I don’t think anyone really knows. There is the line in the show where Michael Shaeffer as Thomas says: “We’re not fighting to win, we’re fighting to stop the other side from winning.” It is a very good line and it applies to both sides. I wouldn’t begin to think I knew the answer. I’m just an actor who pretends to know what he is doing!’
The process of putting the show together has created friendships David didn’t expect. ‘I would never have expected to get on as well as I do with Ben Elton but now we go for a drink together. He’s a lovely guy. The same with Andrew. They call them “The Odd Couple” which I think is great and it is why I accepted the role. It is such a terrific combination. I like Andrew’s music – I love Jesus Christ, Superstar, it’s my favourite musical. And I enjoyed being in Whistle for a while. Then Ben’s script is just so well written. It would make a fantastic play on its own and this show is perfect for a movie musical.’
In his early days in Les Miserables, David learned the importance of pacing himself properly, explaining that whilst he was giving it 110% every night, he eventually lost his voice completely in the second month into the run.
‘I was wearing myself out. A couple of years ago, I did take some lessons to get the technical knowledge of what I do with my voice. I went to Mark Malen who has been fantastic for me, teaching me proper breathing and how to support my voice. Every once in a while if I have problems, I go to Mark for any help I need and he always comes to see me in my shows, which I really appreciate.’
After the tour of Les Miserables, David joined the London production for a year and then took a year off from musical theatre. He worked with a band, his other great love, and as I said at the beginning of this interview, when The Beautiful Game finishes, that’s what he plans to do next.
‘I want to record and write songs and I also want to do some straight acting and keep things separate. For the last five or six years, I’ve show-hopped and there is nothing else I particularly want to do in musicals. I want to try a different avenue. When I took a break before, I came back to be in the choir for the 10th Anniversary of Les Mis and it made me feel like doing some musical theatre again. I was lucky because that was when Tommy came along and although I didn’t get it for London, they ‘phoned and offered me Germany. I was there for eight months, had a wonderful time, met a girl and moved to New York with her at the end of the run.’
The relationship ended and David went back to Ireland for a while, then popped over to London to see what was happening and landed up taking over the role of Guillaume in Martin Guerre from Jerome Pradon who has just taken over from David in Whistle Down the Wind.
Flexible
‘Considering how different we are, it is funny how we’ve played so many of the same parts. It shows how flexible the roles can be.’
Both men have played Chris in Miss Saigon whom we agreed was a bit of a whiny role although David defends him:
‘He’s on this journey where he goes from being wonderfully in love to a bit of a mess! I enjoyed doing it – working with Joanna (Ampil) was fantastic.’
His time in Cats was, he says, his least favourite gig. ‘I enjoyed it once I got out there. I was offered Rent when I left Miss Saigon and I turned it down because I didn’t want to do another sad musical with a hard edge and I wanted something that was a bit more fun. Lucky for me I took Cats because within a week, the notice went up for Rent! But I really don’t like wearing all that make-up and lycra body suits – and I’m not a dancer, either. At least Tugger is one of those parts where you can really enjoy yourself. I loved playing in the round, but offstage, the dressing rooms are tiny and windowless, so rather claustrophobic. Cats has been on a long time now and there were bits I thought were too long. I talked to Andrew about it and he says it is time for some new orchestrations.’
Another thing he and Andrew talked about was the fact that Superstar was only originally planned to be a concept album and, in David’s view, works best in a concert version with a really big orchestra. He has been in two concerts of it himself and said it is really thrilling to take part.
David was also up for a role in Notre Dame de Paris but backed out when The Beautiful Game came along. He went to see it, however, and has plenty of words of praise for the production, particularly the inventiveness of the choreography.
‘It’s the choreography that kept me there, but I liked some of the music. It is the sort of thing I like to sing so it is a rock concert.’
Listening to David, there is no trace of an Irish accent, so returning to The Beautiful Game, how is he coping with that? And isn’t the Northern Irish accent notoriously difficult to assimilate?
‘My dad came to see the show and found it funny to actually hear me speaking with an accent – or speaking at all – on stage. I’m OK now, but at first, I would slip into the South a bit. The real Northern Irish accent is quite harsh and if we did the true version, the audience wouldn’t understand us, so we’re using a softer version.’
Soft or harsh, we’ll miss David when he finishes his run as John, but let’s hope something tempts him back to musical theatre again in the not-too-distant future.
© Musical Stages
Desperate to Score – Time Magazine
A bleak story of football, the I.R.A. and Belfast’s troubles could be the stuff of a musical comeback
by James Inverne, London
From the moment the audience enters London’s Cambridge Theater and sees a badly chipped proscenium arch, it is clear that The Beautiful Game is a very different kind of Andrew Lloyd Webber Experience. The composer could do with a hit. The man who gave the world such glitzy long-runners as Cats and Starlight Express has not had a success on that scale since The Phantom of the Opera in 1986. Interspersed with disasters such as Sunset Boulevard and modest hits like Whistle Down the Wind, Lloyd Webber has been in limbo.
“I felt that I was treading water a little bit,” he acknowledges. “I needed something completely new.” The result is a theatrical partnership that has caught everyone by surprise: a collaboration with the motormouth left-wing comedian and writer Ben Elton. Since Lloyd Webber is perceived as a staunch Conservative peer, very Establishment and rather shy in public, it wasn’t long before British newspapers headlined the story “The Odd Couple.” The composer insists that he and Elton “share the same sense of humor.”
Elton had never written for musical theater before, but Lloyd Webber sent him a television documentary about a children’s football team in Belfast in 1969 and how the players were affected by the political conflicts around them. Two weeks later he got his reply: a 40-page synopsis dropped through the letterbox. The composer was immediately enthusiastic. “It struck me as exactly the kind of show that Rodgers and Hammerstein would have written,” he says. “We forget that they tackled very tough subjects. South Pacific in 1949 was one of the first shows to address racism. I and theater must deal with these sorts of things.”
A musical about the I.R.A. with, incidentally, book and lyrics by Elton, liberally peppered with swearwords? This is a new direction for Lloyd Webber. Gone is the trademark lavish production; in its place director Robert Carsen presents a bare black stage, which is gradually reduced by various explosions to a bombed-out shell. On the brick wall at the back of the stage a goalpost has been chalked. It is the perfect setting for a shockingly dark story.
The plot focuses on a youth football team in 1960’s Belfast and on one lad in particular, the team’s golden boy, John. It follows his maturation, marriage and – after being imprisoned for an accidental crime – induction into the I.R.A. Elton’s famous quickfire wit is evident. This must be the first musical with a song about the hazards of premature ejaculation, and a typically sharp routine about about introducing drinking games to the Olympics would be perfectly at home in one of Elton’s stand-up acts. But he packs in the dramatic punches, stealthily upping the stakes. By the end, the audience has seen a kneecapping, murders and full-scale riots.
Carsen handles the pivotal football match with aplomb. It becomes a jerkily choreographed ballet, with mimed headers, leaps and kicks throbbing with testosterone. The match is not his only coup: in the second half, a sinister line of men advances through the gloom holding glinting objects. Guns? Glasses. The lights come up, and the scene is of a cocktail party.
Lloyd Webber’s music has – odd as this may sound – texture. His score’s percussive feel catches the volatility and unpredictable danger of the region. The melodies themselves are variable, though when needed blend well with Elton’s punchy lyrics. As is usual with this composer, the women have all the best tunes, particularly the soaring ballad Our Kind of Love. Then there are one or two banal pieces. Don’t Like You, a childish chat-up tune that seems to ape the taunting rhythms of the playground, keeps returning and is rarely welcome. Elsewhere, both music and lyrics often capture the desperate sense of moral outrage, the passionate outcry of those still sane enough to recognize the insanity that threatens to engulf them.
David Shannon is eminently believable as John, whose downfall is rendered all the more disturbing because of his affable ordinariness. Michael Shaeffer underplays with lethal calm as his betrayer, Thomas. But the show is stolen by Josie Walker, in a gutsy, fabulously sung performance as John’s wife.
The Beautiful Game may not contain vintage Lloyd Webber torch songs. The audience does not exit marveling at the sets. Instead, they receive something rarer in a Lloyd Webber musical : emotion. Anger at the waste of generations, and celebration for an example of tough, fresh, vital theater.
Game, set and match – Sunday Times
He could have been sick as a parrot – but Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new football musical has turned out to be his best yet, says JOHN PETER
Photograph: Mark Ellidge
He shoots, he scores
The London theatre is gloriously unpredictable, and there are weeks when it sends out its forces not as single spies but in big, big battalions. The greatest fanfare preceded Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical, The Beautiful Game (Cambridge), and ALW, who now has five big shows running in London, romps home with his best work since Cats and his finest piece of musical theatre ever. I put it in this way because Cats is a wonderful piece of imagination and theatre-craft, but with this show, ALW and his librettist, Ben Elton, have taken on a huge subject: not a biblical fantasy or romantic fiction, not political chic (the dreadful Evita), but real life, real death, real history, humanity at war with itself.
The show is set in Belfast in 1969. Offstage, the civil-rights movement is being born; on stage, Father O’Donnell (Frank Grimes) trains his football-fanatic pupils to win the cup in the beautiful game of the title. But soon the outside world starts breaking in – except that it is not the outside world. The one Protestant boy in the team, Del (Ben Goddard), is brutally intimidated and expelled by Catholic boys, led by the cold-faced Thomas (Michael Shaeffer), who is clearly first-rate IRA material. Next, masked Protestant bullyboys vandalise the dressing room and, after the team wins, another gang tortures and murders Greg (Dale Meeks), the sweet-natured, ginger-haired fatty who has just had his first kiss. Daniel (Jamie Golding) starts stealing car radios and takes his first steps in drugs. The sectarian criminal underworld culture of Northern Ireland is being born.
The romantic heart of the story is about politically conscious Mary (Josie Walker) and innocent, handsome, football-mad John (David Shannon), who almost gets to play for Everton but is sucked up into the conflict; and Christine (Hannah Waddingham), who marries Protestant Del and receives vile abuse from other Catholic girls. They leave, with their baby, for America. And so the alternatives are: silence, exile or killing.
The subject brings the best out of ALW. From the first moment, when the sound of Andy Findon’s flute, lyrical but edgy, rises from the orchestra pit against the soft thud of percussion, you know the Irish influence on this score will be much more than just decoration. I still find that ALW’s music (although I am no authority) can be less rich rhythmically than harmonically, but in this show, his use of leitmotifs and pianissimos has great sophistication as well as cunning theatricality and deep feeling. Elton’s book and lyrics burst with energy, indignation and intelligence. We are in inner-city Belfast, and I am glad to say that some of the language is not for the faint-hearted. Some of the political talk is a bit stilted, but the show grows in power and passion, steadily and naturally, until the end. “I think we just love to kill / And I think we always will,” Mary sings. This is a brave and bitterly truthful thing to have written, and it lifts this show to a level where it need not fear comparison with West Side Story. Offhand, I cannot think of greater praise.
