As suggested by the title above, a page linked by alliteration and rhyme to showcase my work in movies, musicals, the stage and for the page. A record of my work in progress and an archive.
A Distant Shore
If you’re a fan of musical theatre you will definitely want to know more about this project.
Click >>>HERE<<<
This is a musical that I have written lyrics and co-written the book for. It is a historical romance with a twist set in 19th Century gangland Boston. It is written with composer/producer Andrew Wyke (who came up with the original concept) with music arranged by Tim Maple (links to both creatives are on the Distant Shore page}. We have recorded several songs with contributions by an excellent cast of popular West End singers. It is the biggest project I have so far been linked with and I’m itching to share more with you. The songs are phenomenal (though I do say so myself) and I will keep you updated on the Distant Shore page (click the link above).
I have written for a number of professional sketch and theatre companies and had my work performed all over the UK, from prestigious London fringe theatres to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I teamed up with sketch company Teak Show and joined a number of illustrious writers such as Steven Dinsdale, who had a big hit with his stage play Anorak of Fire (which was also turned into a film and published by play publisher Samuel French Ltd) and Peter Vincent who co-wrote sitcom Sorry starring the much-loved Ronnie Corbett, which was a huge hit for the BBC. Sadly, Teak Show no longer perform and I don’t have any filmed recordings of my time with them but I’m still good pals with Steve and who knows, maybe we’ll work together again sometime!
Insignificant Theatre Co also produced some of my work. If you can bear the poor video and audio quality, here is a short film of my sketch Bunting performed by actress Maggie Turner. I later rewrote it as a short story called Celebration Day and included it in my short story collection Whittiford Wilds (see below).
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My musical theatre piece Dr Ox’s Experiment
-was professionally showcased at the prestigious Hackney Empire in its Acorn Theatre space. It was produced by the prolific Simon James Collier of Okai Collier Productions and directed by Sam Buntrock, who is best known for his Olivier Award winning production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, which played in London’s West End and on Broadway. Sam enthused about my adaptation describing as a real “event” piece of work and I still have hopes that this could find its way to a larger production.
Based on a novella by Jules Verne, Dr Ox’s Experiment is set in the Victorian era and involves a scientist who discovers a sleepy, forgotten town in Flanders. Using the pretext of introducing street lighting, Dr Ox and his assistant Ygene proceed to experiment on the town by pumping an invisible, highly oxygen-rich gas into the atmosphere. The effect on the local population is incredible, hilarious and perhaps a little terrifying. Dr Ox’s Experiment is a humorous look at the excesses of the of scientific ego. Although fictional, there are elements of scientific truth in the notion that by experimenting with the properties in our atmosphere, people’s physical and mental behaviour can be altered.
In fact, so taken was I with Verne’s eccentric story, that I have also adapted it (very freely, it has to be said) into a children’s novel, provisionally entitled Weird Happenings in Wispy Hyde. When I know more about what’s happening with that I will post it here >>>Scribblings for Young People<<<
Alice at the Wishing Well
– I have completed this new family stage show which I hope to tie in with my children’s novel of the same name. More to follow on this when I can.
Whittiford Wilds
-is a collection of thirteen humorous short stories for adults set in a fictional English county.
A humorous tramp predicts the end of the world. When The End fails to materialise, he simply predicts it again. And again. In a bid to get to university, a gypsy girl embarks upon a highly unusual game of bingo. An East End thug experiences the simple rustic pleasure of wandering through a forest – lost, alone and at night. Playing truant for the first time, two school boys tangle with rival gangs of Twitchers in search of a rare visitor. From the comfort of his bed, an ageing farmer joins the cyber age in an attempt to round up his sheep. An elderly lady decides to shake up the education system but her rose-tinted prejudice is challenged when she discovers that modern kids aren’t as stupid as she assumed.
With a cast of eccentric characters and a host of peculiar situations, you’ll laugh your way around England’s third-smallest historic county.
I recently received some lovely feedback from a singer who was on tour and confided to a mutual friend that they had read this collection no less than three times during lockdown. It also has a 4* rating on Goodreads from a trustworthy independent reviewer.
Originally published on my own Whittiford Press imprint, Whittiford Wilds is currently only available as an eBook, which you can get >>>HERE <<<
Mirror Mirror
-is a short film based on a one-act play by Robert Calvert. The idea to turn it into a film came about after a conversation I’d had with actress Andrea Furlotti outside the theatre where it was playing. Andrea was cast in the lead role of Eleanor Bryant and was keen to reprise the role on screen.
Robert Calvert, who died in 1988, had once been lead singer of cult UK space rock band Hawkwind, a favourite of mine since I was in my teens and I knew this was a project I had to be part of.
As the Covid pandemic hit and Lockdown ensued, the tenacious Andrea managed to get permission to make a screen adaptation from Nick Calvert, Robert’s son. The script was getting on for 50 pages in length and very ‘stagey’. I produced a couple of drafts and was ruthless, eventually cutting it down to just over 20 pages. In the interim, Andrea managed to secure funding. With a budget in place, she was then able to enlist up and coming director Katya Ganfeld and we were away. Even on a short film, there is a huge amount of work to be done before filming begins. We had regular script meetings and I had to be much more ruthless with the script.
Katya is a very visual director and it was sometimes hard to let go of some of Calvert’s ideas but we plugged away until a working script was ready.
Covid restrictions meant I had to let go as dates for filming loomed. At the time I confess I was saddened and frustrated but such is a writer’s lot in film-making. Covid meant that there were many false starts and I immersed myself in other works. The good news was that when I contacted Katya to find out how it had gone, she was in post-production and sent me a few enticing production shots. She then sent me a rough cut of the finished piece and I was blown away. It looked and sounded just like I had hoped and exceeded my expectations, with Katya’s visual flare and flamboyant editing reminding me of film director heroes such as Nic Roeg, Ken Russell and Terry Gilliam (though she would no doubt cite others as her inspiration). Andrea’s performance too was stunning, dispensing with her natural blonde hair for a mop of dark black as she convincingly descended into madness. The icing on the cake was a touch of genius from Katya – Calvert’s voice, cloned as the voice of the mirror.
Though only 15 minutes in length, the film is rich and intense and warrants several viewings to unpick its many mysteries.
The film has gone on to play at film festivals the world over, picking up awards along the way. It even played in his home town Margate as part of an unveiling ceremony for a blue plaque that now commemorates where he lived in the 1960s. The event drew lots of interest and a performance by a modern iteration of the Hawklords, a band Calvert co-formed with Dave Brock in the 70s.
You can watch the full movie at Katya’s website by clicking the link >>>HERE<<<
MIRROR MIRROR
Where did it come from?
In the late 60s, busker Dave Brock formed psychedelic band Hawkwind (For those that don’t know they are like an English Grateful Dead, cultish and tribal though musically very different). They soon became integral to the underground, counter-cultural scene of the time, playing free gigs such as the Isle of Wight Festival. Unique in that they spawned their own sub-genre dubbed ‘Space Rock’ they soon became associated with SciFi writer Michael Moorcock (who, I would argue, inspired SteamPunk with his novel Warlord of the Air).
Saxophonist Nik Turner invited a friend of his from Margate, a small southern English seaside town (where Mirror Mirror was shot) to join Hawkwind onstage and read his space poetry. That friend was Robert Calvert. Interestingly, Calvert had his work published in a SciFi anthology called New Worlds, which was edited by Michael Moorcock and included up and coming writers such as Brian Aldiss, John Sladek [writer of the excellent Tik Tok]and JG Ballard – who later inspired one of Calvert’s finest songs with Hawkwind – Highrise.
The other thing Calvert did was pen the lyrics for their only hit, Silver Machine, which everyone assumed to be about a space ship (but turned out to be his bicycle, which always makes me chuckle). Unfortunately, his singing wasn’t good enough and his vocals were replaced by a bass player who went by the name of Lemmy (that’s correct, later of Motorhead). The follow up single Urban Guerilla retained his singing but was banned as it coincided with an IRA attack in London. These relative successes gave him a platform and inspired him to go solo. True to form, he made two very idiosyncratic concept albums which, to be brutally frank, though brilliant were never destined to be the next Ziggy Stardust. Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters was an early showcase for his dramatic writing and humour – more like a radio play, and was about the scandal of faulty planes sold to Germany after the war. It included a couple of late 60s eccentrics Vivian Stanshall (of Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) and Arthur Brown (as in the Crazy World of). This album was followed by Lucky Leif and the Longships – a reimagining of how the USA might have evolved if Vikings had established a civilisation in what they called Vinland. Amazingly, it was produced by Brian Eno.
Rejoining Hawkwind when his solo albums failed to set the world alight, he really came into his own bringing theatrics to the stage shows, becoming front man and writing all the lyrics. It is worth noting that the lyrics during the Charisma years [that’s a record label, not a period when he suddenly acquired a magnetic personality] were outstanding – they really leave other rock lyricists in the shade. Worth noting too, a young John Lydon of the Sex Pistols was briefly a roadie with Hawkwind and must surely have been influenced by Calvert’s combat fatigues, short hair and provocative stage persona while the rest of the band were still laid back long-haired rockers.
It’s also worth mentioning another hero of mine, a graphic artist called Barney Bubbles (Colin Fulcher) who, like Calvert, was a troubled soul. He worked on Hawkwind’s visual image, creating striking visuals alongside Calvert’s words for programs and LP inserts (check out their Pan Transcendental Industries Inc with its words and graphics and slogan Reality You Can Rely On). It presents a bleak vision of the future which brings us closer to Mirror Mirror. Back then bipolar disorder was called manic depression and Calvert was occasionally sectioned for the good of his mental health. He was ejected from the band when his behaviour became too erratic for the others to cope with.
I mentioned his JG Ballard inspired song Highrise, which lyrically has very little to do with the novel and very much reflected his feelings about living in a tower block in Margate. These are buildings that weren’t designed with any notion of metropolitan chic – these were soulless cheap anonymous blocks used to solve the housing crisis amongst the poor. It was around this time (78/79) that he wrote a Sci-Fi themed one act play called Mirror Mirror in which he projected his fears for the future, but as with his more socially aware lyrics for Hawkwind and his solo material, these themes were very much shaped by the politics of the late 70s.
Robert Calvert died suddenly from a heart attack in 1988. The last few years of his life were a struggle, I think – you can hear it in the lyrics, moments of humour have almost entirely vanished. The 80s weren’t very kind to many of the creative forces of the previous decade but he continued to write poetry, plays and release albums and his creativity remained undimmed. He wrote a satirical novel called Hype about the music industry which he released with a really great album of the same name.
His plays such as Mirror Mirror and The Stars that play with Laughing Sam’s Dice and a small-scale musical called The Kid from Silicon Gulch were produced at a London fringe venue called Pentameters by his friend, Leonie Scott-Matthews.
He remains one of my heroes.
You can find out a lot more about Robert Calvert at this definitive website: http://aural-innovations.com/robertcalvert/calvertbio/calvertbio.htm