Sat 17 – Sat 31 July
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SAT 17 – SAT 31 JULY Supported by a National Lottery grant from the Arts Council England’s Ambition for Excellence fund Gin Craze! A BOOZE-SOAKED LOVE BALLAD FROM THE WOMEN OF GIN LANE BOOK AND LYRICS BY APRIL DE ANGELIS MUSIC AND LYRICS BY LUCY RIVERS A ROYAL & DERNGATE, NORTHAMPTON AND CHINA PLATE CO-PRODUCTION IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ENGLISH TOURING THEATRE Welcome to this performance of Gin Craze! It’s wonderful to have audiences back in the theatre and it’s been a joy to have a production rehearsing in the building once again, albeit under stringent Covid protocols, with the cast and core team members in a bubble for the entire rehearsal and production period. We’re very grateful to everyone who has had to put in the extra effort to make this happen. We hope you’ll agree that it’s been worth it to bring this fantastic new musical to the stage! Jo Gordon & James Dacre We would like to thank the following supporters: The Made in Northampton season is sponsored by Michael Jones Jeweller #HereForCulture Inspiring and supporting the creation of new musicals and operas With the support of Arts Council England’s Ambition for Excellence fund, Royal & Derngate has been leading a consortium including China Plate, Improbable, Mercury Musical Developments, Musical Theatre Network, Perfect Pitch and Scottish Opera, which has been working to address the barriers that prevent the creation of new, and original, musical theatre specifically developed for mid-scale regional touring. Gin Craze! has been developed as part of this three-year project which has seen Royal & Derngate and its partners support 150 artists in nurturing the creation of new musical theatre. Also developed as part of this project, An Improbable Musical will take to the Royal stage next spring and the concept album #ZoologicalSociety is available to stream or download from all major streaming platforms. Subscribe & Save Many shows in our forthcoming programme at Royal & Derngate are available to Subscribe & Save. Book 7+ Shows Book 5 or 6 Shows Book 3 or 4 Shows Save 25%* Save 20%* Save 15%* • Members enjoy an extra 5% off • • Best seats at lower prices • • Exchange dates of tickets for free • • Pay no transaction fee • • Discounts on programmes • *Discount is applied when tickets are purchased in a single transaction. For details of all shows coming up at Royal & Derngate please visit www.royalandderngate.co.uk/whats-on Sign up to one of our memberships to enjoy more Our memberships are designed to save you money and give you more. Whether you’re a theatre lover or film buff, there’s something for everyone, and with our Stage & Screen Membership you can now enjoy the very best in entertainment from across both Royal & Derngate and Northampton Filmhouse. Want to go further? How about first priority booking, discounts in local restaurants or behind the scenes experiences? Our new Director’s Circle memberships give you everything from the Stage & Screen Membership and more! Get closer to the action at the level that suits you, all of which include a donation as part of the membership fee to help us continue our ongoing charitable work in the county. To find out more, please visit www.royalandderngate.co.uk/membership Gin Lane by William Hogarth, 1751 April De Angelis reflects on developing the musical Gin Craze! I met Michael Oakley, the director of Gin Craze!, when he directed another ‘historical play’ of mine Playhouse Creatures at Chichester in 2012 about the first English actresses, set in the 17th century. He then directed a further play set in the mid-18th century, Fanny Hill, at Bristol Old Vic in 2015. We enjoyed the experience of working together so much that we looked around for an idea for another play with an historical setting. I had been given a book on the subject of the Gin Craze and suggested it as an idea. So the seeds of the project go back to those early conversations. We then approached Northampton and ETT who commissioned it. BUT as I began to write I had a strong feeling that the characters I was creating would be singing. I had never written a musical before but started to write lyrics for the characters. After we had showed a draft to our producers they suggested we bring a composer on board and that was when we met Lucy Rivers for the first time. We were lucky enough to be invited to a residential development workshop in Saratoga Springs, USA by the Orchard Project and it was actually there that Lucy, Michael and I met for the first time. Lucy brought her guitar to America. I remember the day she came over and sat on my porch in Saratoga and sung the tune she had written to Inebriate You. Michael and I were blown away - we loved what she had done. She then composed more music and Lucy and I wrote the lyrics for a new song too. It was a very liberating and exhilarating experience. Lucy and I found a method where when we felt there needed to be a song - which the scene should be wrapped around - I would send Lucy some thoughts on content and images and then she would create the lyrics and the music. Lucy and I talked a lot about street ballads and how they would have been the music of the streets and Lucy’s music reflects that. Any Hogarth print will show you multiple sources of sound. The challenge of writing Gin Craze! was finding a story to match the history and tell it through character. The women of Gin Lane did not write their stories down as they were working women and so we have had to imagine their lives. Court records are one of the only places to get information apart from looking at Hogarth prints to get a flavour of the age, although of course he was not kind to the women of Gin Lane. Slowly the story of Mary and Lydia emerged as the heroines who struggle to make a success of their lives in a hostile world. At some point in my research I was amazed to discover that the novelist Henry Fielding was a magistrate at the very time the Gin Craze was occurring and he had joined the battle against gin. It seemed too juicy a piece of history to leave out of the play and he became a character as well as his novelist sister Sarah and his blind brother John who set up the Bow Street Runners with Henry. Our first police force! We hope the musical transports our audience back to the world of the Gin Women. Like a lot of working class and women’s history it is a largely forgotten chapter but it’s worth knowing about the inventiveness, resilience and comradeship of the women as well as reminding us that governments often like to blame the less powerful in society for its own mistakes. Find out more in April’s article in The Guardian in December 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/dec/21/gin- craze-april-de-angelis-future-plays-royal-and-derngate Thoughts from Lucy Rivers What’s been amazing about this whole experience is not only working with this rich material but also the writing process has been very collaborative and supportive. Over the three years we’ve been able to really dig into the story and style we wanted to create, and April and I found a fluid way of working together on the lyrics. Quite quickly we got hooked onto the idea of street Ballads which were the pop songs of the time, and were sang and sold on street corners. I was also inspired by folk ballads, Cabaret, Kurt Weill, Torch songs and even George Frideric Handel has made it in there. Like the writing, I never wanted it to feel like we had to be tied to the period but wanted to make the music feel contemporary and speak to a modern audience. I’ve worked on many music-driven shows and particularly enjoy writing Gig-theatre, but Gin Craze! is my first official musical. Luckily we had the brilliant Victoria Saxton as dramaturg to help us with the musical form and expectations, and it’s been a great learning experience, ie hitting those big numbers, turning dialogue scenes into songs and pin-pointing the moments when the best way a character can express themselves is to sing. More recently it’s been fun working together with the wonderful Tamara Saringer who’s come up with beautiful arrangements and the songs and music hopefully carry the spirit, energy and emotion of those women of the time. Now a brilliant team and multi-talented cast are assembled and rehearsals are underway it’s been so exciting to see everyone working together to bring the story and music alive. Gin Craze! feels like a perfect show for our time. It’s full of wonderful and flawed female characters singing their heart out, it’s a political satire, it’s a love story, it’s full of humour, full of drama, and all washed down with plenty of gin – what’s not to enjoy! I hope audiences will be gagging to get back into theatres now we’re allowed and I think Gin Craze! is a welcome tonic to the past 15 months. As the women of Gin Lane say... “We’re the ones who made the fuss You should thank the lord for us We drank the most So raise a toast to Gin Gin Gin!” Cast & Creative Team DEBBIE ROSALIND ARUHAN CHAZEN FORD GALIEVA Moll/Queen Suki/Betsy Mary Caroline PAULA ALEX PETER JAMES MUGNAIONI PEARSON Evelyn/Mistress Henry Fielding/ John Fielding/ Jekyll /Constable Thomas Wilson/ Bartholomew PAKSIE RACHEL VERNON WINTERS Lydia Sarah Fielding/ Informer Cast and creative biographies can be found later in this programme Creative Team APRIL DE ANGELIS JACK KNOWLES Book and Lyrics Lighting Designer LUCY RIVERS TONY GAYLE Music and Lyrics Sound Designer MICHAEL OAKLEY TIAN BROWN-SAMPSON Director Assistant Director HAYLEY GRINDLE ALISON DE BURGH Designer Fight Director TAMARA SARINGER MATILDA JAMES CDG Music Supervisor and