AUGUST 2013 Set And Costume Concept JOHN CUMBERLIDGE Costume Design Set Design Providing local professional services JEANNE SPAZIANI NICK MURLEY to local businesses for over 20 years. Looking out for you For more information call us on 627744 13-15 Hope Street, Douglas, Isle of Man, IM1 1AQ Chartered Accountants Insolvency Practitioners 2 3 january 31st - february 8th 2014 5 Manx Operatic Society proudly presents Book By Tom Hedley & Robert Cary For more information, please call the Secretary on 324456 www.mos.im Based on the Paramount Picture film screenplay by Tom Hedley Manx Operatic Society presents and Joe Eszteraas, story by Tom Hedley Robin Hood and Babes In The Wood by Peter Denyer This amateur production is presented by special arrangement with This amateur production is by arrangement with JOSEF WEINBERGER LTD NODA Limited 6 7 Wherever you are on your journey... Conceived, Directed and Staged by Lloyds TSB can help take you where you want to be. JOHN CUMBERLIDGE To find out more, visit www.lloydstsb-offshore.com Musical Director ANDREW HILTON Music by based on ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ by Orchestrations by David Cullen & Andrew Lloyd Webber. Original production by Cameron Mackintosh Ltd. and The Really Useful Group Ltd. An amateur production by arrangement with The Really Useful Group Ltd Lloyds TSB are the principal sponsors of the Taylorian Production of Cats the Musical at the Gaiety Theatre. Registered Office: PO Box 160, 25 New Street, St. Helier, Jersey JE4 8RG. Registered in Jersey, number 4029. The Isle of Man branch of Lloyds TSB Offshore Limited is licensed by the Isle of Man Financial Supervision Commission and registered with the Insurance and Pensions Authority in respect of General Business. Business Address: PO Box 111, Peveril Buildings, Peveril Square, Douglas, Isle of Man IM99 1JJ. Lloyds TSB Offshore Limited is a Jersey registered company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lloyds TSB Bank plc. Lloyds TSB Bank plc is incorporated in the United Kingdom, regulated by the UK Financial Services Authority and is part of the Lloyds Banking Group. Lloyds TSB Offshore Limited places funds with Lloyds TSB Bank plc and thus its financial standing is linked to that of the group. Depositors may wish to form their own view on the financial standing of Lloyds TSB Offshore Limited and its parent based upon publicly available information. Lloyds TSB Offshore Limited’s latest annual financial statements are available on our website at www.lloydstsb-offshore.com 8 9 It is with enormous pride and an immense honour that I welcome you To The Really Useful Group for their faith and for trusting us with this I began setting Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats to music ‘The Naming of Cats’. But what was most thrilling was to find a to our beautiful Gaiety Theatre for one of the most exhilarating and gargantuan challenge, thank you – we won’t let you down! late in 1977, partly because it is a book I remember with reference in one of Eliot’s letters to coherent, albeit incomplete innovative musicals ever staged. It’s fair to say there’s no better way to introduce new audiences to the affection from my childhood and partly because I wanted to structure for an evening; he proposed that eventually the cats I distinctly recall the moment last autumn when I received a call to wonders of live theatre than with the magic, the mystery, the memory set existing verse to music. In my associations with lyricists were to go “Up up up past the Russell Hotel, up up up to the say Taylorian Productions had been granted the opportunity to perform of CATS. it has tended to be the case that once a dramatic story line Heaviside Layer”. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s unique and magical theatrical experience. It is a magnificent marriage of words, music, dancing, design and direction had been agreed, the lyrics are written to music I compose. I remember less, however, when the news eventually sank in! and a brilliantly imaginative show. Trevor Nunn, who I discovered has a taste for tackling theatrical I was very curious to see whether I could work the other To be tasked with bringing the show to the Isle of Man for the first ever Who else then could be charged with bringing all these facets to life? problems that most people consider insoluble, set to work way round. time – all this when the UK tour is receiving critical acclaim – is something Under the majestic direction of John Cumberlidge, this spectacular new immediately with me combing Eliot’s works and we were which not only creates great joy but also a responsibility which weighs production will not disappoint you. Very luckily Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats contains verses reminded of the many references to cats in the main body of his heavy on our shoulders. We once again welcome back West End musical director Andrew Hilton to that are extraordinarily musical; they have rhythms that are very writing. our close-knit team: a company of outstanding singers and dancers of all much their own, like the ‘Rum Tum Tugger’ or ‘Old Deuteronomy’ I have enjoyed working on Cats as much as on any show on ages whose commitment to the project has been vast. and although clearly they dictate to some degree the music that which I have worked. My gratitude will be undying to Valerie To them and to the crew and members of the production company for will accompany them, they are frequently of irregular and exciting Eliot without whose encouragement the musical could never have their hard work, thank you also. metre and are very challenging to a composer. taken its present form. That the company is able to present its seventh summer show and I wrote some settings in late 1977 which I began performing at the continues to bring much remembered theatrical entertainment to the © Andrew Lloyd Webber and The Really Useful Group Ltd Manx public - the wish of the much-missed Patrick Taylor - is something piano for friends, but I never progressed the idea seriously until which everyone associated with Taylorian is extremely proud of. after I had composed Tell Me On A Sunday. This was performed Finally, on behalf of Taylorian Productions, I thank YOU, the audience, for on BBC TV in the early part of 1980 and I began to think of Old coming along and for your continued support. Possum’s Book of Practical Cats as a possible concert anthology Now sit back and enjoy what I’m sure will be an uplifting theatrical that could also be performed on television. With this in mind, experience. some of my settings were performed in the summer of 1980 at the Sydmonton Festival. Valerie Eliot fortunately came to the concert and with her brought various unpublished pieces of verse by her husband; one of these was ‘Grizabella the Glamour Cat’. The musical and dramatic images that this created for me made me feel that there was very much more to the project. I needed It’s difficult to think that more than five years have elapsed since the Quite a coup for Taylorian Productions. Quite a coup for the Isle of Man. the support of another to encourage me to re-work my settings passing of our co-founder and the man whose name lives on through What would he have made of it all? To be honest, we will never know and to see if a dramatic whole could be woven from the delightful this company. exactly – but we can hazard a pretty good guess! verse that I was now to be allowed to develop. ‘Mr T’, as he was affectionately known, derived so much pleasure Thus in the late summer I had my first meeting with Trevor Nunn. from his involvement in theatre, that it was infectious. Soon after Valerie Eliot produced various other uncollected poems, So when you add in the playful, eye catching, heart-stopping three of which we have incorporated into Cats in their entirety. ingredients of this show, it’s fair to say Patrick Denton Taylor would She also gave us a fascinating rough draft of an opening poem fully endorse Taylorian’s eighth production. for what appears to have been conceived as a longer book about CATS puts the sense of occasion back into going to the theatre, cats and dogs. This poem was not appropriate for the stage but it transporting the audience into a completely new fantasy world as inspired us to write a lyric with the same intention of celebrating only truly great theatre can do. the supremacy of Jellicle cats. We have been able to include No doubt during this run, ‘Mr T’ will be looking down with an encouraging word, particularly thrilled with younger members of the lines from the end of Eliot’s draft poem which now introduce cast who he loved to see thrive and progress. 10 11 The theatrical experience that is Andrew Lloyd Webbers’ CATS at the Wizard of Oz, Barnum, Hello Dolly, Jekyll and Hyde –The Musical and The cats are at first suspicious and proud, reluctant to allow an audience into their The entire tribe returns as their benevolent and wise old leader Old Deuteronomy domain. In “The Naming of Cats”, however, they begin to reveal who they are arrives. The cats adore and respect him; indeed he is father to some of them: Gaiety Theatre in the summer of 2013, marks John’s eighth consecutive Me & My Girl – for which he received the Best Director Award at the and that cats have three different names: the one the family uses daily, a more Old Deuteronomy’s lived a long time; production with Taylorian.