Powered By Blogger

Sunday, 12 May 2013

Footsteps to the Moon: The Argument.

I wrote this for the programme notes when Paul Prescott & I put the show on at the White Bear in Kennington. I stand by every word...



Footsteps to the Moon.

“And the towers were tallest in Bastion. But that didn’t help us at all.
For the towers were tallest in Bastion, and those towers, and those towers
Were a long way to fall.”

Sounds like a non-too-subtle reference to 9/11, doesn’t it? But actually, Paul Prescott wrote those lines in 1988.

The story of the fall of the once great city of Bastion is alive with reverberations of the past. And, in this case, the future.

Paul wanted to look at how war affects the ordinary people. No great tales of battles fought and won. But the story of how those stuck in the middle, the victims of no more than geographical happenstance, watch as their world is taken from them, broken into pieces and handed back.

And what if those people are already outcasts from society? Shunned and locked away before the war was even half over.

Who are the madmen? Those who were locked away for protesting against the war? Those who saw their loved-ones slaughtered and lost their families and their minds in one fell swoop? Those institutionalised and brutalised by an uncaring government? The soldiers perhaps? Conscripted and regimented into killing one another for a mile of wasteland.

Or are the madmen those who start wars like this in the first place?

Footsteps to the Moon considers all this, and more.

It was written, originally, for the Edinburgh Festival and also performed at La Bonne Crepe Café Theatre (LBC) in Battersea, London.

Then it was put on in Sydney, Australia the following year.

Then we left it alone for 15 years.

In 2003, Paul and I were talking about reviving on of the 8 musicals we had written at LBC.

We both knew it would be “Footsteps”.

We looked at the script and decided it should be re-written as a full-scale production. We’d both seen the harrowing pictures from Kosovo and such. Our characters’ story would be on the 6 o’clock news every night.

So when the show finally opens in a larger theatre (and it will.) you will see camera crews and TV screens and announcers. The theatre transformed from a wasteland to the floor of a long-closed nightclub. You will feel the down-draught of the helicopters. See the falling rubble from the shelling.

And yet, in the centre of this, our 8 characters huddle together. Zoom in a little, beyond the flashing lights and deafening noise, and that is what you will see at the White Bear. Ordinary people in an extra-ordinary situation. Love and even laughter. Triumph and betrayal. Redemption – at least for some.

And tears. Many tears.






From the original songs, we kept half a dozen. With 2 new characters and an enlarged script, we soon expanded to 22 songs. There are songs in a variety of styles, reflecting the diversity of the characters. But the major themes occur and re-occur to give cohesiveness to the score.  It is written for full orchestra. And then some.

We put on a rehearsed reading at the White Bear late last year. A bunch of talented actors performed with very little rehearsal of script or songs. The result was astonishing. Most of those actors are now in this production. Just a little bit more rehearsed!

“Footsteps to the Moon”. A story of our time. Or any time. There are no politics in the show. The city of Bastion could be anywhere. And anywhen.

Just as there will always be war, there will always be Lynn remembering her lost love Leon, who disappeared for singing the wrong songs. Otto trying to catch rainwater, or rats.
Delphi, selling sexual favours for the chance of escape. Somewhere Alicia, poor damaged Alicia looks to the moon and salvation in make-believe. Somewhere Gregory, the Travelling Man gathers junk and information and remembers Alicia. Somewhere a soldier weeps for the horrors he has seen and might see again.

And somewhere Cora watches him and imagines a past because she can’t imagine any future.

It’s like taking “Footsteps to the Moon”.




Rod Anderson
February 2005


No comments:

Post a Comment