In the corner of the Citizens Theatre rehearsal room, seven young women
are gathered round a piano, at which is sat musical director Hilary Brooks, who leads the ensemble through their scales. In their dressed-down tracksuit bottoms and voice-protecting scarves, the women might well be attending some common or garden open-call audition for some big west end musical in search of fresh blood. Such a notion seems to be confirmed a few minutes later when they’re put through their paces on a metal building-site set in a cheesily choreographed routine involving umbrellas that help punctuate a song infused with unabashed peppiness. Such a bright mood has been salvaged after a piercing electronic shriek shattered the scales into discordant submission. Such an incident gives a hint that what’s being knocked into shape is no ordinary musical, as well as highlighting the tensions between old-school jazz hands routines and more modern fare. Such creative tensions are at the heart of Glasgow Girls, one-woman theatrical whirlwind Cora Bissett’s follow-up to the Olivier Award winning close-up dissection of sex-trafficking, Roadkill. Like Roadkill, Glasgow Girls looks to real-life incidents. In this case, Bissett looked to the inspirational tale of the group of school-girl refugees who took on a Scottish Government which had sanctioned dawn raids and the detention and potential deportation of their friends, and won. Rather than present this as a gritty piece of issue-based drama, with a slew of producers including Theatre Royal Stratford East and the National Theatre of Scotland behind her, Bissett has opted to transform the story into a large-scale commercial musical, subverting the form even further by concocting a musical stew of contemporary urban styles as well as influences from further afield. Grime, dub and hip-hop rub up against middle eastern and east European rhythms by way of Scots indie folk, and, yes, the aforementioned jazz hands number. “It's a musical,” Bissett gushes, “and we're not going to shy away from that. It's not a play with songs. It's a musical. One of the things that stood out in the original documentary about the real Glasgow girls was that music was embedded in every fibre of the girls' being. You'd see them dancing at home with their families in their flats. They all gave this rhythm in their bones. You see them dancing to hip-hop, but they've also got music from their own cultures in their blood.” To capture this, Bissett drafted in three other composers to work alongside herself, Brooks and sound designer Fergus O'Hare. All of the composers have a diverse musical pedigree. John Kielty is one of three Kielty brothers who wrote The Sundowe, the kitsch, zombie-referencing winner of producer Cameron Mackintosh's TV-friendly search for a new Scottish musical, The Highland Quest. The Sundowe cast included Bissett, while Brooks provided some of the musical backing. The bulk of the tunes were provided by The Martians, Kielty's band who once included Fame Academy winner turned back-room song-writer, David Sneddon. Kielty even co-wrote Sneddon's debut album back in 2002. MC Soom T is a Glasgow-based Scots-Asian rapper, who Bissett first saw playing an anti-racist benefit. Something of a star in India, MC Soom T, aka Sumati Bhardwaj, wrote the show's theme song, We Are The Glasgow Girls, with Brooks. The song has just been released as a single to trail the show. If Kielty’s semi-comic songs are the light relief in Glasgow Girls and MC Soom T its furious conscience, then Patricia Panther provides the play’s dark heart. Bissett previously worked with Panther on Detainee A, a community-based show with Ankur Productions which also looked at the plight of asylum seekers in Glasgow. Hearing that Panther had started making her own Grime music, Bissett drafted her in to provide a downbeat urban noir for the scenes where law and order swoops. Panther now also appears in the show. To oversee all this, Brooks’ experience as musical director on shows including Dundee Rep's Proclaimers-based musical, Sunshine on Leith as well as work with Terry Neason and Dorothy Paul, is a major asset. As indeed is the presence of Brook’ singer sibling, Lorna Brooks, who is singing coach on the show. There are links here too with Bissett’s previous work. Kielty acted in Whatever Gets You Through The Night alongside actress Frances Thorburn, who plays one of the Glasgow Girls. Kielty also performed songs in the show penned by an array of Scots musical talent who appeared in the show. Thorburn too has a music background, as a rising singer/songwriter who already has a solo album, The Needle is the Haystack, under her belt. “It's just a great big mash-up,” is how Bissett sees it. “It's got to reflect the myriad of cultures of the girls. No one person could capture that clash of styles." Prior to a move into acting and directing, Bissett herself started out playing in bands, Darlingheart and Swelling Meg. An early move into left-field music theatre found her channelling Patti Smith in Horses Horses Coming In In All Directions, directed by Grid Iron’s Ben Harrison at The Arches. Bissett remains one half of the cast in the smash hit lo-fi rom-com for the stage, Midsummer, a collaboration between song-writer Gordon McIntyre of Edinburgh indie outfit, Ballboy, and playwright David Greig, who has written the book for Glasgow Girls. Midsummer continues to tour the world. More recently, Bissett devised and directed Whatever Gets You Through The Night, another lo-fi venture, which mixed and matched some of the country’s more interesting songwriters with the cream of a young literati to create a dramatic stew of stories and songs exploring Glasgow after-hours. “Glasgow Girls is working on exactly the same ethos of all of this things,” says Bissett. “It's just on a bigger scale. I think we've all accidentally discovered a love for musical theatre, but we've been making up the rules as we go along.” Back in the rehearsal room, the Glasgow Girls are back on the floor, but this time it’s definitely not jazz hands they’re doing. Rather, the shapes they’re throwing and the music they’re making is a multi-cultural melting pot of sound and vision, a whirling microcosm of a global village in motion. It’s a musical, and, like it’s subjects, it’s loud and proud about what it is. Listen closer, however, and it might just be the most radical thing you hear on a stage this year. Glasgow Girls, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, October 31st-November 17th; Theatre Royal Stratford East, February 8th-March 2nd 2013. www.citz.co.uk www.nationaltheatrescotland.com The Herald, October 23rd 2012 ends
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