“What's gallus?”
Catherine Johnson asks, unprompted. The writer behind ABBA-based hit
musical Mamma Mia! is contemplating how one of her characters for
her earlier play, Shang-A-Lang, has just been described to her by the
team behind Rapture Theatre's touring revival, and isn't quite sure
how it translates into her own west country patois.
When it's explained to
Johnson that somebody who is gallus is someone with attitude, swagger
and cheek in abundance, it seems to hit the spot.
“That's Lauren,”
Johnson says of one of three middle-aged women in the play who go on
a bender at a 1970s revival weekend at Butlin's holiday camp, where
a Bay City Rollers tribute act are headlining. Over the course of the
weekend, Lauren and her pals, Jackie and Pauline, have assorted
epiphanies as they encounter a couple of equally ageing rockers.
“I'd been thinking
about writing a play set in a holiday camp for some time,” Johnson
explains about the roots of Shang-a-Lang, which first appeared at
London fringe theatre The Bush in 1998. “I'd been to Butlin's in
Ayr for a cheap holiday, and then my sister went on one of these
1970s weekends, came back and said that's what you've got to write
about. I mean, tribute bands, what's not to love?”
Johnson duly went on a
reconnaissance expedition to Butlin's in both Bognor and Minehead,
with then Bush artistic director Mike Bradwell in tow.
“Mike bottled out
after a day and went home,” Johnson says of the man who championed
her writing. “But we did see a version of the Bay City Rollers, Les
McKeown's version, I think. We also saw The Sweet, not long before
[singer] Brian Connolly died, and we saw Desmond Dekker, who was
amazing. It isn't just booze, sex and vomit, you know. You can have a
good time as well.”
Johnson's career as a
playwright began when, inspired by the likes of Jim Cartwright's
play, Road, she entered a play-writing competition run by Bristol Old
Vic and HTV West. Johnson won this with Rag Doll, a play about incest
and child abuse which was staged at Bristol Old Vic in 1988, and
subsequently filmed for television.
“Success for me was
writing something from start to finish,” Johnson says, “but I won
the competition, and there's nothing better than being told that you
can do something.”
Johnson sent her next
play on spec to The Bush. Bradwell's staging of it began their long
working relationship, while Johnson penning three more plays for
Bristol Old Vic inbetween writing for television on the likes of
Casualty, Byker Grove and Band of Gold. It was Shang-a-Lang and,
especially, Mamma Mia!, however, that put Johnson squarely into the
mainstream as much as the book that Shang-a-Lang was partly inspired
by, Helen Fielding's novel, Bridget Jones' Diary.
“It seemed to be
saying that if they haven't got a man as an appendage, all women are
useless,” Johnson says. “Me and my mates at school were all
rampant feminists, or so we thought, even though we all secretly
wanted boyfriends, but I was annoyed by the phenomenon of Bridget
Jones.”
Johnson hasn't read
Helen Fielding's new Bridget Jones novel, nor is she likely to. She
is deeply amused, however, by one of the book's plot-twists which
she's been unable to avoid.
“My God, she's killed
off Darcy,” Johnson says dryly. “What a great thing to do. You've
got to admire her chops for doing that.”
Johnson's play wasn't
the first Shang A Lang to make it to the stage. Back in 1987, Clyde
Unity Theatre produced a play by Aileen Ritchie of the same name
which was also about a group of Rollers fans. While it is unlikely
that Johnson had heard of Ritchie's play, the surface similarities
between the two demonstrate just how much the Edinburgh sired
boy-band affected a generation's collective psyche.
This is also the case
with jukebox musicals, a trend which Mamma Mia! pretty much
kick-started. While some remain snobbish about the
commercially-minded melding of contemporary narrative with already
existing hit records, the term dates back to the 1940s with Judy
Garland vehicle, Meet Me in St Louis, and one could cite films such
as Rock Around The Clock and Beatles flick, A Hard Day's Night, as
fitting into this category. As with the craze for rock and roll
musicals such as Buddy and Return to the Forbidden Planet, the
current wave of jukebox musicals has its roots in fringe theatre.
Johnson's relationship
with the Bush is testament to this, as is the success of Sunshine on
Leith, Stephen Greenhorn's Proclaimers soundtracked play which, like
Mamma Mia! before it, was recently turned into a film. Again, like
Mamma Mia!,and Shang-a-Lang, Sunshine on Leith is shot through with a
common touch akin to a popular television drama, with the naturalism
broken up by the songs.
“I get really annoyed
when people talk about Dexter Fletcher's Sunshine on Leith,”
Johnson says. “It was a stage play first, and it's Stephen
Greenhorn's.”
As for Shang-a-Lang,
that remains very much Johnson's.
“I was working on
both Mamma Mia! and Shang-a-Lang at the same time,” Johnson
remembers, “so they reflect each other. If I'd been doing a lot on
Mamma Mia!, it was quite a relief to get back to Shang-a-Lang with
Lauren, Jackie and Pauline and let them be as foul-mouthed as they
liked. It's a play about friendship, and realising that the people
who are your friends aren't necessarily the best people to be around
after a certain time. They can hold you back. If I was to identify
with any of the women in the play. It would probably be poor old
Pauline, who's on her own and can't get a shag.”
Fifteen years on,
Johnson retains a fondness for the play.
“It's like a gawky
adolescent now,” she says. “but it was so much fun. After Mamma
Mia! became what it became, that kind of became my identity. That was
fine, because there was no point in denying that I wrote Mamma Mia!,
because it brought me so many benefits, like getting to know the
people who wrote all those wonderful songs, but Shang-a-Lang is still
me as well. Now that it is a gawky adolescent I may be mortified when
I see it again, but looking back at it now, it brings out the gallus
in me.”
Shang-a-Lang, Brunton
Theatre, Musselburgh, Thursday-Friday; Regal Theatre, Bathgate,
November 11th; Albert Halls, Stirling, November 15th;
King's Theatre, Glasgow, November 19th-23rd.
ends
Catherine Johnson – A
Life in Letters
Catherine Johnson grew
up in Wickwar, near Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire, where she
was expelled from school aged sixteen. She married aged eighteen, but
was divorced by the time she was twenty-four. Unemployed and living
in Bristol with her first child, Johnson entered a playwriting
competition run by Bristol Old Vic and HTV West. Entered under the
pseudonym Maxwell Smart, Rag Doll won the competition, and was
subsequently produced in 1988.
Boys Mean Business was
produced by The Bush in 1989, and Dead Sheep by the same theatre in
1991, winning the Thames TV Best Play Award. For Bristol Old Vic,
Johnson wrote Too Much Too Young (1992), Where's Willy? (1994) and
Renegades (1995).
Shang-a-Lang was first
produced by The Bush in 1998, with Mamma Mia! opening in the West End
the following year. Since then it has been seen in more than forty
countries, and was nominated for Olivier and Tony awards.
Beyond Mamma Mia!,
Johnson wrote Little Baby Nothing (2003) for The Bush, Through The
Wire (2005) for the Royal National Theatre Shell Connections, and
Suspension (2009) for Bristol Old Vic. Johnson has written
extensively for television, and is currently working on a major new
project, as well as a novel and a new piece for the RNT Shell
Connections initiative.
The Herald, November 5th 2013
ends
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