Midsummer

How do you describe the first weekend of summer? If you’re living anywhere to the west of Falkirk it’s like the Arab Strap tune, a candid confessional of a band of friends necking Es and tonic wine and clambering into graveyards and waking up halfway towards autumn.

Edinburgh is a little different, where a lawyer and a petty criminal might meet in a yuppie wine bar and embark on some similar minor criminal activities, and indulge in some drunken sex, though not necessarily in that order. Indeed, the will-they won’t-they doesn’t apply to the couple sleeping together, but will they actually get together? (We’ll not spoil it for you).
If this plot synposis sounds vaguely familiar, it will be no surprise that David Greig’s play Midsummer has a soundtrack penned by Gordon McIntyre – and, as we discover, has dialogue and a plot which may sound strangely familiar to fans of Edinburgh combo ballboy.

Bob and Helen, the 2 main characters, stumble drunkenly through a rainy midsummer, as Bob hits a midlife crisis and Helen similarly has reached a tipping point in her own path as her sister marries. The pair lament their lot in song, using Macintyre-penned tunes to give their tale added pathos – Cora Bissett of course known as a former member of Swelling Meg, Arab Strap collaborator, and familiar to is this music? readers via a CD appearance on a duet with Swimmer One. Happily, the male lead Matthew Pidgeon can carry a tune too, Bob’s lines reading like a ballboy lyric with nods to space travel, health crises and unfulfilled childhood dreams. But it’s hardly a musical in the traditional sense – thank god. More a play with a live soundtrack.

The action takes place perhaps symbolically around a bed which doubles up as a nightclub, a car, car park and Arthur’s Seat in a football match-length play which despite some rough edges is in the main highly entertaining. Never dull, it contains moments of genius, and despite its length wastes few of its 90 minutes. Even the random flashbacks and asides to the audience are cleverly constructed and always deliver a laugh or an intake of breath, usually in quick succession.
Plus, if your big summer weekend is full of booze, drugs and sex then random is exactly what you’d expect. Just ask Aidan Moffat.
Better still, ask Gordon McIntyre.

itm?: So, ballboy – the musical. Ok, not exactly, but how did this “Play with songs’” come about? Chicken/egg perhaps, but was it a case of adapting songs to fit David’s play, or writing to order?

Gordon: The initial idea was David’s. He was a fan of ballboy and keen to use music in a show, but not make it a “musical”. We have been very keen to try and avoid having a sequence of songs linked with a story to fit, or songs wedged in to a story. I really feel we have fitted the two together well and achieved that. The process varied. We did some work independently – I would come and say “I have this song for this moment” or he’d say “I have this moment and I need a song” and other things – songs and story we worked on together.

itm?: The question about who wrote what, when, stems from the fact that – to me – the plot, and even the dialogue, sounds like a ballboy song, and plenty of the references (running for health, spaceships, childhood athletics) sound like they might have come from you or from someone who listened to your lyrics. Did you have much input apart from the soundtrack?

G: Well – it’s very interesting that you pick up on that. David thinks that the play is a ballboy song to some extent – in themes and structure and tone. We have built the show together from the ground up. The starting point of the story originally came from two (unreleased at the moment) spoken word tracks I have describing a one night stand from two different viewpoints (his and hers). We developed it together initially and then with the two actors and the stage designer, Georgia McGuinness. So although David did the actual script and I did the actual songs and music and spoken word bits it is very much a joint project and we get co-authorship of it.

itm?: That might be the first time you’ve had someone doing a ‘cover’ of one of your songs – how did it go (ok, you’re hardly going to say you hated it!) Did it help that Cora is a seasoned professional (Matthew was fine too I thought.)

G: Well, first of all we picked the actors specifically. They were our first choice and we were really looking for actors who could sing a bit rather than singers who could act a bit. We were very keen that the moments where they sing shouldn’t break the feeling of the characters. It should feel like the characters are singing and not “here’s a musical number”. Cora and I knew each other a bit from band stuff, but the idea was to keep the singing as realistic as possible within the given setting. But because we picked the right actors it is a real pleasure to hear them sing my songs – they are so respectful of the lyrics and the tunes – if they make a mistake they are so apologetic; much more so than I am when I make a mess of one of my lines!

itm?: The show (as reviewed above) was a ‘preview’ showing – do you intend to tweak stuff for the ‘proper’ run?

G: Yep – the first 3 shows – Friday, Saturday, Sunday – are previews so we tweak and fix things after each show. It could be something technical about sound or lighting queues or a wee note to make sure a lyric is clear in the actor’s mind or a line is right. After official opening night – Tuesday 28th Oct – the show will be pretty much fixed until the run is finished. So I was in the corner taking notes, but mostly I just watched and enjoyed the show – the actors are just great and they make me laugh out loud each night – and I’ve seen all the rehearsals!

itm?: On that tack will you, if the play continues, expand it in any way (i.e. to take in more music?) – was there the right amount of music given your hatred of musicals?

G: I don’t “hate” musicals as such! I know I said that in print, but it looks much more harsh written down. I like to think I said it with a glint in my eye… but I don’t know about taking in more music. We count the spoken word parts as song parts so it has 8 songs in a show that’s an hour and a half long which feels like a good balance at the moment (especially since some are used more than once).
Anyway, once this run is finished then we will decide what happens next. Stage one is to hope it is a success now in its current context and if it is then we will hopefully have options for what happens to it in the future.

itm?: So, any musicals you actually ever enjoyed? Or ‘songs in plays’? Have you seen Once (acclaimed film with Oscar-winning music by Frames singer Glen Hansard)?

G: I really like Singing in the Rain, The Jungle Book and The Lion King – that’s all though. The Lion King is a kind of band ritual – we watch it every time we stay at Nick’s parents’ house in Birmingham. But we haven’t seen Once – we were deliberately avoiding it so it didn’t interfere with our process. When we finish then we are going to watch it (and I think I’ll really enjoy it because lots of people tell me I will).

itm?: Would you do it again – yourself or with the same playwright?

G: I would definitely work with David again on something similar – I have loved this whole thing from beginning to end. The first preview was a very special moment for me and I will treasure it for the rest of my life.

itm?: Finally (phew) any plans to release the ‘soundtrack’?

G: The soundtrack will be released – with me singing my versions of the songs plus a couple which didn’t make the show. We think it might be a playscript/album joint release. It isn’t fixed yet.

Midsummer runs at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre until November 15th. More details.