The Showstopper Phone Call

Christopher Ash

Allow me to let you in on a little secret: there is in fact one section of Showstopper: The Improvised Musical which is, in fact, not wholly improvised. (This will come as a huge surprise to those of our devoted fans who have heard us vehemently debunk the various rumours over the years: "they have scripts", "secret auto-cues", "plants in the audience", etc.) However, it must be admitted that there is indeed one section of every show which always takes a similar pathway. And yet, as Assistant MD (performing on woodwinds or piano depending on the night) it is a section of our show which I find consistently thrilling and exciting. I'm talking, of course, about the opening gambit with our writer character, and the phone call, and the audience. Let's call it The Showstopper Phone Call.

Sitting in the band, directly across the stage from this little vignette, I have had the chance to directly view the scene play out hundreds of times during our eight-year history, and it continues to be a delight and a pleasure to watch, and inexplicably, one of the things I love the most about this show. Seeing it now, in the West End (with Simon Scullion's set, Gabriella Slade's costumes, Tim Mascall and Damian Robertson's lights), it looks better than ever before!

It begins, always, with a phone ringing in an office. The writer, who has been riffing ideas with his band/composer collaborators, silences them: "shh! It's the producer!" The writer picks up the receiver, answers the caller, "Hi, Cameron" (surname omitted), and begins a conversation which will devise, with the audience, an identity for a show which has never been seen before, and will never be seen again: "you need another musical?"

As Stephen Sondheim describes it in Sunday in the Park with George: "White. A blank page, or canvas. So many possibilities." This is what exists at that moment. A blank page. None of us in the cast, or crew, or band, have any idea what form this story will take, and the all important ingredients which the audience provide during this phone call will set the GPS for which direction we start our improvisational adventure.

This week's phonecalls from Cameron (surname omitted) have taken us to a Cryogenic Lab ("Eyes Wide Frozen"), a Yorkshire Allotment ("A Lot T' Live For"), Asda ("Asda La Vista"), a Pet Crematorium ("Burn Pussy Burn"), British Airways First Class ("We Got Baggage"), and a Superhero School ("Brat Man").

As a composer, I have been lucky to be commissioned to write the odd bit of music, for concert, for stage, for screen. There is a buzz, a thrill, from those moments of being commissioned, being asked to make something from nothing. I recognise that same buzz in the Showstopper Phone Call. I think our audiences also receive that buzz: they are part of the creating of the show. They receive the thrill of Cameron (surname omitted) asking them to write a musical!

Here we are nearing the end of our 10-week West End adventure, and we still don't ever know what will come out of the phone call. But the producer keeps on calling.