SHOWSTOPPER! From Shostakovich To Gershwin...

Musical director Duncan Walsh Atkins writes the latest blog from the Showstopper! team...

Week 5 of Showstopper's run at the Apollo Theatre sees us in the usual bewildering variety of settings: a fish and chip shop, the Vatican, the Burning Man festival, a war pigeon training camp, the end of the rainbow and a Lego factory. Some of these are familiar (chip shop is a recurring suggestion, and we've done at least five Vatican musicals in the last three years), but gratifyingly the West End audience is throwing some quirky and unexpected ideas at us.

One of the frustrating things about this show is that the best moments can never be repeated and fade from the memory alarmingly quickly, so even by the end of the week I'm struggling to pick out the highlights. I'm pretty sure Andrew Pugsley, one of the greatest living Meat Loaf fans, got to pastiche his hero in the opening of one of the second Acts, and I'm prepared to swear Adam Meggido's 'Freedom hit me like a burning man' finale and Sarah-Louise Young's Frozen homage were two of the best songs ever performed in the West End, although I can't now recall how either of them went.

It's a constant thrill to see how engaged the audience become with the show and the characters. The interval tweets on which we base the second act are often mischievous (and bizarre) but they reveal how much the audience revel in being part of the show, and it's joyful to see them rooting for the characters they've helped to create. The roar for Ruth Bratt when she finally told her callous lover to 'Get Stuffed' in a barnstorming rock number was exhilarating, and this week we had a first when the audience set up a chant for the Dancing Coliseum Gladiators (who had been ordered offstage for upstaging the romantic leads) to be brought back on.

On many West End shows the musicians and actors rarely interact, and the musicians are able to detach from the show; as long as they play the right notes in the right order they can spend the rest of the time reading the paper. I have met West End musicians who have little idea what their show is about. Needless to say, this is not an option on Showstopper - we are onstage with the actors, watching every movement, feeling the mood of each scene and taking cues instinctively from dialogue we've never heard before. Instead of conducting them, as I would on other shows, I more often let the actors conduct me - it's easier. The first thing I tell any new Showstopper musician is: keep watching the actors. We have assembled an amazing team for this run; our percussionists can instantly recreate either a full rock kit or an orchestral percussion section, and our multi-reed players can switch from Gershwin to Shostakovich in a second.

I always said I'd be happy if I'd done one musical in the West End - by December I'll have done over sixty of them. So I'm very happy.

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical runs at the Apollo Theatre.

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