Guest Blog: 'We Will Rinse a Joke to Absolute Exhaustion!': Writer Nathan Parkinson on The Incredible Journey of POLICE COPS: THE MUSICAL

In 2015 our newly formed theatre company, then called ‘The Pretend Men’, debuted our first ever piece of work at The New Wolsey’s ‘Pulse Theatre Festival’ in Ipswich. ‘Pulse’ is a curated festival for artists to develop, grow and connect with audiences, something we desperately needed to do in 2015. They have a wonderful competition called ‘The Suitcase Award’ where artists can present a 20 minute work-in-progress of whatever they are currently working on and perform it to the general Pulse festival audience as well as a selection of industry judges.

The only rule being that whatever you present has to ‘fit into a suitcase’ encouraging artists to create environmentally friendly work which is tourable on public transport. No problem for us as we couldn’t afford to hire a car and my mum had a selection of suitcases that could rival Amazon from her many years doing car boot sales.

We had been creating a 20 minute version of our first show Police Cops for the competition in Tom’s parent’s barn. Pulse Festival was in March so we started our rehearsals in January.

There was no heating in the barn and we would work till the early hours but we were kept warm by our dream of winning the competition and a hack we found on youtube where you put tea candles under an upside down terracotta plant pot to create a make-shift radiator.

Fast-forward to March and we had just won the Suitcase Award as well as the £1000 prize money. At the schmoozy lunch after the competition we sat looking at some of the more premium terracotta plant pots on the Homebase website and talking to the judges. Although we had won the award, there was plenty of skepticism about the long-term viability of the show; an 80’s blockbuster buddy-cop parody on a shoestring budget.

“Sure, it’s funny and well performed and has a certain barn-ness to it but will an audience be able to engage with this ridiculousness for anything more than half an hour” was the vibe of what one of the judges said to us as we explained our plans to turn the show into a full hour for the upcoming Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Well fast-forward again (or stream on 1.5 speed for all you Gen Z’ers) to the present day and we’ve now taken that hour long show to South Africa, Canada, Australia, USA, China, Indonesia, Thailand and with our subsequent shows Police Cops In Space and Badass Be Thy Name won 10 awards and had sell-out runs every year since at the Edinburgh Festival and at London’s Soho Theatre.

Everything seemed to be going great and then lockdown hit and we were confined to our respective mansions. We were taking a break in one of our terracotta plant pot saunas when we had the idea of adapting Police Cops into a musical. As you can tell from the plant pot thing, we will rinse a joke to absolute exhaustion and so thought turning the show into a musical was a great idea and so Police Cops:The Musical was born.

Coming out of lockdown we wanted to create something that was pure joy. Our goal was to put everything we had learnt in our seven years creating comedy plays into one show to create our most ambitious, most entertaining and most importantly - our funniest show yet.

Police Cops:The Musical has just enjoyed a total sell out run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,[and received 5 stars from Broadway World] is our most critically acclaimed show to date and is now transferring to The Southwark Playhouse. That 20 minute scratch which industry professionals doubted could go beyond that is now a 1 hour 45min play with a live band, expanded cast and a soundtrack by a Brit Award Winner.

Police Cops the five hour Opera…coming soon?

Police Cops:The Musical is at Southwark Playhouse Borough from 8 September - 14 October 2023.

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