It’s January: cold, bleak, miserable, seemingly never ending. We’re always on the lookout for a healthy dose of escapism at this time of year, and One Man Musical, the new show from comedy duo Flo & Joan, has caught our attention. Fresh from a sell out run at last summer’s Edinburgh Fringe festival it has just opened at the Underbelly Boulevard Theatre in Soho, and we’ll be checking it out very soon. Ahead of that we caught up with the pair – sisters Nicola and Rosie Dempsey – for a quick chat.
For the uninitiated – what can we expect from the Flo & Joan experience? “Well this is slightly different to a normal Flo & Joan show,” Nicola begins, “because a normal Flo & Joan show is the two of us with a collection of songs that we’ve written over a year, about life in general. But we decided we wanted to try something different – we always wanted to write a musical, and we were writing a big musical, and everyone just kept telling us that no-one makes big musicals anymore, there’s no money in it. So we thought, ok, what we’ll do is we’ll write a musical for one person.”
The show’s title doesn’t give too much away… who might this one person be? “We were trying to find someone interesting to write a musical about,” Nicola continues. “Who’s got an interesting story? We started thinking about lots of public figures, like who do we want to give attention to? Or who would be funny, or clever? We thought it would be fun to write a musical about one of the most famous musical writers, so we thought – let’s try and write a musical about Andrew Lloyd Webber.”
We’re interested to know a bit more about the journey of this show so far. “We did Edinburgh Fringe – the show was written specifically for Edinburgh,” says Rosie, “because the first premise was – what does it look like for Andrew Lloyd Webber to go and have to put on a musical in Edinburgh? Where there’s famously no budget, it’s extremely hard to do… watching him, the man who’s the king of spectacle, have to put on a spectacle with effectively no money, in a disused gym.”
“That was the Edinburgh premise and it went so well there that we got offered a Soho Theatre run,” Rosie continues. “It became ‘what does it look like if Andrew Lloyd Webber has to put on a show at a black box theatre in the middle of Soho’, so the premise still worked. And with the Underbelly Boulevard… to get there you have to pass Shaftesbury Avenue, you have to walk past all of the big theatres, you come up a side street next to sex shops, there’s Prowler opposite, and you come upstairs to watch Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical… it’s not where he wishes his show would be.”
“From our dressing room here you can see The Gielgud,” adds Nicola, “and I think he would rather be at The Gielgud. It’s fun to find these theatres that are like… where would Andrew Lloyd Webber pretend to be ok about doing a show, but actually be quite angry about it?”
We love this as a premise and can’t wait to see the show in action. Flo & Joan have had quite an illustrious career thus far, with numerous shows, viral videos and a slot at a Royal Variety Performance – we wonder what the highlight has been so far? “Oh, uh, a highlight…” begins Nicola, followed by a long pause. “Oh this makes it sound like it was all terrible!”
“Yes – we’re VERY ungrateful for everything we’ve done,” laughs Rosie. “I’d say actually – we got given an Amazon Special. In comedy, to be offered a special, it feels like someone wants to immortalise your show – and to give that show to a large Amazon audience, it sort of feels like the golden finger has been pointed at you.”
“I think we’d been doing comedy for just over a year at that point,” Nicola continues. “It felt very early and very fortunate. We filmed that about six years ago, we are literal babies, we don’t even look like that – thank god! It’s nice to see something at the beginning of your career… it immortalised the very beginning of where we came from, which feels like a nice little touchstone. And thank god we’re not there any more! Now we write musicals about billionaires, look at how the mighty have fallen…”
Back to One Man Musical – why should GAY TIMES readers come along to see it? “Because it’s dripping with jokes about Elaine Paige,” Rosie laughs. “It’s dripping with jokes about old stardom, those old glory days where the money was just huge, and entertainment was huge – there’s a nostalgia to it, if you love theatre and entertainment, and catty comedy…”
“Couple of stereotypes there!” Nicola quips. “It’s just a good quality show. Maybe a bit blowing smoke up your own arse to say something like that but it’s a show that we care very much about, George – who is playing Andrew Lloyd Webber – cares very much about. There’s also an amazing restaurant, an amazing bar in this theatre… we’re already worried about our own bar tab knowing that we’re going to be hanging out here every night, drinking with anyone that comes in!”
“I think it’s just like a really solid January night out,” Nicola continues. “If you like music, if you like comedy, if you LOVE musical theatre, it is a deep cut show. There are layers to it – if you like Les Mis, this show is for you. If you like a specific cast recording of Les Mis, it’s even more for you. If you like a specific show where a specific thing happened, the cuts get deeper and deeper and deeper…”
“You know, you’ve got crowds in when there’s a joke about Patti Lupone, and you get some deep, deep cackles from pockets of people in the audience and you’re like YES – the deep cutters are in!” Rosie adds.
Sounds great – we’re very here for musical theatre deep cuts! We’re almost out of time (we’re just grabbing a few minutes in the stairwell of the theatre during a break in rehearsals) but we wanted to know more about the collaboration with George Fouracres, who is playing the titular Man in the musical. How did this come about, and how has it been so far?
“We initially wanted the man to be played by a female or a non-binary performer, because we wanted to separate the man, we didn’t want it to feel like an impression,” says Nicola. “We cast the net wide, we thought about musical theatre people, because we were writing musical theatre songs. Someone recommended George to us, he’s a comedian, he’s done his own solo shows, and we said – ok we’ll see a tape from this man. He just got it immediately, his audition tape made us cry, we were like – ‘well, it’s obviously him, isn’t it?’ – so our grand plans of breaking boundaries and binaries were out the window.”
“And the process has been amazing!” Nicola continues. “We have an amazing director too, Georgie Staight, we’re working with people who really understand comedy, it makes it all easier.” “In comedy,” Rosie adds, “we realised you need someone who has got comedy chops who can survive Edinburgh. If you can’t deal with a rough Edinburgh audience the show will just be on its knees, and George had done that time and time again, so it was perfect. He knew how to deal with beast of Edinburgh.”
“And collaborating has just been lovely because it’s two extra people to stop us from having arguments!” Nicola laughs. “If it’s just the two of us it’ll be horrible shouting matches and bickering, but when there are two other human beings in the room who don’t know you very well, you have to behave yourself a lot more, which is good for our relationship!”
One Man Musical is currently playing at the Underbelly Boulevard Theatre – more information can be found here.
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