You’ll know GLYN KERSLAKE from many beloved cast recordings. He came shooting straight from the hallowed halls of ArtsEd straight to the West End in 1988 in Les Misérables, and has enjoyed a 30-something-year career as a leading man in both town and tour, from Schönberg to Andrew Lloyd Webber to Sondheim and beyond.
In recent years, he’s turned his hand to composing – and his collaboration with Gareth Machin and the Salisbury Playhouse is bearing some enchanting fruit. Their latest musical, Little Robin Red Breast, runs at the venue from 11-31 December.
Glyn is in conversation with Aura Simon.
You’ve co-written Little Robin Red Breast with Gareth Machin for pre-school children. Can you tell us a little bit more about it.
I’ve done a lot of work for Gareth as an actor and as a musical director in the past and we still very much want to write an adult musical, but we thought, as an experiment to see how we collaborate and how we get on in terms of working together as writers, we’d try a couple of children’s shows first.
So, last year we did The Night Before Christmas, which was an adaptation of the poem set to music, and it went down so well that we decided to do another one this year, and something original this time!
It’s Gareth’s idea to have the story about a little boy called Robin. Robin’s father is a composer who works full time, is very arty and scatty. His little sister is a bit older than him, and she’s a bit of a madam – fancies herself as a Broadway diva and is very stagey, a-la Bonnie Langford in the 1970s and 80s.; He doesn’t get enough time with his family to play, and the only time he does have a joyous family time is at Christmas.
So he gets an advent calendar given to him – when he opens the first window it’s a robin and he fantasises about what it might be like to fly, and at that point he becomes a robin. Each of the windows he opens up represents a new part of his adventure, and by the end of the story he comes back to being at home at Christmas, where they’re all united and harmonious. It’s like a little mini fantasy adventure.
Is there anything autobiographical going on there?
I think Gareth has admitted that he hasn’t done this purely for fun. I think he’s brought an awful lot of his experience as a parent to the piece. I think whether we want to admit it or not, Robin is Frank, his little boy!
Writing a musical for pre-schoolers must be a baptism of fire in so many ways. What were the biggest challenges for you both?
Well, I think the story has got to be king – no different to any other musical, but we had to write a story they could engage with and relate to.
I think for toddlers, pantomime can be an hour each half, which is a long time for little ones to concentrate without getting restless. We wanted to write just a one act play which is under an hour long.
If you write in a musical or lyrical language they can understand, then you’re halfway there. And the other thing is – a bit like with CBeebies –- is that you can’t try and be too clever. You’ve got to make sure there’s catchy tunes, that they’re jaunty, that the ballad’s not too long, that it’s something children can relate to.
There’s a whole host of music in it in terms of musical styles as well. We’ve got a little duet with Robin and the mouse, it’s called ‘The Perfect Act’, and it’s like a Fred and Ginger routine. We’ve got a predatory cat who sings the blues to get Mouse and Robin on her side; and we’ve got a rock‘n’roll jive about getting ready for Christmas, about putting up the decorations and getting the tree up.
Also, there’s quite a lot of call and response, so that the children all feel involved as well.
So how do you and Gareth write together?
He came up with the idea initially – a basic synopsis and then an idea of where the songs might happen. And from that moment he started from the top of the show. We’d get one scene sorted before we moved onto the next thing. We did it very much in chronological order.
When he came up with the idea, especially with the set being an advent calendar, being for toddlers, and that with call and response, they have to open each window – I thought it was such an endearing and charming idea, especially at Christmas time.
There’s a lot of back and forth going on – I’m in the East Midlands, and Gareth’s down in Salisbury. We have met up a couple of times to sit down at the piano and toss ideas around, but the joy of modern technology these days is that it’s easy for him to email ideas or lyrics through, and then I just noodle around on the piano and give him three or four different options as to where we might take it musically.
He’ll come back with some response and say: “I think this” and so I’ll send something else – and so it’s very easy to do. I think Elton John and Bernie Taupin hardly ever see each other and they do everything by email.
Gareth and I are both very much on the same wavelength, we have the same sense of humour, so it’s not been difficult to write with him because he’s a lovely guy and very talented.
What sort of instruments are you using in the show?
It’s just piano – very basic. We’ve written it so that the musical director plays the daddy, that’s why we’ve made him a composer! So it doesn’t seem weird that Daddy just plays the piano all the time.
Nothing weird about that, this is a musical! So is this the first time you’ve not performed in something you’ve written?
Absolutely, and that really excites me. When you’re in something you can’t really take an objective view because you can’t see the overall picture of it, so it is really lovely to sort of stand back and be a member of the audience and experience it from that point of view for the first time.
You’ve had such a successful career as a performer, and now more recently you’ve dropped composing into the mix, have you always wanted to compose?
It’s something I’ve always been passionate about but not had the time to do properly. And I don’t regret that because I think my fate was to be a performer for the best part of 30 years really. I left Devon at 16 to go to the Arts Educational School, and from then I didn’t really stop working – I’ve been really lucky.
The set model for Little Robin Redbreast
It’s been a gradual progression from being a swing to understudy to leading roles, but at the age of 50 now I just don’t want to do eight shows a week.
I feel like everything I dreamt I wanted to do as a child I’ve done, and I feel ready for a different life – still to be creative. My passion for performing has completely gone, which is nice, I feel like there was nothing left to do except completely divert. The kind of roles I could play now between 50 and 70 are not the kind of roles I want to play, they are lovely but I just don’t want to do any more. At the end of the day that’s how I feel.
My ambition now, creatively, is to write. And we’ve started off on a small scale with children’s writing. But with Gareth being the artistic director of the Salisbury Playhouse – because we’ve got that theatre to try things out – if we do end up writing something that we’ve got faith in, or that other people are complimentary about, then we’ll try and get our work put out there and get other producers interested. Then we can make a go of it – we shall have to see how it goes.
You must keep busy with all these projects, and a one year old now too! What’s the key to keeping so many things in balance?
Well I’m very lucky because my fiancée Elaine [Glover] is an actress but at the moment she’s going to be in a show and I’m going to be on daddy-care over Christmas, so I can give myself a break from teaching and performing!.
I think balance is what I’ve tried to find and I’m definitely improving my life –- I take my work seriously, I don’t take myself too seriously.
I’m having a nice time and I’m enjoying working with the students that I teach, trying to inspire students who want to do what I did – that’s one side of my life. The other is just moving over to being a creative as opposed to a performer, whether it be MD or composer – trying to create new things.
The other thing is just to enjoy being part of a family. I didn’t really, to be honest, believe that I would ever be a father. I didn’t think that would be part of my fate, as it were. And because it did happen and has happened, it’s probably the best thing that has ever happened to me.
I need to make time now, for just being an ordinary guy with a loving family. Most of my career I was just so career driven, and there were flaws in my personal life as a result of that. I never got the balance right, so now, being an older man, I feel it’s important to get that balance right so that I can weigh up what’s important in life.
There’s a real mix of being creative and doing fantastic work but also just having lovely walks in the park and holidays and being with your family.
You teach performers who want to go into today’s industry. Do you think performers are being required to be more all-round creative?
I think they’re being encouraged to, but when it comes to writing I think experience counts for a lot. Experience of life and experience of working within the industry counts for a lot so you’ve got more to draw on as you get older.
So I think it depends on the individual, what their circumstances are and what their drive is. My drive was: I always wanted to escape into the world of make-believe, so as a performer that was, for me, what I wanted to do. But now I want to create something new for other performers to do and not be involved in that side of it at all, and that’s the way it’s evolved for me.
I don’t think there is a set rule for it. I do think it’s great to encourage performers to be creative, and look at the prospect of what they creatively could achieve outside of being a performer. Though most people in their 20s and 30s, if they’re driven to be a performer, it tends to be to that and that alone.
Glyn Kerslake in The Night Before Christmas at Salisbury Playhouse. Picture: Paul Blakemore
How would you say that drama schools have changed since you’ve been in the industry?
I think the triple threat thing now is massive in schools. When I went to college I couldn’t dance at all. I learnt to move a bit but they really did hone in on my acting ability. I carried on doing the dance in order to just improve my posture and the ability to hold myself well onstage.
I think now they really do hammer away at the prospect of trying to be the best you can be in all three disciplines equally, and encourage actor-musicians – there’s just a lot more going on now in terms of facilities, what they’ve got and what they expect of you in all those three disciplines.
Quick fire!
Best response live to your work:
Best response was to see just how completely believable the story became to the children that were watching. They got so immersed in the story you could see the joy in their faces, and then at the end they were literally clapping and stamping their feet.
What any composer or playwright wants is for the story to be so compelling that the audience members lose themselves inside of it and forget about anything outside of it. That was the most exciting part of last year’s show.
Who’s your favourite composer to have worked with?
Stephen Sondheim. No hesitation there!
Touring or town?
Town.
Strangest audition you’ve ever had?
I went in and the pianist could literally not play a note of the song I wanted to sing. It might have appeared a bit cocky but I said: “Do you mind if I play?” Because I just wouldn’t have been able to sing the song! I did it in a tactful way. It was for director Jude Kelly, funnily enough. She encouraged me to do it, and I passed the audition and she employed me to play the piano in the show as well. That was for The World Goes ’Round at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.
Strangest auditionee?
There was one guy, he came and sang, but didn’t want us to look at him. He sang the whole song with his back to us. That was quite weird.
Best vocal warm-up?
My warm-up consists of the best exercises from the teachers I’ve had over the years, it’s a combination of all of their work. There isn’t one specific warm-up, it’s a combination.
Dream production, dream cast – alive or dead?
It would be a brand new musical that Gareth and I write – and I would have to have Jenna Russell in it, and Frank Sinatra, when he was younger!
Perfect. Lastly, your favourite Christmas tradition?
Roast dinner.
Straight off the bat there. Right down to the food!
Right down to the food!
* Little Robin Red Breast plays at the Salisbury Playhouse from 11-31 December.
* Glyn Kerslake’s credits in musical theatre include Les Misérables (Palace Theatre); original cast and subsequent alternate Chris in Miss Saigon (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane); Sunset Boulevard (Adelphi Theatre); Martin Guerre (Prince Edward Theatre); The Phantom of the Opera (Her Majesty’s Theatre); TheWolf/Cinderella’s Prince in Into the Woods; Assassins (Union Theatre); Merrily We Roll Along (Menier Chocolate Factory/Harold Pinter Theatre); London Calling, With a Song in My Heart (Salisbury Playhouse).
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