Clean! The Musical won the Outstanding Show Award at the Brighton Fringe. Picture: Andy O’Hara
Different Theatre is bringing its award-winning, five-star musical Clean! – a rousing celebration of women’s resilience and sisterhood – to London’s Cockpit Theatre on 23 and 24 November 2021.
Exploring the lives of seven women living in the historic Roundhill (or Laundry Hill) area of Brighton through different eras, Sam Chittenden and Simon Scardanelli’s Clean! The Musical won the Outstanding Show Award at Brighton Fringe in June this year and attracted a string of five-star reviews. Several people likened it to Les Misérables, Six and Emilia.
Highlighting how much has and hasn’t changed from 1880 to today, it is a rousing celebration of women’s resilience through difficult times. Sisterhood is a common theme – from laundry to women’s hospital to modern female friendships.
Other themes include suffrage, sexuality, mental health, domestic violence and – topically – the smallpox outbreak in 1950, which has eerie parallels with Covid 70 years later. In exploring these stories we see how universal and ‘modern’ these women’s experiences actually are.
Prolific singer-songwriter/composer and member of 1980s band Big Bam Boo, Simon Scardanelli has written the music alongside Sam Chittenden (Unquiet Slumbers, Sary, Underworlds, Metamorphosis, So You Say) who provides the book and lyrics.
The cast at the Cockpit Theatre will feature Amelia Armande, Judey Bignell, Jack Cryer, Sharon Drain, Anna Chloe Moorey, Holly Ray and Rosa Samuels. Simon Scardanelli (guitar) and Ben Alexander (cello) provide the accompaniment in the production designed by Delphine du Barry.
Touched everyone’s hearts… has the spirit of Les Misérables, and a strong potential to be taken into the West End ★★★★★ – Broadway Baby
A triumph in every sense… a spine-tingling musical soundscape… more than deserves to be seen by a very wide audience ★★★★★ – Latest Brighton
This should be in the West End… I’ve never heard a new musical come up to this one… A masterwork… A true homage to the women it celebrates – Outstanding Show – Fringe Review
A life-affirming show with an inspiring message about our shared capacity for tenacity and love which left the audience genuinely uplifted – Watford Fringe Reviews
Clean! tells the stories of real and fictional women of varying ages and at different times in the area’s history and features 14 original songs, from feminist anthems to heart-wrenching ballads.
In conversation with Musical Theatre Review below, writer and Different Theatre artistic director SAM CHITTENDEN explains more about her fascinating and topical new show, Clean! The Musical.
What inspired you and your husband Simon Scardanelli to write Clean The Musical? I believe you originally wrote the piece as a play in 2018?
Yes, I wrote it in 2018 when I was living in the area it is set in [Brighton]. I was fascinated by all the local history and had started to write a series of monologues for different characters. We first performed Clean in May 2019, in a garden that used to be a laundry drying field. It was a promenade piece, and we decided that we needed some acoustic music for the transitions, so we ended up writing two ensemble songs (‘Sisterhood’ and ‘The Difference’).
The show went so well (winning Best New Play at the Brighton Fringe 2019), and the music really worked, so later that year we decided to write a bunch of new songs, including solo songs for each character. And so Clean The Musical was born!
The show tells the tales of the women of laundry hill in Brighton from 1880 to (now) 2021. Can you describe some of the momentous stories of women’s resilience which are incorporated in the musical?
All of the characters face challenges of different kinds, some personal, some historical. Millicent, a laundry worker in the 1870s, has lost several children in infancy, as was very common, and she becomes the carer for her granddaughter after her daughter’s untimely death.
Dr Helen Boyle was one of the first female GPs in Brighton, along with her partner Dr Mabel Jones. In 1905 she established a hospital for women with nervous disorders – a precursor to modern forms of mental health care. She had to withstand setbacks and ridicule to achieve her aims, but was eventually recognised by the establishment, even though she remained secretive about her sexuality.
Meg is a suffragette who is trying to get women to vote in the flapper election of 1929. She is inspired by her mother who died in the violent suffragette rallies of 1917.
Dot is the manageress of the Tivoli laundry, which was involved in the smallpox outbreak of 1950/51, after bedding from the house of its first victim – a taxi driver – came there to be washed. She faces fear and responsibility with courage, in a situation all too familiar now (track and trace, quarantine, vaccine queues).
And Juliet reflects on her past exploits at Greenham Common, where ordinary women came together and changed the course of this country’s nuclear history.
Was it challenging to tackle so many different eras in one production?
It was a challenge to do the research and be historically accurate for seven different eras, but I think the mix is part of what makes Clean! work. I found it really interesting to hear the contrasting tones of language from the different eras overlapping. It was also great fun creating costumes and sets for each of the eras, all in a purple, white and green colour palette (the suffragette colours).
When I was writing Clean! I became struck by the resonances between these women’s stories all the way from 1870 to 2021. A lot has changed over that time, but a lot hasn’t. Several scenes feature the suffragette Meg, alongside Ruby who is running away to one of the first homes for ‘battered women’. Meg believes that universal suffrage in 1929 will change things and that in the future women will no longer fear their husbands. As we hear from Ruby, that wasn’t the case in the 1970s, and we sadly know it still isn’t in 2021.
Clean! The Musical was recently seen at the Watford Fringe. Picture: origin8photography
The show was due to be performed in May 2020, but the pandemic put a stop to that. You carried on with online rehearsals and came up with a digital version of the show. How difficult was that?
It was a logistical headache for sure! But we were determined to keep the momentum going and give the cast a way to be involved during lockdown. We discovered how hard it is to rehearse ensemble music online, but we did group read-throughs and one-to-one work, and found ways to layer the voices into backing tracks so that all the cast could rehearse their parts individually.
Creating the digital version of the show was a huge amount of work. We filmed all the cast individually and montaged the ensemble parts. I learned how to use video editing software – not something I had expected at the start of 2020!
What was it like when you finally got to see the show performed live? When and where was that and what was the reaction like?
We first performed live in June 2021 at Brighton Fringe. It was wonderful to first bring the cast together in the same room for rehearsals and then to finally perform to a live audience. It was amazing! For many it was the first time they had been in a theatre since early 2020. The show is both poignant and rousing and people were really moved. We had standing ovations and several five-star reviews.
I believe both the online and live versions have been nominated/won a number of awards?
Yes, the online version was nominated for an OffFest award and the live version won the Outstanding Theatre Award at Brighton Fringe.
Since those first live performances, where else has the show been seen and what performances are scheduled this year? We hear there are performances at the Cockpit Theatre in November, is that the show’s London debut?
Since our Brighton run we have performed in Tunbridge Wells, Eastbourne, Litlington and Watford. We are due to perform our London debut at The Cockpit on 23 and 24 November. This will be more in-the-round, so a different experience again.
Picture: origin8photography
It is possible for fans of Clean The Musical to hear the show’s score on different online platforms, when did you record that?
The songs are on all the usual platforms – Spotify, iTunes, etc – and can be dowloaded via our website www.different-theatre.com/music.
We recorded the songs in autumn of 2020 in a Covid-conscious way, layering the parts together. Simon recorded the guitar, keyboard and ukulele in his studio in Brittany to create the backing tracks. Then our guest musicians (cello, flute and violin) recorded their parts remotely; and we recorded the singers individually at Brighton Road Studios in Sussex. Finally, Simon mixed everything together.
When did you first create Different Theatre and what was your vision? Do you have other new projects in development?
I created Different Theatre in 2017 with the vision of creating exciting and lyrical new work with a primarily female focus. That remains at our heart but we are also expanding into different genres.
One of our next projects will be a musical adaptation of Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince, written again by Simon and me. We also have some dystopian sci fi and environmental drama in the pipeline.
Tickets for Clean! The Musical at London’s Cockpit Theatre on 23 and 24 November 2021 are available HERE
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