Winner of Musical Theatre Review’s Best Musical Award at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Islander is running at London’s Southwark Playhouse until 26 October 2019.
Conceived and directed by Amy Draper, with a book by Stewart Melton and a score by Finn Anderson (presented by Helen Milne Productions), the musical see Kirsty Findlay and Bethany Tennick perform a whole host of characters, while weaving, building and layering their voices using looping technology to create an expansive, ethereal soundscape
Despite FINN ANDERSON and STEWART MELTON’s hectic schedules, Musical Theatre Review’s Clare Walters managed to catch up with the writers for a chat about the process of how the show came about.
The starting point came with an idea from Amy Draper (the show’s director) about doing something focusing on the conflict in the Falkland Islands and then eventually developed into what we can see now at Southwark Playhouse which is set on the fictitious Scottish island of Kinnen.
One of the exciting things we discussed was the extraordinary synthesis of the pragmatic and the organic in the development of the project. Essentially every collaborator brought both a constructive and a transformational element which Anderson and Melton were able to absorb and work with.
Melton, the bookwriter who is also a director himself, and Draper have worked together before, but it was the arrival of Anderson as composer and lyricist which firmly located the show in Scotland.
Composer Finn Anderson, director Amy Draper, librettist Stewart Melton and producer Helen Milne
The auditions for performers brought in Kirsty Findlay and Bethany Tennick who play all the show’s many characters and who, Anderson says, are capable of singing anything he might write for them while simultaneously operating the two loopers used in the show.
After the auditions one performer in the show transformed from male to female so they could both be incorporated. Producer Helen Milne’s involvement as producer also brought a hugely significant element and located the show’s original home on the Isle of Mull. It was developed in association with Comar, an arts organisation on Mull and toured extensively before it arrived at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as part of this year’s Made in Scotland programme.
The audiences for the tour were also collaborators in the final project and now the show is far from home playing at the Southwark Playhouse in London after winning the Musical Theatre Review Award for Best Musical at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In the course of our meeting, Anderson checked I knew where Mull was. It’s a beautiful place. I have been and am now even keener to go back.
After the initial development period bookwriter Melton spent a year on research before taking the work forward and it certainly shows. While being a lot of fun in performance, the show is also deeply steeped in mythology and this resonates through the whole production.
Melton’s brief review for me of what he had looked into in order to create the world of the show was staggeringly detailed. The music is all original though Anderson also describes himself as steeped in Scottish folk music. His score for the show is both authentic and innovative.
Despite appreciating the potential of the two women’s voices, he very quickly wanted to bring technology into the show in the form of two loopers so that he could add more textures (thereby keeping himself from getting bored!).
Much of the show is live except for a few cleverly inserted recorded cues which confirm occasional needed pitches and tempos. Also, as Anderson points out, unusually in a piece of musical theatre none of the songs in the show are about or express the characters’ feelings. They are all driven by plot and character. The characters’ feelings come through the telling of the story.
Writing for loopers was both a constraint as well as an expansion of the show’s musical palate and Anderson made the repetitive cyclical nature of the loopers’ contribution a constructive feature of the music as a whole. The result is a delight to listen to as the musical textures are built anew for us each night.
Every answer to one of my questions inspired another flurry of questions and I could have talked to them both for much longer than their schedules allowed. I was one of the judges of the Musical Theatre Review Award in Edinburgh and I believed it to be a “beautiful work”.
For both its craftsmanship and its pure entertainment value of great storytelling and beautiful music, Islander is worth seeing, but beyond these qualities there is great elegance here.
It will be interesting to see where they go from here with this show, whether into further iterations in its current incarnation (and a cast recording) or in finding a way for other performers and theatre artists to ultimately take it on. In the meantime, catch it while you can!
Readers may also be interested in:
Islander: A New Musical at Southwark Playhouse – Review
Islander is named as Musical Theatre Review Best Musical at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2019 – News
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