Bananaman composer Leon Parris with his three children
Bananaman The Musical is a new British musical arriving at the Southwark Playhouse in south London this month.
Its writer and composer is LEON PARRIS whose previous shows include Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five, Wolfboy, Stig of the Dump and Monte Cristo, among others.
Winner of a Vivian Ellis Award for Best Musical and a Really Useful Group Award for Most Promising Writer, Parris spills the beans on his career so far…
Which came first, the acting or the music? And when did you start writing the words and the music, not to mention the books for the shows above?
To be honest, neither. Music and acting were the byproduct of dancing. I started off as a ballet dancer at the age of two and ended up working with the Royal Academy as the dancer on the dance videos that teach the dance teachers how to teach dance to the dancers.
Acting and music came later and almost hand in hand; bits and bobs for BBC2 educational programmes and then Channel 4’s Desmond’s (a milestone I’m not sure I’ll ever surpass!). Then I was off to the National Youth Music Theatre which was basically my baptism-by-fire education in all things theatrical for the next seven years. I was very very lucky to be surrounded by the most astonishing actors, performers, musicians, composers and writers who I idolised. So looking back, it was almost inevitable that I find myself doing what I do now.
I always wanted to write, but never knew how to. I hated reading, but loved stories which was a bit of a bind, but the most astonishing teachers at my school were Classics and English teachers whose passion was nothing short of infectious, so my maths, science, history and geography classes were spent writing stories about a boy who sucked at maths and science, on a quest throughout history around the globe to find someone who could explain why algebra is so bloody important!
The rest was simple… I started putting it all to music. I always was, and have always been, a film buff before a theatre one, so I’ve never written a story without a soundtrack in my head. In any musical I’ve ever written the characters simply sing the story to the soundtrack of the movie that was in my head. That’s why my first shows were nearly always sung-through. Book and scriptwriting were never an intentional accolade I strove for, they’re just the bits of the movie where there’s no soundtrack to sing along to.
Did you learn to play musical instruments from an early age and, if so, were you ever in a band?
I took about 13 piano lessons and hated it. My siblings were all more musically gifted than I when it came to reading music, something I still cannot do. I remember biting my piano teacher – which brought an abrupt end to a turbulent relationship – and I began playing everything by ear. Drums are the only thing I can read music in and it’s fair to say every show I’ve ever written is fiercely percussive in tone and timbre.
I was in a few bands – none that anyone will have heard of – but never with a view to playing professionally. It was just nice to be paid to be in a pub, so it seemed a no-brainer!
Matthew McKenna will play the title role in Bananaman The Musical at the Southwark Playhouse, London. Picture: Claire Bilyard
As a boy actor you were in A Christmas Carol, Whistle Down the Wind, Bugsy Malone etc. Were these the shows that prompted you to write for an audience of children?
When I was young I always got on better with adults than with children my own age and I honestly never saw these projects as ‘kids shows’. Adults seemed to me to get even more from things that were ‘child-friendly’. So I’ve never set out to write anything specifically for kids. I have three little boys of my own, but I treat them as if they were my peers and my friends. I don’t adapt the way I speak to them or the material that they’re exposed to just because they’re little.
I think kids can feel patronised a lot by entertainment and at times when adults write for children, our protective instincts can be to the detriment of their enjoyment and development. The fun part of writing is finding the balance. My 5-year-old’s favourite musical is the stadium tour of Jesus Christ Superstar. His favourite band is Fall Out Boy! Go figure!
You obviously started acting while still at school in Bedford, and at 18 you wrote a musical called The Fallen. Did you have visions then of becoming a professional actor, writer, composer and musician?
Yes!!! By the time I was 15 or 16 all I wanted to do was write. I remember auditioning for something at the London Palladium when I was 12 and my dad, a chartered surveyor, who for a time looked after many of the greatest theatres in the West End, told me: “you’ll know you’ve made it when you get here.” When I was 18 I got there in the finals of the Vivian Ellis Awards, not as a performer, but as a writer/composer.
Have you ever had any formal training in any of the above career choices?
No. And when I’m not writing musicals I work as an horror-history tour guide in Barcelona where I live – telling stories for a living!
What attracts you to a project initially? Are you looking for something specific, not to say offbeat or weird?
I have a notebook with 200 titles in it. Some are fictional, some are not, some adaptations, some original, ranging from The Princess Bride to Life is Beautiful to Fraggle Rock to Geriatric Mutant Ninja Zombie Vampire Hunters (that one’s mine! – patent pending!). It’s a sort of Christmas wish list of things I’d love to write or stories and characters and situations I think would find a new lease of life from; that strange energetic metamorphosis that happens when people suddenly start singing a story.
Your musical of the play Wolfboy sounds uncompromising in that it concerns a potential suicide victim and a would-be werewolf. Did the oddness of the subject appeal to you?
Suicide and mental illness weren’t high on my list of musical subject matters to be honest, but I fell in love with the play and the characters and the claustrophobia of the piece. I knew I was writing something that had never been tackled in this genre, so the challenge alone was appealing and terrifying in equal measure, coupled with a mission to do justice to emotions, afflictions and situations that are far from fictional. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
What made you musicalise Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five and was the resulting show a send-up of a much-parodied genre or a love letter in music?
That was a gift! I was obsessed with the books when I was little and couldn’t sleep without the audio book tapes playing in the background. If memory serves I entered a reading competition at school without the book because I could recite most of the stories by heart. There are certain things that are instantly singable: ginger beer, hidden treasure and summer holiday adventures to name a few. The show ended up as a chimeric musical comedy; half Blyton and half my inner child troublemaker finally going on the escapades that only happen in stories.
Bananaman The Musical is already a parody of the superhero comics and films. It appeared as a cartoon strip in the Nutty comic, then the Dandy, finally the Beano, and ultimately became a TV cartoon. Was it the silliness of the idea of a young man called Eric Wimp becoming a superhero when faced with a banana that appealed to you?
Ha ha… questions that have never before and will never again be asked! I grew up on a healthy diet of SuperTed, He-Man, Inspector Gadget and Bagpuss. Bananaman was the one that always stuck with me. As a child who watched it every day after school and read the comic strip instead of doing homework, I obviously found it funny, but never saw the irony or the satire. I bought it hook, line and sinker. Some people have strong sense memory linked to scent or taste, but I remember so clearly how I felt when the title sequence played and the theme tune blared out. For me it was, and still is, a feeling of nostalgic safety and comfort. For my parents it was an excuse to force feed me bananas instead of crisps to turn me in to a muscle-bound hero. I’m ashamed to say I believed that too!
Bananaman sends up the genres of Superman, Batman and Spiderman et al. Are you a particular fan of Marvel Comics?
Fan would be putting it mildly. “Unhealthy obsession bordering on addiction” is how my wife would phrase it. There’s not a single movie, cartoon, comic, poster or T-shirt I don’t own. My eldest son calls me “Thor” (I’m proud of the accolade regardless of how staggeringly inaccurate it may be!).
I took him to see the live stadium tour of Marvel Universe Live in Barcelona and although it was slightly confusing because it was entirely in Spanish, I’m proud to say we left with every piece of merchandise available.
Perhaps it’s the ordinariness of Bananaman that is its forte, so what sort of songs have you written for him?
You’re right. He’s a pretty straightforward kinda guy, but armed with the same sort of penetrative logic that toddlers use to silence their parents! Thus… he’s a deceptively tricky chap to write because on the one hand you have a erudite English gentleman with impeccable manners, and on the other you have a giant man-child in lycra who can fly and fight and bench press a steam train, but struggles with basic maths.
His material, much like his character, is all heart. There’s no inner monologue or deep thought process with Bananaman. Why use a door when you can walk through the wall? Why would you speak to someone if there’s a perfectly good live band waiting to accompany you in song? There are more songs about heroes in every genre than possibly any other subject matter, so no shortage of inspiration, but it’s hard to know how to set him apart. Thankfully there are surprisingly few great anthems about bananas; that’s a niche we have all to ourselves! Although, as I found out the hard way, it is perhaps because “banana” took third place in the impossible-to-find-a-rhyme fruit awards (beaten narrowly by “orange” and “kumquat”).
Is there a romantic love interest in the show for Eric Wimp and what sort of capers does he get up to?
The character of Fiona – originally an early 1930s news reporter in the comics and TVs series – has found her own renaissance in the musical. I’m not going to give too much away, but let’s just say the romance in the show will take many by surprise, not least Fiona herself.
Will adults as well as children appreciate the show, rather like the Paddington films which are witty as well as being knockabout fun?
Yes – without a shadow of a doubt. This is not just a family show or a musical spectacle for kids. At its heart it is an homage to the children who are now parents who understand the exact sense memory I mentioned earlier. It’s a blast from the past with a 21st century makeover, but moreover it’s the excuse every frustrated parent has been looking for to get their kids immersed in the stuff that used to make us tie the tablecloth around our necks, eat a banana and then fall down a flight of stairs, safe in the conviction we could fly – that may have just been me!
Jodie Jacobs and Mark Newnham in rehearsal for Bananaman The Musical. Picture: Pamela Raith
Do you still have a couple of other shows in the pipeline, namely Going Once and Naughty Pour Homme, the latter a dubious tale of scientists attracting women through a special pheromone spray in, of course, Paris, the city of romance?
As I’m sure every writer in the industry would attest, there’s always a back catalogue of material sitting on the shelf collecting dust which one day might see the light of day. It’s impossible to maintain the momentum necessary to write a musical without the complete and total (and irrational) belief that one day it will grace the stage and be loved by thousands, but those which do not… it’s never wasted time.
I hope one day all these things will find an audience and an arena in one machination or another, but I’m sure many of my peers can empathise with the need to move forward and find the next project; the next show, the next song that makes us dance around our living rooms (in private) thinking: “This is the one!”
I’m proud of everything I’ve written, but why wouldn’t you want more of that feeling?
Obviously in a musical the book comes first, but then in writing the songs, which comes first, the music or the lyrics?
This answer might hammer the nail in the coffin of my future career, but here goes…
I start with one song and the poster! Always have. Always will. I design a poster of what might one day hang on the walls of the London Underground and then I write a song. Then I write one or two more so I hear the soundtrack to the aforementioned movie in my head. Then I go back and start the thankless task of structure.
“Book” is a loose and vague and undefinable creature to me. Structuring a story is a pride-swallowing siege that makes you feel utterly unprepared and unqualified 90% of the time, but with the premature poster hanging on the wall and the half-written songs playing in the background, eventually it appears on its own and from there on it’s simply a matter of telling the story the best possible way.
There’s always a logical tone and rhythm to any given story or scene, so that gifts you either a lyric or a melody and the rest is only a few hundred sleepless nights away.
Will you be staying with live theatre or do you have plans for other media such as films, TV or radio?
Film and TV were always my first loves and for some time I was sure that it would remain the top of my to-do-list, but that may just be down to the theatrical way in which I view anything; films, books, history, politics… you name it. I’ve written two TV series (I’ve so far not shown them to anyone) and I’ve embarked on a novel in the last year, but I can’t help thinking my sons will have to step in 50 years from now and finish it for me.
For now I’m happy in theatre. It’s addictive and I’m hooked. Even if my musicals are only experienced by a few friends who are forced to do the first read-through over dinner in Barcelona, the feeling I get from making something from scratch remains the same and I cannot see that changing any time soon.
* Bananaman The Musical is at Southwark Playhouse from 15 December to 20 January
Compiled by Michael Darvell
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