Composer James Fortune in rehearsal for the National Theatre’s Pericles. Pictures: James Bellorini Photography
Susan Elkin writes… Composer JAMES FORTUNE – who prefers to be known as Jim to avoid confusion with the well-known American jazz musician of the same name – and I are chatting in the National Theatre’s balcony interview room.
He has slipped out of Pericles rehearsals downstairs to meet me. “This Pericles is pretty special and unusual because it has a cast of 200 including seven cameo groups who represent the diversity of London.”
He then lists them for me: “They are Ascension Eagles, Faithworks Gospel Choir, London Bulgarian Choir, Manifest Nation, The Archetype Dance Team, The Bhavan and the Youthsayers.”
So how on earth do you incorporate all that into Pericles? “Well it’s a story about travelling and searching – a cross between Finding Nemo and the Odyssey – so each different group represents a different location or world,” Fortune explains.
This show, presented in collaboration with Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, is the National Theatre’s first foray into community theatre and marks the launch of an ongoing project called “Public Acts”.
Pericles will run just 90 minutes. “Writer Chris Bush has skilfully used a lot of Shakespeare’s texts along with other language so that the storytelling is really clear,” says Fortune.
The cast of Pericles at the National Theatre
He is full of praise for director Emily Lim too. “She knows the name of every single person in the cast whose ages range from four to 80,” says Fortune, adding that she knows something personal about each of them too.
Age four? “Yes,” he chuckles. “And of all the people I’ve taught songs to on this project the four-year-old was the easiest. So musical. Soaked it up like blotting paper!”
Fortune has written a very wide range of music for the show which, he says, includes a great deal of music for its length. “I compose at a keyboard and use the usual Sibelius programme,” he says.
For this show he has been more involved with rehearsals than on some projects, so he has got to know the cameo groups he has written for, although he also has to “let go” and hand the work over to MD Tarek Merchant.
“For Faithworks, for instance, I’ve written a song which comes somewhere between a sea shanty and a gospel sound,” he says.
Ascension Eagles is a group of cheerleaders – a youth project from Newham. “They’ve got a triumphal youth number,” he says, adding that he’s created quasi Maypole hoedown music for three classical Indian drummers from the Bhavan Centre who represent the very welcoming Pentapolis in Pericles.
“The whole show is a celebration of what we can do in multicultural London which other cities can’t – except perhaps New York whose Public Works project inspired it,” says Fortune, telling me enthusiastically how much he has enjoyed working with the cameo groups and what a lot he has learned from them.
“The London Bulgarian Choir sound is extraordinary – all quarter-tones and funny time signatures,” he says explaining that they will be singing a song of their own as well as his music in Pericles.
Fortune studied classical flute at Guildhall School of Music and Drama after doing a degree in philosophy at university. “That meant a lot of playing in orchestras while I was growing up and the rigour of that is very good training,” he says.
Today he composes for “a lot of theatre” along with a few adverts “to pay the bills”. He gets repeat work. “There are a few directors who seem to like working with me so they keep inviting me back,” he says.
“Composing for theatre is usually very collaborative. Sometimes they have a very clear idea of what they want which is fine. It’s fun when they haven’t got a clue and I can start from a blank musical sheet too.”
After Pericles, Fortune is heading to Manchester Royal Exchange for Mother Courage and then to the Globe for Love’s Labour’s Lost. When you’re good at it, composing is a busy life, I reflect, as Fortune hurries back to his rehearsal elsewhere in the building
* Pericles runs at the NT’s Olivier Theatre from 26-28 August 2018
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