Plague - the musical?

We all trooped off to Sloane Square this afternoon - dozens of us, true "Almondettes", following the darling boy around the country, travelling hundreds of miles for one of his smiles - and not one of us knew quite what to expect. This was, after all, a "work in progress" by esteemed playwright Mark Ravenhill (he of Shopping and Fucking notoriety, and whose Bette Bourne - A Life in Three Acts we went to see recently).

Anyhow it turned out to be a very intriguing experience indeed. No-one would (obviously) expect a set of songs about the devastation of the bubonic plague to be cheerful. It was certainly not that. What it was turned out to be a quite spectacular set of enigmatic part-Brechtian, part-folk songs, all with a major connecting theme - the experiences of people living in an era when everyone seemed to be dropping dead around them.

Being a "rehearsal", we had to dump our bags and cameras and phones in safe storage, and were not allowed to applaud until the whole piece was done. A weird experience, which made the atmosphere all the more dramatic. Marc Almond (quite rightly, given the sombreness of the piece) was merely one of the players alongside Omar Ebrahim and Nigel Richards. It would have been inappropriate to have a gang of manic Marc fans cheer his every move while other had equally important songs to sing, after all...

The songs themselves were exceptionally complex - given the theme this was not unexpectedly so - yet, my goodness, did these players do them brilliantly! Songs about plague pits, deserted streets, people dropping dead in the road, lovers who dare not kiss, women waving their newly-grown buboes (tumours) at each other as they plan their funerals, "survivors" who return from the country being shunned by those who stayed in the city - none of these topics is easily set to music, and Mr Ravenhill and his musical collaborator Conor Mitchell provided the performers with some tricky pieces to present.

Mr Almond inevitably had the most memorable number for his own - a little ditty about a vain individual who had shaved his/her head to avoid the plague yet had purchased a new fashionable wig that just happened to be made out of the hair of those unfortunates who were dumped into one of the pits...

All in all this was a very rewarding theatrical experience! I am rather glad that Marc actually turned up (it was touch and go at one point, according to his own website), and I am also quite pleased that he was quite deliberately not given the star treatment. He was absolutely brilliant, but his fellow players were also excellent, given the incredibly "experimental" style of music they all had to sing. The whole was more than a sum of its parts, and I look forward to the finished version!

A fabulous day with fabulous friends (from MySpace and distant parts)! I look forward to the next get together...