Elliot wants new musical to be the best . . . ‘Bart’ none
Jewish Telegraph, October 2024
IT’S quite apt that Elliot Davis’ latest musical is based around a school’s production of Oliver! as he was mentored in his youth by Lionel Bart, the writer of the classic show.
Becoming Nancy, being performed at The Rep, Birmingham, until November 2 sees David Starr (played by Joseph Peacock) being cast as Nancy in Oliver! much to the delight of the school bullies and the horror of his father.
The musical, which features themes of homophobia and racism, is based on a novel by Terry Ronald — who turned down the role of Nancy in his school’s production because of fears of being bullied.
Terry, who has written music with the likes of Dannii and Kylie Minogue, Girls Aloud and Kim Wilde, has penned additional songs with Elliot for Becoming Nancy. The original music and lyrics were written by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe.
London-born Elliot told me that when he first met director Jerry Mitchell, they “got on like a house on fire”.
Elliot, who now lives with husband Chris and their two sons in Holywood, Northern Ireland, explained how he writes the script for musicals.
“How do you turn what’s in a book into something on stage?” he said. “Essentially you’re going, ‘what are we leaving out of the book and what are we keeping?’ Then you’re looking for an interval point.
“And so I lay it out on cards. I’ll go ‘the opening song could be this. We need to get to this point’, and then you work it out heading towards an interval. So you’d like seven or nine scenes, up to 10 scenes in Act One, and then Act Two, you generally want to be shorter.
“And when there’s certain song points, then you can say, ‘okay, let’s write, concentrate on that moment, that song’, and then you start to build it up.
“So I think the first song that was written for Becoming Nancy was actually the title song, which is the second song in the show, and that stayed, but most of the other songs have changed lots.
“And then I write the script around the book, around the song structure and then cut, cut, edit, edit, and it gets built up into a show.”
Despite Becoming Nancy being set in East Dulwich, South East London in 1979, it was actually premiered in Atlanta, America, and was due to open on Broadway in 2020 . . . then Covid hit.
“Atlanta was interesting because Becoming Nancy has got a really British sensibility about it,” he said, “and kitchen sink drama is not something Americans really know about, or it’s not in their culture. So I made all the producers and Jerry watch things like episodes of the Royle Family, because they couldn’t believe it’s a sitcom with a family on a sofa.
“But people really responded in Atlanta to the story, but I don’t think they quite got it in the way that British audiences get it.”
Elliot revealed that for the Birmingham run they “upped” the racism side of the story.
Paige Peddie plays Frances Bassey who bears the brunt of the racist hate from the school bullies.
In fact, midway through previews, Elliot wrote the showstopping song Who I Am for Frances with Terry and George.
“I live just outside Belfast and I originally wrote that lyric on the beach, and then Terry and George made it better, and we wrote the music together.
“Paige is sensational. She played the lead in Oklahoma in the West End and she’s in The Book of Mormon straight after this. She’s an absolute powerhouse.”
Elliot has also been blown away by the response on social media to Becoming Nancy.
“It had a big following in Atlanta, so we knew that audiences were responding,” he said. “I didn’t know that the British audience would become attached to it in the way that they have.
“It’s been so heartwarming to see the response of it. And so from the off there was a buzz on social media during the previews that people were enjoying it, and then, of course, we were honing it and making it tighter and better after every single preview.”
Elliot also pointed out that work started on Becoming Nancy before Everybody’s Talking About Jamie had been written, but the latter beat it to the stage.
Both share the theme of a gay student being bullied at school and struggling with a homophonic father.
“There have been other shows about a boy in dress; there was literally David Walliams’ book The Boy in the Dress which was adapted for the stage,” Elliot added.
“We had to tell our own story and it’s different than the others because this is focused around David Starr. But that’s Terry’s life. that’s Terry’s story.”
Since the American performances, seven new songs have been added. Elliot and Terry rewrote a section of the show, and then George joined them after he had recovered from a stroke.
“I would have loved it to go to Broadway, and I loved the show then,” Elliot told me. “I just think it’s better and stronger now.”
He hopes that Becoming Nancy can move to London’s West End or go on tour, but accepts that is out of his control.
“I want it to be seen by as wide an audience as possible,” he said. “Genuinely, I take such pride and joy that it’s going so well at Birmingham Rep, and I hope it lays the foundation for other things.”
Earlier in the year, Rehab — with the book written by Elliot and music by Grant Black and Murray Lachlan Young — was performed in London with a star-studded cast.
“After what we learned from that production, I’ve actually just been working on the script for that, and so we’re going to look at that later on.
“But the West End is not the be all and end all of commercial theatre. There’s tours to be had, there’s other territories, but musicals take a long time to get right. It has to function as a team.
“Thankfully, Becoming Nancy has a superlative team.”
Elliot says he doesn’t get frustrated with the time it takes for productions to get to stage as he has plenty on the go.
“Everything happens at its right time,” he told me. “I’m used to showbusiness that just takes a long time. But I do other things as well that mean I have a very full, happy life. So not everything is about theatre.
“I have a film project that’s happening at the moment, which is lovely, and and I also work in other fields.”
The ‘film project’ of which he speaks is about Lionel Bart — who played a major role in Elliot’s move into musical theatre.
As a pianist from a young age, Elliot could have gone to music school, but while he was studying at Warwick University to be a lawyer, he saw ITV’s The South Bank Show about Bart.
“I thought I’d much rather do that than law,” he laughed. “So I found out who Lionel’s accountant was and asked him to pass a letter onto Lionel.
“It basically said, ‘How do I do what you do rather than be a lawyer?’ When I went back to university that Christmas, there was a letter on blue paper from Lionel with his number.
“I met him at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital after he had a scan, and we went for a cup of tea.
“We got on so brilliantly that he said, ‘Well, if you’re serious, when you graduate, call me again’.
“I graduated with Politics and International Studies and deferred my articles and my law conversion. My parents went crazy, but I said, ‘I’m going to try theatre for a year’.
“I got in touch with Lionel, and he said, ‘Come and work with me’.”
Elliot — who has also made a number of music documentaries for the BBC — said how Bart would sing into a Dictaphone and it was his job to transcribe it.
“I was his last scribe as this was 1995/96/97 and he died in 1999.”
He added: “I was writing my first musical at the time, which was staged at the Sheffield Crucible.
“I told him I was writing this thing. And he said to me, ‘Can you sum it up in a lyric and a phrase?’ He explained that the heart of every musical should be able to be summed up in a lyric and a phrase.
“. . . And now he’s come into my life again doing this film.”
While he tells me the film — which will be released next year — has a “brilliant cast”, he can’t say who is playing Bart.
Elliot believes he is in such demand because he not only writes the scripts but he also does the music.
“I have a good musical knowledge and that seems to be a good USP,” he told me.
“I’ve worked conducting orchestras and doing arrangements for people like Burt Bacharach, Marc Almond, Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
“It’s an absolute joy for me to work with those artists.
“To be paid a musical compliment by Bacharach . . . it just stays with you forever.
“I was so sad at his passing, but grateful that I got to spend so many evenings playing his music in front of him and with him.
Elliot, who was raised in Totteridge And Whetstone, describes himself as “culturally very attached to Judaism, not religiously”.
While the Irish government has been vocally anti-Israel, Elliot says the situation is different in Northern Ireland.
Days before we spoke, he had been to an Israeli music evening and he described how Protestant areas of Belfast fly the Israel flag next to the British one.
He has also taken to social media to show his support for Israel.
“If anyone asks me my view, I’ll tell them,” he said. “This is a defining moment in my Jewish history life, and it’s been interesting to watch how people respond.
“I’m certainly not going to hide my Jewishness or being proud to support Israel.”
He says he and Chris moved to Holywood from London “to live a beach life”.
He added: “There are good schools, fewer people, less pollution. Everyone wants to come here to write.”
Becomingnancymusical.com and watch the trailer tinyurl.com/BNancytrailer
