Guest Blog: Composer Luke Bateman on MR POPPER'S PENGUINS

I like to write tunes. By tunes I mean real hummable melodies. Some people scoff at this as if 'that's easy' or 'not exactly art', but I thoroughly disagree. Lots of songwriters write both music and lyrics, and I've given lyrics a go, but I like to stick to the music. In my opinion, my job is to serve a lyric. A great melody can carry a poor lyric, but a good lyric sure as hell ain't gonna carry a bad tune. When you combine both a great lyric and a great melody then you've hit the jackpot.

Growing up, my dad was a musical director in the West End working on shows such as Barnum (with Michael Crawford), Phantom of the Opera (not sure whether that was with Michael Crawford or not, but I did get the chance to meet him in his dressing room after a show in it's first year - I was seven, for the record) and Carman Jones at the Old Vic - my God, I loved that show, with such incredible ditties by Bizet and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II.

Of all the productions the prepubescent me had the greatest privilege to sit in on was The Ziegfeld Follies at the London Palladium. The show was a biography of Florence Ziegfeld using many wonderful standards from the Great American Songbook. I was utterly moved and hooked by the music and the glamour. It was, though, a total flop. An incredible flop, I think the biggest ever up to that date, with over £1 million spent on costumes alone - and this was in the 1980s, when you could still buy a flat for £20,000.

However, as I turned into a (not particularly) rebellious teenager, I spurned those perfectly crafted, classic old songs and decided to go to university to study 'avant-garde 20th-century music'. That's right: you can forget your Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Richard Rogers - give me Webern, Berg and Schoenberg (not the Les Mis one). Squeaky-gate music, as some call it, was for me. So for seven or eight lonely years this avant-garde music was what I battled with writing.

In the end, though, the music I was writing left me (and I imagine anyone else listening) cold. It took me those years to realise that harmony and a melody someone can actually hum along to might not be such a bad thing. In fact, maybe people liking your music could be a good thing. I was freed. With my rebellion over I returned to my childhood love of musical theatre - and boy did I feel happy to be back, but this time as a composer.

Last year I was lucky enough to be commissioned by Kenny Wax to write the score for Mr Popper's Penguins. I was teamed up with the award-winning lyricist Richy Hughes (whom fortunately I knew as we both drink in the same pub). The show features 10 penguins, and as far as I can tell penguins only have one word and that is 'Sqwaark', so I wasn't sure what Richy was planning to do.

However, being the skilled lyricist he is - a whole different craft to mine - he came up with some genius ideas; obviously mainly for the human characters, although the penguins do get to do a tiny amount of singing. (N.B. No penguins were harmed in the making of this show.) It's set in the Forties/Fifties, and the creative team's thinking was to have the feel of a Golden Age musical. So that's what we did, and what a joy it's been to write.

So I've gone full circle. I've been given the chance to write 'real hummable melodies' for all the family. Without giving too much away, I've even written a Broadway kick line in the show - I've channeled my inner Ziegfeld. But the most amazing thing was to get to observe New York audiences see it on 42nd Street in a theatre built by Oscar Hammerstein I. (I don't think they called him that until his grandson Oscar Hammerstein II was named.) There I am, pinching myself, watching children enjoying the tunes I wrote - and as I'm watching them, I'm seeing myself back when I was seven and living it all again. With my first child on the way, I'm thinking of changing my name to Luke Bateman I...

Mr Popper's Penguins is at the Criterion Theatre 15-31 December. Luke's shows also include The Sorrows of Satan at Tristan Bates Theatre 14 February-25 March and The Little Beasts at The Other Palace 13-29 July

Photo credit: Helen Murray

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