Guest Blog: Katie Lam On Creating Musical AFTER YOU For Live At Zedel

Nearly a decade ago, my best friend - round at my house as he had been pretty much every day of the school summer holidays - had an idea. This year, for our school's drama competition, we should write and produce a musical.

For context, Alex Parker and I had been best mates since we were placed next to one another in the Class 4 seating plan when we were eight years old. We'd been letting our imaginations run wild together ever since - even then we had a made-up children's television show that we hosted, featuring whatever was going on at school (breaking news: new flavours of gel pen!); Alex wrote the theme tune.

When we were a little older, there was the hit crime drama Manning Mysteries (two series and a Christmas special, available on DVD), for which I wrote the lines and, of course, Alex wrote the title music. A few years later, the summer of that fateful suggestion, I was 15, so I wasn't old enough to know better - a totally new musical? For a cast of 11-year-olds? The oldest member of the creative team wouldn't yet be 17? Sure!

I'm old enough now that I should have learned my lesson, but somehow it never seems to go in. We did write that show - a half-hour comedy called, A&E: The Musical - and after a university hiatus, we've written three full-length musicals. When we were asked if we would create a piece for the Crazy Coqs cabaret space at Brasserie Zedel, the first musical to be performed there, we jumped at the chance before we even knew what we were saying. After You, the show we wrote, has been its own kind of exciting challenge.

First of all, the creation of the show had a pretty tight timeline: December to March. There's a line from Beckett, "I can't go on. I'll go on", and whilst it's perhaps a touch on the melodramatic side to claim that writing a new musical involves quite that level of internal angst, there is always a moment - and you're lucky if there's only one - where you think, we cannot finish this.

There's a hectic period where everything needs editing and every Tube journey is just a chance to scribble new lines in the Notes app. Every piano you pass is an opportunity to record that key change. And even though in your heart of hearts you think "This can't be done", you don't really have a choice but to keep going.

Secondly, with only two characters in the show, Alex and I have had to get to know them inside out - the sort of songs they sing, the words they use, the way they argue, the way they talk to themselves. You don't have that level of depth in a show with a larger cast, and having to find your emotional core as well as your light relief - your goodies and your baddies - within just two people is a very different task from doing it across 15 or 25.

Finally, there is a particular challenge and a particular thrill in writing something site-specific, especially when the site in question is such a special place. In After You, the Crazy Coqs itself, and the wider world of Brasserie Zedel, becomes almost a third character: the hidden magic and old-school glamour of this wonderful space deep in the heart of central London form the backbone of the show.

The Crazy Coqs feels like everyone's favourite secret, and that clandestine romance inspired a lot of the plot and the style we use (along with some of my favourite love stories - the films Brief Encounter, The Way We Were, Falling in Love; the book The Bridges of Madison County). At the same time, the brief was to write something fully contemporary, so there was a balance to strike between classic and modern.

I have decided (although my mum isn't very impressed with this analogy) that writing a musical is a bit like having a baby - you somehow forget each time just how much work it is, and as soon as you start you're swearing at your past self for signing up to it. And then it's done and brought to life, changed, improved, and suddenly you feel like it was never that much effort after all (it was).

At this point we're moving from the first stage to the second, and I'm incredibly excited for the show to open and for our phenomenal cast - Laura Tebbutt and Liam Doyle - to show the world what they've made of After You, guided by Alastair Knight's fantastic direction.

There's a final group of people, of course, who make a show what it is, and as we come into the last rehearsals leading up to opening night, it's the audience who are on my mind. The final challenge of writing a musical is the hardest of all: watching people watch it. It's only then that a show lives for the first time, so here's hoping they like it, and if you're joining us, I sincerely hope that you enjoy it too.

After You at Live at Zedel 13-22 April

To post a comment, you must register and login.