Guest Blog: Lucy Rivers on SINNERS CLUB at Soho Theatre

Gagglebabble, the company I run with Hannah McPake, has always been interested in mixing the buzz and excitement of a live gig with the storytelling and drama of theatre. With Sinners Club, we collaborated with co-producers The Other Room in Cardiff and Theatr Clwyd in Mold to push that gig-theatre form to its limits, trying to do away with a relentless focus on narrative and make the songs work on their own.

Personally, I'm also hugely inspired by singer/musicians like Patty Smith, PJ Harvey, Bjork, Bowie and Nick Cave. They have an enormous amount of theatre and performance in their music.

There's a brilliant documentary on the making of Nick Cave's album Skeleton Tree called One More Time With Feeling, which captures the brutal honesty of that recording process. The album is made not long after the tragic loss of his son, and so these layers of narrative imbue the songs with an emotional punch that is incredibly moving and somehow uplifting.

As well as bands, cabaret artists like Taylor Mac and stand-up comedians also inspired this show because, like a band's lead singer, they have this frank, intimate dialogue with their audience.

Gagglebabble has been an associate company of The Other Room since it opened in 2015, and it felt like, in looking to make a show together for their small space (47 seats!), I was encouraged to be even more risky and ambitious in my ideas than usual; the same was true when I spent some time as writer in residence at Theatr Clwyd and they also became interested in the show.

My first idea was to write an angry album full of great songs that could be performed in front of a live audience, and see how far the emotions of songs could engage an audience without relying on too much narrative. After some initial discussions and R&D, it became obvious that this gig-theatre show needed to find a character at its centre.

I then stumbled across the tragic story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain (who was born the same year as my grandmother), and it felt like a rich character and narrative to base the album around. Ruth's story was perfect for a show that tries to explore the terrible things we are capable of - and the reasons behind these actions.

I've never wanted to make straightforward biopic pieces, and with Sinners Club, Titas Halder, the show's director and Kate Wasserberg at The Other Room, really pushed for the show to play with the gig-theatre form in a way that feels dangerous and real.

So, the show invites the audience into an intimate recording session of a new concept album by live band The Bad Mothers, and the songs cover all the deadly sins: lust, jealousy, murder, greed, revenge.

We thought a lot while making the show about the notion of judgement and the importance of having your voice heard. It isn't a straight biopic of Ruth Ellis, but more an exploration through the lead singer of The Bad Mothers of the sins we commit; the songs ask "Do we know what we're capable of?".

What interested me about Ruth, and what I wanted to mirror in the lead singer, is their journey as women. What we think of as sinful and acceptable changes over time, and Ruth was living in a time when options were very limited for women, especially from her background. The show doesn't excuse what she did, but we do attempt to invoke how she must have felt when she was alive.

The lead singer flirts around Ruth's story, sometimes impersonating or acting out little moments of her life, sometimes going off on tangents, and by the end she becomes so immersed in Ruth's predicament that the lines of what is Ruth and what is our lead singer become blurred.

Early in rehearsals, Titas and I said Sinners Club would be perfect at the Soho - so we're very excited that it is actually happening! The Soho Theatre is the perfect location, being right in the heart of Ruth's London club world; the vibe on Dean Street and audience fits well with our style, and we can't wait to rock out... Hope to see you there!

Sinners Club at Soho Theatre until 30 December

Photo credit: Kieran Cudlip

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