Interview: 'How Would We Feel If Someone Wrote a Musical About Us?': Writers Flo & Joan Unpack Their Show ONE MAN MUSICAL

After sell-out runs at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Soho Theatre, One Man Musical has arrived at Underbelly Boulevard Soho. Running until 2 March, the show, written by musical comedians Flo & Joan, tells the story of a “very renowned and real life gentleman” who is “an icon of the musical theatre world.” (Spoiler alert: it's Andrew Lloyd Webber.)

Recently, we had the chance to chat with Flo & Joan, AKA sisters Rosie and Nicola Dempsey. We discussed how they first got started in musical comedy, the creative process for a show like One Man Musical and some favourite fun facts they’ve found while researching for the show!

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So starting with a bit of a general question, how did you first get started in the world of comedy?

Nicola: We used to watch lots of TV, particularly loads of American comedy, and I wanted to learn to write like it. I love 30 Rock, Will and Grace, Parks and Rec[reation] and stuff like that. So I went to Second City in Chicago for three months, and then to The Second City in Toronto when my visa ran out and tried loads of stuff. This was just after I finished uni, so it was like, “If I'm not good at it, it'll be a fun couple of years I had learning how to do comedy, and then I'll just go back to my normal job or whatever.” So I tried sketch and stand-up and improv.

And then Rosie came out to visit in Toronto and had done some courses and stuff in the same thing. We thought we would try musical songs, because not many people were doing them and we used watch a lot of that kind of stuff too. We both tried everything, and it was the music and the songs that people didn't hate us doing. [Laughs] Those are the things that people weren't like, “Boo!” So we kept doing that and we've been doing it for a while!

And what inspired you to create One Man Musical?

Rosie: We've always loved musicals. We were brought up on them...We've been doing musical comedy for a while, and we were like, “It feels like musical theatre could be something that we could dip our toe in!” But we wanted to take something to Edinburgh, and Edinburgh budgets are absolutely disgusting, so it had to be a small cast musical. We also didn't want to write a big musical for Edinburgh and it be a horrible month. So we just wanted to write about one person. And we were racking our brains for ages about who it could be, and then we were like, “Well, the person who writes musicals having a musical about them seems to be an extremely funny idea.” And lots of ideas came really fast in the first twenty minutes of talking about it, so we didn't really think twice! 

Nicola: As soon as we got that idea, we were like, “Oh, yeah, this could work!” It allowed us to play in the musical theatre world and the comedy world at the same time - the two things seem to be a very good match. So yeah, we were like, “Okay, let's do this one.”

Rosie: Then we high-fived and skipped off into the sunset! [Laughs]

And so once you had that idea, what was the creative process like for the show? 

Rosie: The first step was reading his autobiography. We knew enough about his musicals and his general life that we were like, “We can piece together something here, and we'll just check his book in case there's anything odd or whatever.” And his book was just an absolute treasure trove of stories and interesting things. 

Nicola: And then we read a load of other biographies as well. His book finished after Phantom of the Opera, thirty-eight years ago, and he didn't die after Phantom of the Opera - he still exists! So we had to read a lot of other people's biographies and articles and interviews and stuff to gather the rest of the information as well. After his book finished was when it got actually interesting! 

Rosie: [The opening number] was about ten minutes long when we first wrote it because we felt like we had to pile all of our ideas in it. The more we looked at it and the longer we spent on it, we were like, “Just cut five of those verses. It's a comedy show - they just need the jokes!

Nicola: And then we talked about what other ideas for songs could be. Are all the bones there for us to sort of start fleshing out a skeleton? And once we decided, “Okay, there are,” we committed to it.

Rosie: We put flesh on the skeleton!

Nicola: And now we exercise it!

With all the research you did, how do you balance the real person and this character you've created for the show?

Rosie: That's been one of the most difficult things that we found writing this, because he's still alive, and no matter what you think about him, he still has a beating heart.

Nicola: He’s still a human being... If someone wrote a musical about us, how would we feel? What would we be upset had happened? What would we be okay with? So testing the boundaries on your own self. If I found out someone had written a musical about me, it better be good! But it would be a lot going on. But one thing that really helped was we had an idea in our heads of, “He'll be an exaggerated version of the person.” And then we were able to hand it over to George Fouracres, our incredible actor who is playing this man, who brought loads of lovely eccentricities and quirks. George is an amazing comedian and also a Shakespearean actor, so he was fleshing out this character in ways that we hadn't thought of. So between the three of us, we've all created this Frankenstein's monster - part caricature, part Shakespearean interpretation. 

Rosie: With George, he knew the general idea of Andrew but didn't know as much as we knew. We said, “Try not research too much and just use what you know, because that would be likely what a lot of the audience know as well.” We get big Andrew heads and big musical heads coming to the show. We've given them their niche jokes. But also, a lot of people are coming to just be entertained.

Nicola: And we didn't want it to be a direct impression, either. It wasn't, “See how close you can get to this.” It was like, “The information you need is in the show. Don't read too much outside of it, and then just do what you want with it.” 

Rosie: It's like a “cartooned” version of Andrew. It has a beating heart and it also has its claws out as well. 

What was it like creating a show with another person versus the normal duo that the two of you have with Flo & Joan?

Rosie: Joy.

Nicola: A real joy! We've got a director, Georgie [Straight], who we've been working with too. It's been very nice to have someone to break up arguments. [Laughs]

Rosie: She reigns us in a little bit, which we definitely needed! There's so many crazy details in his book that you want to put in because it provides all the colour and the wackiness. But the audiences think it's all made up because it's a comedy show! They think, “Oh, you just made up that bit about Sarah Brightman.”

Nicola: “No, it's on page 493!”

Rosie: “It happened!” So it's been good having people to rein us in and say, “No one's going to understand this,” and to be able to pull out other ideas and other people because we've only got each other to bounce off on in our own show. “Are you finding this funny?” “Yeah, I'm finding it funny.” But that doesn't mean the world is finding it funny as well. So there's a few different filter papers in the process to catch the shit. The headline news is, it's amazing to work with other people. 

Nicola: What’s great is the reason we did it was because, like Rosie said, we spent a lot of time doing Flo & Joan, which we love, and we will continue to sometimes do it. But we were also looking for something new for us - how do we develop what we're doing? How do we do more stuff? And so part of that was writing a musical and working with other people where you never have to. We have friends who are stand-ups and they can't work with other people because they never had to. At least we have to compromise between two people!

And then being able to work with people who don't have the skill set that you have, like, we can't act. We don't want to act. But to be able to give it to an actor, to be like, “You bring this to life because we can't do it,” and to give it to a director, because she has eyes and ideas and knows how to put shows together in an amazing way - if we were in charge of that, it would be a joke. So it's been really nice! It feels like a step in a different direction, which has been very fulfilling as well. 

And what was it like performing the show, both at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and recently at Soho Theatre?

Rosie: So good! It's one of my favourite ever times of being on stage because you get to watch another performer say the words that you wrote and get a laugh without having to be sweating under the weight of holding an audience too much. 

Nicola: We put that stress on someone else this time! [Laughs]

Rosie: And we get to play our instruments without having to sing too much - just being able to focus. I would love to be in a pit orchestra one day, so it's a mini version of being able to do that. You get to enjoy it all. 

Nicola: We've done Edinburgh quite a few times, and it's mad! It’s so intense - you feel the best and the worst you've ever felt in the space of twenty minutes. We vowed that we would never go back. And so this was a fun way of, “If we were to go back, what do we do?” So it was really fun to take something brand-new and be like, “Okay, let's see how this feels.” And that fun kind of nervousness of going in with a show where you can't tell anyone what it's about. It's not our faces on a poster.

So that was a fun way of going up to Edinburgh - to start with small audiences and then see them build. Again, we've never written a musical like this, so you're going in not even knowing if it's any good! We did two previews, so we didn't even have a big chance to get a hold on whether it was working. Also, there was a chance it could have got shut down in the first show! We didn't know if it was even going to last, if we'd get a big fat cease and desist and call it a day. So it was a bit touch and go going into Edinburgh. Will anyone know it's even happening? 

And then getting to do it in Soho in London . . . We got to write a little bit extra because it was a longer show, and then seeing again, “Okay, does it still work? Or was it just one of those ‘Edinburgh bubbles’ where everyone is just so out of their minds, they'll go and see anything?” So it was nice to then do it at Soho for two weeks and be like, “Okay, no, I think it does still work.” 

Do you have a favourite fact you've learned during the research for this show?

Nicola: It’s less a fact, but my favourite event is that Andrew Lloyd Webber invited Sarah Brightman to a private audition at his house for Cats, and on the way there, her car exploded, and she had to punch herself out of the back window. And I don't know why, but she turned up in his living room wearing a blue wig. [Laughs]

Rosie: My favourite thing about the book is on the first page, first paragraph, he talks about how his mum had a monkey called Mimi, and Mimi the monkey tried to claw Andrew out of his mother's stomach when she was pregnant. The monkey was given to his mum by an opera singer, a baritone - there's lots of detail in the book. And so on the first page, you're like, “Oh, what a gift!” [Laughs]

How would you describe One Man Musical in one word?

Rosie: A breakdown? Oh, that's two words! 

Read our review of One Man Musical at Soho Theatre here.

One Man Musical runs until 2 March at Underbelly Boulevard Soho.

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