THE CHAMBER MUSICAL SESSIONS Brings New Writing to the West End

As the curtain lifts on the West End once again, familiar show tunes echo down the streets of central London. The likes of Les Miserables, Six, Wicked and Mamma Mia are back, along with a sea of film adaptations such as Back to the Future and Frozen - Shaftesbury Avenue on a Saturday evening is filled with theatregoers once more. But where is the new writing? Are original new musicals even being put on in the West End anymore?

Katy Lipson of Aria Entertainment and Adam Lenson of ALP Musicals answered these questions in spectacular fashion at the Garrick Theatre on Monday. In their concert production The Chamber Musical Sessions, 15 new musicals were showcased on a West End stage. With West End actors performing one or two songs from each show, audiences were treated to an eclectic range of pieces from a host of exciting new voices.

The musicals - all entirely original - covered a vast array of subjects, ranging from Elizabeth Holmes to YouTube fame to the process of having a child as an LGBTQ+ person. Each writing team gave a summary of their show before their songs were performed, giving a real flavour of the sheer scope of new-writing musicals. Hearing about the (often personal) inspiration between the songs also gave more of a window into each of the shows and the people behind them.

Two shows have received full commissions: Echoes by Freya Catrin Smith and Jack Williams, and Eartha, Eddie, & the Upside Down Tree by Leo Munby and Annabel Mutale Reed. Echoes tells the story of a romantic relationship between two women from both of their perspectives, with each act being told from a different point of view. Their second song "One Step Forward", performed by Evie Rose Lane, demonstrated the show's sharp lyrics, emotive score, and strong characterisation.

Eartha, Eddie & the Upside Down Tree moves between places and time periods to tell a modern fairy tale of love and wish-making. Sharon Rose gave a showstopping performance of two songs from the show, with soaring choruses that wouldn't have been out of place on a Tony or Olivier Awards stage.

Other standout numbers included "What If" from How to Save the World by Guy Woolf and Isla Van Tricht, a refreshingly funny show about the creation of the original Superman comics set to a jazzy score. Comedy was also found in "Margate" from Harder Baby by Tommy Antonio and Robert Cawsey, a song about the horror of seeing all your friends settling down in dead-end small towns.

In "Girl in My Own Armour" from Open Mic 1803 by Eden Tredwell, Emma Kingston showcased what could be a future staple MT female solo. Another powerhouse performance came from Robin Simoes da Silva, singing "Meant for This" from Treehouse, which he also co-wrote with P Burton-Morgan - as soon as they opened their mouth, an awed silence fell upon the auditorium.

In wake of an already infamous Telegraph article suggesting that the number of musicals on the West End currently "means little room for serious plays", this concert proved that musical theatre can be equally "serious". Many shows put forward ambitious, original concepts, such as Escape Room by Sarah-Louise Young, Richard Link and Paul Chronnell, a show that appears to be about a dysfunctional family in an escape room but is revealed to really be taking place inside the mind of the mother who is in a coma in the last hour of her life. Other shows dealt with themes of miscarriages and the mental health treatment system.

Despite the prominence of long-running shows, film adaptations and jukebox musicals on the West End at the moment, Lipson and Lenson have well and truly demonstrated that UK new musical theatre writing has a huge amount to offer. They also showed that the future of musicals can be more diverse not only in terms of musical style, but in terms of the stories being told and the people telling them: writer Michelle Payne spoke about being a working-class musical theatre writer, while at least four of the shows centre around female LGBTQ+ characters, an area in which musical theatre has so far been lacking.

The future is bright: between Lipson and Lenson's projects and the annual MT Fest, new British musical theatre writing is gradually finding its way into the spotlight. It seems that one day soon those theatregoers on Shaftesbury Avenue could be humming some new tunes.

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