Mar. 25th, 2022

charlie_cochrane: (Default)

Hi all. Since last I wrote, we’ve been on a cruise, during which we contracted the dreaded covid. We got away with it quite lightly, in the greater scheme of things but it doesn’t half make you tired.
 
News
 
Three things to report, in ascending order of imminence and excitement.
 
The first draft of my Cambridge Fellows/actor laddies crossover is almost finished. I’m hoping Mike at Williams and Whiting will be interested in publishing it, but it’ll need a good sprucing up before I send it.
 
Second big bit of news is that the next Lindenshaw – Lock, Stock and Peril – will be out on June 6th. I’ll let you have the pre-order link when it goes live and will share the cover art when I’m allowed to. As always with this series, the cover is a great one.
 
The third thing is that I’ve relaunched In The Spotlight, which puts together my two showbusiness related novellas, All the Jazz and If Music Be. They really did need a new cover and the lovely, multi-talented Alex Beecroft came up trumps.
 

 
All That Jazz
Francis Yardley may be the high kicking star of an all-male version of Chicago, but bitter, and on the booze after the breakdown of a relationship, he thinks that the chance for true love has passed him by. A handsome, shy rugby player called Tommy seems to be the answer to his problems, but Tommy doesn't like the lipstick and lace. Can they find a way forward and is there still a chance for happiness "nowadays"?
 
If Music Be
Rick Cowley finds himself taking up am-dram once more, thinking it’ll help him get over the death of his partner. He’d never anticipated it would mean an encounter with an old flame and the sort of emotional complications the Bard would have revelled in. Still, old Will had the right word for every situation, didn’t he?
 
Excerpt:
 
The first lines of “All That Jazz” sounded seductively, in Francis’s bell clear voice.
Freddie watched his friend slink across the stage. From the third row of the circle, his favoured place for observing any show, he’d have bet fifty quid that the average punter wouldn’t have guessed Francis wasn’t a woman. And a bloody attractive one at that. One of the—straight—stagehands had made a pass at the ‘leading lady’ even though he must have known damn well that the entire cast of this production was male. That was the whole bloody point.
The bit about the noisy hall and the nightly brawl came and went.
Francis was holding it up well, the slight nerves which had come across in the opening lines fading now into an assured performance. He’d have to give as good as this when it came to first night. Novelty value was all very well, but if people didn’t believe they’d had their money’s worth from their night at the theatre then no amount of innovation was going to compensate for them feeling hard done by.
Freddie took his eyes off Velma and had a good look at the rest of the troupe. Nice legs, every one of them, not a bosom out of place. It was taking a huge risk having no women in the cast of a show that relied on the relationship between its two leading ladies. Granted, it was the sort of thing which was being done with Shakespeare; didn’t the Globe prove that no-one batted an eye at a reversion to all male theatre? There were never any snide remarks in the broadsheets about some Ophelia who had to pad her cleavage and shave twice before taking the stage. It was an experience regarded as oddly highbrow.  But how would the same newspapers react to an all male ‘Chicago’? Only the press night would tell and there was a rumour that the Daily Telegraph was sending someone. Not necessarily the top man, but it would still be a coup. So long as the critic thought the show justified the trip.
Freddie closed his eyes for a moment, focussing his thoughts and reassuring himself that it was worth the risk. It was the right musical, of course it was. All the mad suggestions when they’d first mooted it—among the saner West Side Story or Wicked—had been little more than private wishes and fantasy fulfilment. When someone had suggested the Sound of Music he’d been ready to throw the whole thing up. Then somebody else had started humming ‘Razzle dazzle’ and the penny had dropped. They could have chosen either Chicago or Cabaret, Kander and Ebb’s music and Fosse’s choreographic ideas having a bizarre manliness, even butchness, to them. But given that Mary Sunshine was a cross dressing role already and Mama Morton seemed to have been created to be played by a drag queen, the die was cast. There even turned out to be peculiarly masculine edge about Velma which Francis had been bringing out beautifully in all the rehearsals so far.
 
 
Charlie

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