THey don�t like musicals. So why have playwright David Greig and musician Gordon Mcintyre teamed up to create one?
By Edd McCracken

EVERY musical hinges on a single moment. It occurs during the pregnant pause before the first song, when the whole artifice takes a deep breath, taps upon the looking-glass, and leaps into a world where making a song and dance is the lingua franca for every situation: the hills are alive, Grease is the word, and men are resolutely washed out of women's hair.

In these few vital seconds the audience's heart will either leap or flatline. And if you are a 30-something male, like playwright David Greig and musician Gordon McIntyre, chances are it will be the latter.

It's not for nothing that Greig calls this transition "the awkward moment". McIntyre is more naked with his attitude towards musicals. "I hate them," he says.

And yet not only have the pair written their first musical together, they claim to have created a show for people whose disbelief is suspended when men fly, but not when they sing. Their secret is two-fold. Firstly, eliminate that vital but divisive hinge (more on that later). Secondly, avoid using the word "musical". Instead they call their production, Midsummer, "a play with songs".

The semantic side-step is understandable. Musicals have been blamed for a lot of theatre's ills. They are frequently accused of hounding straight plays out of London and New York's respective theatre lands, and of being a moribund art form that trades in cheap sentiment and musical back catalogues.

Greig and McIntyre, however, cheerfully describe Midsummer as "an inverse musical". "Everything you associate with a musical, this is the opposite of that," says Greig, over coffee in Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, where the show opens this week. "Where musicals have a cast of thousands, this has a cast of two. Where musicals have an orchestra, this has a ukulele. Musicals have big stories of true love; this is a mess of two middle-aged, difficult people. It's still a love story, but we were determined it would be about ordinary lives."

Life, it seems, is not so much a cabaret, as a love-lorn busking session in the Scottish drizzle. Greig and McIntyre circumnavigated the "awkward moment", usually heralded by the pluck of a violin before Garland or Minnelli break into song, by having music playing throughout. Monologues merge into spoken word pieces, which give way to songs, and back again.

The songs, deliberately, are not descriptive of the action either, another issue Greig and McIntyre have with musicals. There will be no asking for a cup of tea accompanied by an orchestra. Instead, the music is designed to stand alone without the play, and vice versa.

"In musicals, you remember songs, but couldn't quote a line of dialogue," says McIntyre, whose sole concession to the genre is a liking for Singin' In The Rain and The Lion King. "It's like a series of songs linked by dialogue, whereas with this you can take out the songs and it would be a play in its own right or album on its own."

All of which brings to mind the approach taken by last year's hugely successful low-budget Irish film, Once, rather than the day-glo antics of Mamma Mia. Once also swapped "awkward moments" and hip-hip-hooray high-kicks for earthy sentiment and believable heart-break, and won this year's best song Oscar in the process. When the film comes up in conversation Greig and McIntyre both laugh, with a hint of nervousness. "We didn't see that deliberately," says Greig. "It probably will have a lot that is similar in its approach to a musical. I hope we're different enough, but it's probably asking a lot of the same questions."

This low-fi Gilbert and Sullivan met when Greig was editing a book of essays on Scotland's relationship with England. Instead of approaching the usual talking heads, he asked McIntyre for a contribution after hearing a song by McIntyre's band, Ballboy, called I Hate Scotland.

Greig, whose past credits include Damascus, Outlying Islands and Yellow Moon, had been toying with the idea of doing a musical for years. His previous work is littered with songs. Last year's adaptation of The Bacchae, for instance, featured a Greek chorus straight out of a sweaty Memphis soul cellar. "And Gordon and I started to think about the idea of what a musical would be like if it wasn't like a musical, if it was the kind of music that we liked, and the type of play we liked," he said. "It was an interesting question to ask."

The locus for Midsummer was one of McIntyre's spoken word songs, charting an unconventional romantic encounter. It soon morphed into the tale of Bob and Helena, two 30-somethings who have a one-night stand, say their goodbyes in the morning, only to find themselves forced to share a midsummer weekend together in Edinburgh, full of car chases, wedding bust ups, falling in love, and, of course, songs. It is, as Greig puts it, "a reverse romantic comedy. Instead of building up to will they sleep together, the question is: will they get together?"

The project was workshopped with the actors Cora Bissett and Matthew Pidgeon. Despite being one of the most sought-after writers in Scotland, Greig allowed no theatres near it. "We wanted to play with it, have a laugh, and see what might be possible," he says.

Midsummer eventually found a home at the Traverse, a theatre where much of Greig's work has debuted, after the new artistic director Dominic Hill spoke to the writer about a new strand of work: Traverse Too.

"The idea is that it is a place that allows us to put on shows which perhaps are a bit more experimental, unfinished, or not the kind of things we would normally programme," says Hill. "And also not spend that much money on them. We don't want in any way to compromise the quality of them or the experience of the audience, but to try and broaden the amount and type of work we do."

The perfect place for an indie-musical by two show-tune sceptics, then? "Traverse Too is very much about trying stuff out," says Greig. "It genuinely might turn out to be shit. That has to be a possibility. I love it when people say, You have to have the right to fail'. They don't mean it. They say that, but curl up their noses when something doesn't work. But Traverse Too's reason for existence is to experiment. We won't know if Midsummer works until its been in front of an audience a few times."

If anyone was going to open a new strand of work with a musical, it would be Hill. His pedigree with that rarest of beasts, new Scottish musicals, is probably unrivalled. While artistic director at Dundee Rep he oversaw the most successful recent effort, Steven Greenhorn's musical based on The Proclaimers' songs, Sunshine On Leith.

"I remember the whole issue about where new musicals would come from in Scotland when we were in Dundee," says Hill.

He doesn't rule out the chance that Traverse, a place more associated with experimental and cutting-edge new drama, could be a breeding ground for new Cole Porters and Steven Sondheims. "I think musicals aren't to everybody's taste, but I want to develop work of all sorts and musicals can be a part of it," says Hill. "They've called it a play with songs, which might be a highbrow end of the musical. But what's great about this show is the text is really high quality and the music is also wonderful. If you can marry those two in a storytelling way that works, I think it will be excellent."

Previews are October 24-26. Midsummer runs October 28 to November 15 (not November 3, 10)