JEREMY SAMS – Even Successful Polymaths Fail

Jeremy: [00:00:00] It is a funny one that, ’cause I do like collaborating and I guess I could one day if I wanted to write the music and the lyrics in the book and for musical and direct it, but it would be such a lonely, to be honest, it’s not what I came into the theater for. Right. I go to the theater to, to sit in Roman and have a good time and work with people.

Laura: Hello, I’m Laura Shavin, and this is the Offcuts Drawer, the show that looks inside a writer’s bottom drawer to find the bits of work they never finished, had rejected, or couldn’t quite find a home for. We bring them to life, hear the stories behind them, and learn how these random pieces of creativity pave the way to subsequent success.

My guest this week is Jeremy Sams, who’s been described as the ultimate polymath. Not just a writer of plays and musicals. He’s also a theater director, [00:01:00] lyricist composer, and translator orchestrator and musical director, and a name you’ll be all too familiar with. If you enjoy visits to the West End, Broadway, the Opera, or indeed most theaters and cinemas.

He wrote the musical of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which starred Michael Ball and in New York he wrote the Libretto of Enchanted Island at the Met Opera. He directed the International Tour of Sound of Music, last year’s production of Oklahoma of the Chichester Festival Theater, and the King and I at the Royal Albert Hall.

He’s written narration for deflate amount with the London Philharmonic translated Lao M, the Force of Destiny and Figueroa’s Wedding for the English National Opera. And his translation of a More, which ran on Broadway, won him two Tony nominations. Musically, he scored numerous films and television productions including Tiger Basketball for Channel four, enduring Love for Pathe, which netted him an Ivan Novello Award and the BBC production of Persuasion for which he won a bafta.

Jeremy Sams, welcome to the off cut straw. Hi

Jeremy: there.

Laura: Now, do you create your different [00:02:00] projects in different rooms? Do you like have a music studio for your musical creations and an office for written translations sort of thing?

Jeremy: Well, when I’m working on music, I have a piano, and the piano is, for example, writing movie scores.

Very often what I’m doing is I’m looking at the movie over and over and over again, and playing the piano. And instantly I’m reminded of something I have never shared, which is that I had to do the music for a telly once. And one of the scenes was Kate GaN taking her clothes off and I had to write music for this scene.

And what it meant was watching it over and over again on my telly and. Sitting at the piano and trying to find the right music for it. And it occurred to me in the middle of all this, that a passerby may be looking into my front room and see someone looking over and over again as a movie of a woman taking her clothes off.

But strangely, I. Playing the piano. So that’s how it’s often and done writing stuff. Obviously I’m on a computer, on the computer I’m looking at now, but when I’m writing [00:03:00] music, I like to have sound in the background, so radio and so on. And when I’m writing words, I like to have music in the background, so I have various places to work, but when I’m writing music, it is mostly at a piano, although increasingly I’m using machines to create music nowadays.

Laura: All right. Let’s get started with your first off cut. Can you tell us what it’s called, what genre it was written for and when it was written?

Jeremy: Yeah. This is a scene from Mary Stewart, a film script that never got produced, and it was written about 1997

Toby (Actor): Palace Interior Night, Elizabeth at prayer.

Lizzie (Actor): Dear God in heaven, when will you let me rain as I want to rain and not be forced to pay lip service to the people?

Who are they anyway, A screaming mob who’d rather see a punch? And Judy show all howling for her blood.

Toby (Actor): She sees the warrant,

Lizzie (Actor): but I can put an end to her just like that with a twitch of the quill will. Dear God, father in heaven, in that respect, I have more power than [00:04:00] you. Sorry if that sounds shocking, but it’s true.

But you are merciful, and maybe I should be too, but did you see how she looked at me? She steals my sweetheart tears my treaties into shreds and dares to look at me with scorn. Do you think it’s right that she should seek to humble me? Do you? Nor do I.

Toby (Actor): She signs the paper casually.

Lizzie (Actor): Oh, look, and she’s gone.

Toby (Actor): She rings a tiny bell and calls softly.

Lizzie (Actor): Davidson

Toby (Actor): Westminster Interior. Elizabeth has handed Davidson the warrant, which he holds in his hand.

Alex (Actor): Thank you. Your majesty for this. Oh, I see it signed.

Lizzie (Actor): Is it? Well, a warrant is a thing to be signed, so I signed it, but a piece of paper decides nothing. A name cannot kill.

N

Alex (Actor): no indeed. But [00:05:00] this name on this paper kills as surely as a bullet. I mean, when it leaves my hands, she’s dead.

Lizzie (Actor): Yes. So it would seem what a big responsibility God has placed in your hands. I’ll leave you to your duty.

Alex (Actor): I have but one desire to obey my queen. Of course. So let me get this right. You wish to see this warrant be enforced?

That is for your prudence to decide. I’m just a servant. I, I cannot take decisions. Please be clear, this is a death warrant and that surely says it all to be carried out at once.

Lizzie (Actor): I do not say that indeed. I shudder to think it

Alex (Actor): very well, so you wish me to keep it until some later time on your head, be it.

Oh God in heaven, please

Lizzie (Actor): Majesty, tell me what you want. What I want [00:06:00] is an end to this whole wretched, bloody business and not to have to think about it anymore, ever. Is that clear enough? Yes, absolutely.

Alex (Actor): Now about the warrant. Really, this is unbearable. Be patient with me. I, I haven’t been here long. I’ve yet to learn the language of the court.

I’m a simple man, so please tell me simply if not, then take it back. Take it, give it to someone else. Davison your majesty.

Laura: Just do your duty.

Toby (Actor): She exits.

Laura: So tell us about the Mary Stewart film that didn’t get produced.

Jeremy: It was based actually on the play by Schiller, an amazing play, and I did a translation of that play for the National theater, which Isabel EO starred.

Do you remember that? Yes. And it had Anna Massey, didn’t it? Anna Massey and Isabel eo. Together at last. And she, Isabel was, was amazing ’cause her English was, was a bit dodgy. But that’s fine. ’cause [00:07:00] Mary Stewart, as you know, was brought up in France and that was her first language. Mm-hmm. But she would say wonderful things like, uh, you put me on a Peter style and someone says to me, could you please stop her saying, Peter said, I’m not going to stop her saying Peter.

And then a guy called Paul Barrow and Paul Barrow, this is the weirdness. Of, of, as it were, the writer’s life. He was the manager, I think still is the manager of Duran Duran. Oh. And that was, that was a surprising end of a sentence. The whole thing was very surprising. And, and Paul, who I got to know rather well, said, you know, I, I like this.

I saw the show. I’m very interested in Mary’s Stewart, can you turn this Sheila play into a screenplay? So I did, and actually that is one of the scenes which is pretty much intact from, from Sheer, I mean, Schiller’s amazing. And what he does this mixture of, it’s what you dream of in all plays, actually, sex and politics, and you really get that in sheer and in Shakespeare and then not many other writers.

Mm. So I turned into a [00:08:00] screenplay. At the time, I was writing quite a few screenplays, and that one was huge fun. But like many screenplays, and I’m sure you know, from doing this show, it never got made. Mm-hmm. And then there was a movie on Mary Stewart. In fact, there were several, but one came out quite recently.

Yeah. And it’ll never be. Done now. But it was really fun to do and to move this, move the Shiller play all around London and into this scene and that scene and Well, on location you mean? Location? Location, yeah. Yeah, yeah. London evening, you know, palace exterior stuff.

Laura: And who did you have in mind for the lead?

Were you going to go with Anna and

Jeremy: No, um, funnily enough we did a reading and I think Juliet Stevenson did it. And actually when I first did the translation, in my mind it was Fiona Shaw and, and Juliet Stevenson. Fiona was Mary and Juliet is Elizabeth, or even vice versa. And there was talk about them doing it and that didn’t happen.

But I was commissioned, actually originally from Duncan Weldon who was a, a western producer in the maybe late eighties. [00:09:00] So these things go through various iterations.

Laura: Well, is this your first

Jeremy: film script? I’ve written quite a few and I went through a phase of knocking on doors in Hollywood a bit and got some commissions, but only one ever got made.

This might have been my first, I. I really can’t remember. No, there may be a couple before that, but as you know, it’s quite possible for a writer to have a career writing movie scripts and literally not one ever get made. I know people who’ve actually got writing careers and have never had a movie made.

I’ve had one made, which we might talk about later on. Mm-hmm. But again, even that is a strange thing Now working in theater, which I mostly do, the good thing is shows do get on. You know, plays and things are translated or directed, whatever, you know, there’s quite a few a year they happen.

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy: Movies, however happen really quite rarely, and getting one made is a, is a real coup sometimes, particularly when you look around and you know, if full-time movie writers have this perpetual plane that they look [00:10:00] at the stuff that does get made and think how on earth.

But things have to fall out into all sorts of ways to do with money, to do with stars, to do with budgets, to do with availabilities and just, you know, weather. And it so often happens that if a movie is connected with the studio, then the next time the studio changes hands as it were, they will automatically get rid of everything on their books.

And you must have heard that Plained a few times as well. Yeah.

Laura: Yeah. Or something similar has been broadcast or commissioned by another company, and so that’s, oh, no, that’s another, we’ve already got something about a woman or, yeah.

Jeremy: Yeah. We’ve got a story with people in it, so,

yes, exactly.

Jeremy: But I mean, that’s sometimes called site geist.

I call it theft. I mean, I think the fact of matter is that a lot of time people who, you know, chat in, in clubs or in London or in whatever it is, someone picks it up and say, well, I’ll do that so very often, but site geist is the polite word for it.

Laura: Right time for another off cut. Now tell us about this one.

Jeremy: Yes, this is another abandoned thing. [00:11:00] This is from 2003 and it’s the lyrics of a song called The Master of Disguise, and it was written for a show called Toys the Musical.

Lizzie (Actor): I. Mr. Potatohead is talking to action man and

David (Actor): doll. Maybe you can fly and maybe you can scuba, but when it comes to versatility, no one can touch the tuber.

Lizzie (Actor): Mr. Potatohead shows his various body accessories, removing and adding bits, hurling some into the air.

David (Actor): I’ve got an ear for music and an eye for the girls. And if a Vikings to your liking, I have a mustache that curls for every occasion. I can supply the gear. And if you want to talk, then I can lend you an ear because I’m changeable Rearrangable.

If you take me back to Hamley’s, I’m exchangeable. And if you look closely, you can see me with new eyes because I am the master of disguise. I’ve got 20 different feet [00:12:00] so I know where I stand and if anyone needs help, then I can give them a hand. When I’m at home, I like to keep an eye on the door, and when it comes to Christmas, I give arms to the poor ’cause I’m transmutable reconstituting the force of my charismas irrefutable.

You may wonder why I’m impossible to recognize. Well, I am the master of disguise. I’m such a smart potato. I ought to spy. I am the master of disguise.

Laura: I can hear those lyrics to music. I, it’s such a shame. We didn’t have the music for them. Were you writing the music for that as well, or just the lyrics?

Jeremy: Do you know what, Laura? There isn’t any music for it. We never got as far as that. The reason was we always hoped that Andrew Lloyd Weber would write the music ’cause Andrew’s company commissioned it.

But that never happened, and therefore no one else did. I can sort of hear the music for that as well. The idea for that, [00:13:00] it was in the days when people wanted to link up musicals with, with products basically, and there’s an American company called Hasbro who make toys and they make action, man. They make potato head and various other things.

So the idea was to try and write a, a musical that they would co-produce using their characters. Oh, and I know it is fantastic. I, this predates Toy Story, by

Laura: the way. I was about to say, I thought it was from Toy Story, that’s why. No,

Jeremy: no, no.

Laura: I thought, oh, we’re gonna have problems with this. We’re gonna have problems with the copyright on this, this,

Jeremy: this predates Toy story.

Laura: Wow. And

Jeremy: so Mr. Potato Head is a Hasbro artist, as it were. And what always amused me about Mr. Potato Head is that. You can put whatever you like on him, but he still very much looks, looks like a potato, albeit with different hats and noses and mustaches. So the idea of the song called the Master of Disguise Rather appealed to me, and it’s just a series of jokes, just a series of body part jokes.

Laura: They’re very good. [00:14:00] Although I was wondering how you would actually stage that. ’cause I mean, how can you take off arms and put them back on again? If you, I can understand you can have a false arm, but it’s gonna be complicated, isn’t it? I have

Jeremy: no idea. Again, I was just writing the lyrics on this show. The book is written by the wonderful Francesca Simon, who wrote Horrid Henry Books.

Arlene Phillips was going to be the director as in Arlene as in hot gossip and all that. Yeah. So the three of us worked on it for quite a long time, and we even got to go get this to the Hasbro Toy Factory in Rhode Island. They flew us out. We pitched our various ideas and that I was like a kid in a toy factory.

It was remarkable. And we got taken to the rooms where behind the one way mirror, kids play with toys and people take notes. And all the, the mail delivery was done by, uh, an automaton. There are robots everywhere. It was, it was a toy factory, the Hasbro toy factory, and it was fantastic.

Yeah.

Jeremy: So the show never got made, although we wrote it and did a few rewrites, wrote it a few times.

Then I [00:15:00] think for some reason the impetus came out of it. Or Andrew, I think wasn’t, maybe it wasn’t time for him to write the score. Mm-hmm. And other composers were pitched, but my job was just to write the lyrics. I was very happy. But

Laura: you’re a composer. Why didn’t you do composing as well?

Jeremy: I could have done that, I guess.

I mean, there are, it’s a funny one that, ’cause I do like collaborating. And I guess I could one day if I wanted to write the music and the lyrics in the book and for a musical and direct it, but it would be such a lonely, to be honest, it’s not what I came into the theater for. Right. The theater to, to sit in Roman and have a good time and work with people.

Mm-hmm. And being a writer’s lonely enough, God knows. Yeah. So I remember Francesca and Arlene and I having a lot of laughs, particularly ha having a nice trip to Rhode Island, to Providence, Rhode Island. To meet the guys from the toy company who were fantastic and they were up for it.

Laura: Were they? Oh my

Jeremy: God.

They were so up for it and they had ideas and the characters called Dole there because they don’t have Barbie.

Laura: Right, okay.

Jeremy: Barbie’s with another management.

Laura: Right.

Jeremy: [00:16:00] Um, so we had to sort of make a sort of Barbie style character action, man. They do have, and I had a great song for action, man, who falls in love with dol.

And the song is called, it’s Not On My Box. ’cause he has, he discovers he has various feelings and which he doesn’t quite understand.

Laura: Right.

Jeremy: And she sings saying, oh, it’s not on my box either, but I’ve got these feelings. So, um, you know, fun to be had, don’t you think?

Laura: Definitely. Or can it not be done now?

Although, what about the toy story? Would there be a problem with the Pixar

Jeremy: business yet again? Toy Story, you know, you can’t, there’s no point in even thinking about doing anything with toys ever ’cause of Toy Story ’cause it’s the Na plus Ultra as, as they used to say in Ancient Rome. What does that mean for, um, it’s the, it’s, it’s the limits.

You can’t get better than that. So if you can’t get better than that, then maybe not to do it. Well, could you possibly

Laura: go to Pixar and say, you know, I’m an established Western producer, writer, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Let’s do the toy story version of it.

Jeremy: Sorry. Musical. I bet [00:17:00] there is a toy story of the musical coming up somewhere.

Laura: Well, they haven’t, they taken their time over itt. It’s been, they’ve had four films out and there’s done it yet, so I

Jeremy: know. Nowadays. Interestingly, when I started out on this luck, you know, you would try to convince a movie company to you maybe musicalize their products. Now they realize that the musical, the stage musical, the Broadway West End Show will probably make them more than the film

really.

Jeremy: I mean, yes, absolutely stage money. The money from successful stage shows, blows movies out the water.

Laura: Wow. This is an absolute revelation to me. I didn’t know this at

Jeremy: all. Well, I’ll give you an example. The prophets from the Phantom of the Opera vastly exceed those of all of the Star Wars films put together.

And you can throw in Matrix, you can throw in a few No.

Laura: Yeah. No, not more than nothing. No.

Jeremy: Absolutely. If you think about it, not now plainly, but Phantom will be running in a theater in capital Cities making a couple of million a week and touring, [00:18:00] making pretty much the same all around the world and has been for 25 years.

Really?

Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. You there’s got blown my mind, Jeremy,

I didn’t realize. And

Jeremy: that’s, that’s why people want to write new musicals and will take a risk on it. ’cause the profits when you get there, I believe crack cocaine is rather similar in terms of profit versus investment. But it, the difference is it doesn’t always work out that way.

And for all the. Phantoms and the LA Misses and the Wickeds and the Lion Kings. There’s no shortage of, of shows that haven’t made money. But you know, when a, when a stage show works, the money’s really remarkable. Wow. I mean, mama Mia, for example, will make, oh, 50 million a year. A hundred million a year, something like that.

But it’s also got the films as well. Isn it, the stage show. The Stage show. Wow. Wow. But I have friends who move in those astronauts, but, uh, I don’t yet. But, uh, it’s, it’s,

Laura: well with lyrics like that, Jeremy, it’s only a matter of time with lyrics

Jeremy: like Master of [00:19:00] Disguise, sometimes the

Laura: musical. I really liked it.

I just could really see that as one of those what with film number, like in Beauty and the Beast, you know, be our guest. It’s that sort of Exactly. Right. Yeah. I was very impressed with that. Anyway, let’s move on now and have your next off cut.

Jeremy: Yeah, this is a scene that didn’t get filmed from the movie school for Lovers about 2005

Beth (Actor): interior billard Room night.

Adam, Tom, and Martin are trying their hands at Billards. They have plainly been drinking heavily. Adam is wearing a smoking jacket and a rather absurd velvet hat. The boys are in t-shirts and jeans. Tom and Adam are smoking cigars,

Toby (Actor): so I thought Sodded, why not try and do the place up and, oh, um, Mrs. H we are about to send out a search party.

Beth (Actor): Mrs. Hammond has entered and prepares rather stiffly to pour coffee, brandy, et cetera.

Toby (Actor): Oh, we’ll take care of that. You just,

Beth (Actor): good night, sir.

Emma (Actor): Gentlemen.

Beth (Actor): Goodnight, Mrs. H. Mrs. Hammond raises an imperceptible eyebrow. Yes. [00:20:00] Uh, goodnight, Mrs. Hammond. And, and thank you and goodnight to you, sir. She leaves the room, Tom staring after her.

Adam makes for the brandy opposite round.

David (Actor): Oops, second bottle. I seem to be losing my touch here first. Nicola. Now her. I thought I was good with gals. You can forget Nicola. I feel like the elephant man. He makes his elephant man face. I mean, I can normally get round them somehow. What do you mean? You know, with most women, I, I can normally get my leg over.

Well, if you wanna put it that way. Yes.

Toby (Actor): Was I that cocky at your age? I can’t remember. This brand is awesome. It should be. It came with a house. You can’t even buy it now.

Beth (Actor): Tom looks at the dusty label. Jesus Christ. It’s almost a hundred years old

Toby (Actor): then. Cheers.

Alex (Actor): They drink. You know about Nicola. Deeply wounded.

Fucked over. They say Simon Featherstone. What the, uh, he mimes conductor? Yeah. No, him. Oh. Obviously the [00:21:00] name obviously big powerful conductor, nasty piece of work, used to be quite handsome. Fucks his singers.

Toby (Actor): Oh, one of those conductors.

Alex (Actor): Anyway, dumped her for a company manager, apparently kids. Now Nicola didn’t see the funny side, so maybe she’s still a bit, uh, you know.

Beth (Actor): Yeah.

Alex (Actor): But even

Beth (Actor): so, Adam Puffs at his cigar, we see that he is very drunk.

Toby (Actor): Shouldn’t be doing this. Not great for the old vache, but do you really think you could uh,

Alex (Actor): sure.

Toby (Actor): Have her

Alex (Actor): Sure get in. No woman can resist his amazing powers.

David (Actor): Well, I don’t wanna sound arrogant, but heaven forbid, but there’s always a way in, isn’t there?

He’s there.

Beth (Actor): Well,

David (Actor): I find

Beth (Actor): we see Adam

Laura: considering this. School for Lovers. This was a film that did get made.

Jeremy: It did get made, and it got made under a different title, which was First [00:22:00] night.

Laura: First

Jeremy: night as in N-I-G-H-T, or K-N-I-G-H-T, I think N-N-I-H-H-T, I think it’s called that. What happened was this was a.

Again, a commission from a producer an an English producer. And I was gonna direct it and I wrote the script. And the idea was there’s a company putting on an opera sort of guy, Baldy, so, so the guy you heard with the brandy, he’s very, very wealthy and he owns a big house. And there are a few people in England, or there were at the time who had country houses and they’d put on operas and they’d be in them sometimes or something like that.

And the opera they’re putting on is Cozy Vanti by mo. Sort. And in this opera, there’s a wager for an older man with two young friends that they can’t seduce each other’s girlfriends. And they say, no, no, my girlfriend is very faithful to me. And the cynical older man says, well, here’s a hundred pounds, whatever.

And the idea in this one is that they’re putting on this musical, and it spills over into the action. You get the [00:23:00] idea into the action of the play. So a wager is made that this man can’t succe this girl. Yeah, and of course she discovers that the wage has been made and it becomes actually a romcom in a sense.

So then the producer said to me, I’d like to direct this, but you have to remain available for a year, basically. So whenever we get the money together, and I couldn’t do that because I’d gotta live. So I just said, no, I can’t do that. So eventually someone else made it, but that person said, we need to rewrite the script.

And at that point I sort of left them to it.

Oh.

Jeremy: Uh, but it got made and the script got considerably rewritten. And characters who were complicated became less complicated. Endings that were, let’s say ambiguous became less ambiguous. Sexuality, which was very fluid, became less fluid. It became a bit more mainstream, shall we say.

Mm-hmm. And here’s a funny thing, Laura, I’ve never seen it. No.

Laura: No. Did it get proper release? [00:24:00]

Jeremy: It got a proper release, but it went so quiet and my fear was all my cynical friends would see it on flights and get back in touch with me. But it never even, was it on flights?

Laura: Well, your name presumably wouldn’t be on it, would it?

Jeremy: My name was on it. Yes. It’s a sort of co ’cause you in the movie world, you have to be co. CO accredited as it were,

Laura: even if you haven’t written the script, well, I suppose you created it

Jeremy: even if you haven’t written the script. I mean, there are some quite famous examples of that. I had a friend who shall remain nameless, who won lots of big prizes for a movie script, heroes, and this person he’d never met, turned up and came and took the.

Prize with him. And that was the person who had actually the original idea who was then billed as co-writer. So it’s interesting. I mean that, I have to say, it does sound very much of its time. Men plotting to seduce a girl, you think, oh.

Laura: It sounds like it ought to be a Shakespeare comedy or a Yeah.

Restoration comedy that’s been updated. That was the,

Jeremy: well, the opera, if you know it is from 1790 Mozart, and it [00:25:00] was his deponte, his his idea. So it is a marvo. It’s a bomar. She. Love neighbors lost, I guess is the model being updated? What’s funny is the man I wrote to sound like an absolute fucking tosser all the way through was so convincingly done by your act.

He sounds rather nice, but he’s written to be an absolute tosser,

Laura: which is the tosser, the bloke

Jeremy: who says that no one can resist me.

Laura: Oh, right.

Jeremy: So that was a rom-com that got made.

Laura: Hi, this is Laura. Sorry to interrupt, but if you are enjoying the show, please do subscribe to the Offcut Draw. Give us a five star rating. Leave a review. Tell your friends about it, all that stuff’s really important for a podcast like this. And visit offcuts draw.com for more details about the writers and actors, and to find out about future live shows.

Thanks for your support. Now back to the interview.[00:26:00]

Jeremy: What was interesting, and I dunno if you’ve ever tried this, is writing a romcom is keeping the protagonists apart. That’s the really hardest thing in the world, and I got rather obsessed with watching other romcoms. Mm-hmm. Which is how you can keep the people who are gonna get together at the end to not like each other throughout.

And in that movie, what happened was that she discovers that the reason he’s been wooing her is for a bit, and that really makes a big reverse in in their relationship as he might expect.

Laura: Yes. But presumably she then forgives him. He does something. Yeah. He will sacrifice himself in some way, and she goes, oh, well, maybe he’s all right then.

I’m guessing that’s. The sort of,

Jeremy: there’s a, there’s a final scene at the first night of the opera and the one line I think I do remember, and I dunno if this isn’t a film, is they kiss each other surrounded by lots of people and she turns to the people watching and saying, if this was a movie, you’d all be clapping and people do, so I’m as proud of that.

Laura: Yeah. Very good. Right. Next off cut please. What’s this one? [00:27:00]

Jeremy: This is an extract from a play called the Schumann Variations Unproduced as yet, and I wrote it in 2018.

Emma (Actor): Schumann and Johannes Brahms, his young protege, are having a late night boozy conversation about life and art.

Toby (Actor): Alright, let me try for another angle.

What’s your sonata about?

David (Actor): My Sonata. What’s it about? I dunno. It’s about half an hour. It’s about to make me famous. I dunno what you mean. It’s about. Beethoven. It’s about folk song. It’s about counterpoint. It’s about melody and harmony and notes and shapes. That’s what music is. All right? It can be emotional, which I suspect is where you’re trying to lead me, but if it has emotions, it’s as a rose, as a scent.

It smells sweet by any other name, but the rose [00:28:00] isn’t the scent.

Toby (Actor): No, I like that. It’s bollocks, but I like it. No, no. The rose is the scent.

David (Actor): Alright, so what’s Mozart about or, or Schubert or Bark or any music written in the last 150 years? Listen.

Toby (Actor): We all have two things. A, what we know, and B, what we don’t know, but we feel.

We know. Two concentric circles around us and the gap between A and B, be it tiny or vast, is everything. Art lives there and emotion and religion and God, and war and revolution. The wine merchant who wants a better shop, and Napoleon who wants a bigger empire and dreams live there and hopes and love lives there, and that’s what we write and paint that gap and.

Granted, a fresco has to fit the wall and an opera has to have intermission so the ladies can pee and a a piece for rank. Amateurs has to be playable by rank amateurs, and we may get paid when we deliver or not depending, but those are [00:29:00] all details. They are not the thing that makes the thing. And when they are, the thing is worthless as it so often is.

David (Actor): Well, there at least we agree. I’ll drink to that.

Laura: So this was Unproduced. What’s the story behind this one? Why Schumann, particularly

Jeremy: another late night drinking scene. This is about, a theme is emerging here. Um, yeah, so this is a play, it was actually the first play full length play I wrote, and it was a commission and a producer said they were writing.

Commissioning clay’s about music, and this is so close to my heart. Laura, my father, was an expert on Schumann, wrote lots of books on Schumann. Mm-hmm. And one of the things that he discovered was that the connections between Schumann and Brams, Schumann taught Brams many things, including c ciphers and codes that he put into his music.

And we know this because they turn [00:30:00] up in later Brahms music. And what happened was that Brahms undoubtedly fell in love with Truman’s wife. So what we have here is a three handed rom-com, if you like, but it’s not very wrong. It’s certainly not very calm because ’cause Schumann dies quite soon. Oh. Um, leaving Brahms and, and Clara living together effectively, Brahms moved in and basically became a father to the children.

Run around with the Schumann children of whom there are many, we have, for example, the, the account books about how much. How many cigars and how much wine we buy every and, and like many 19th century figures, they all kept account books saying how much they spent on candles and things like that. So Brahms now takes those over and lives with Clara and is in love with Clara.

And what we don’t know is basically. What happened between the three of them? It’s quite clear that Browns was in love with Clara and that bras is the most [00:31:00] remarkable, beautiful young man who either Clara or her husband Robert had ever seen. Robert also had a gay past, I think, and he makes that quite clear.

So he also fell in love with Browns in some. Different way I think. So it really is an interesting triangle. So we did a reading of it and one day it’ll be done somewhere. It was a commission and it worked out very nicely. The other thing is it’s got lots of music in it. So there has to be

Laura: played

Jeremy: on stage.

Yes. Played on stage. And I’d like it ideally that everyone who’s in it can play the piano at some level.

Laura: I’d say that that piece that we just heard did remind me of a Tom Stoppard type play. Yeah. You a play about the definition of art. It’s, it’s very Stop Ian.

Jeremy: It is. It’s gotta stop our joke in it, which is, has it, um, at least the beginning.

Someone said to me years ago, what’s Rosen Krants? And Golden Stone about. He said, it’s about to make me very rich and it also has got you right. [00:32:00] So years ago I wrote the music for Arcadia, which was the very first production of that, which Trevor Nun did at the national This

David (Actor): a

Jeremy: stop up. Uh, yeah. Stop up.

And there are, of course, now you say it, you’re absolutely right. People who aren’t necessarily eloquent trying to describe how they feel about things deeply. And that’s quite interesting to write. Of course, you’re right. Valentine in that play talks about iterative calculus and that sort of thing, and he can’t put it into words ’cause he knows it so well.

And Schumann similarly ’cause I, I have a feeling about this, this is what it means and I can’t quite, ’cause he’s a composer, he can sit down at the piano and show you. But it’s fun to write people who have to speak because they have to speak but can’t really speak.

Laura: And the complicated intertwined relationships.

Also another layer on top, very against a Ian.

Jeremy: Yes. And it’s also a love scene because of the love between a mentor and a mentee. Mm-hmm. As it were. Something I’m really, really massively important part of my [00:33:00] life with various people who’ve helped me. It’s a real love story and that love is a real part of.

Someone’s love life, I think, and you don’t see it written very often, and I wanted to write about that as well.

Laura: Alright, well we’ve now come to your final Offcut. Tell us about this one.

Jeremy: So this is up to date. This is a scene from The Good Life and as yet, unproduced Theater Comedy based on the Economist TV series.

So it’s from 2019 to 20. Soap.

Alex (Actor): There must be a way of making soap. What did people do before soap?

Beth (Actor): I think they stank. Do we?

Lizzie (Actor): Barbara tries to sniff herself while finishing the churning. This is a challenge. She decides to concentrate on finishing the churning.

Beth (Actor): Okie dokie. Here we go. Voila. Butter of goat.

Lizzie (Actor): They reveal the goat’s butter. They looked dubious. Ah, should we try it?

Beth (Actor): Here it goes. Excuse fingers.

Lizzie (Actor): They take a [00:34:00] handful of sludge each about to eat it.

Beth (Actor): Oh wait, did we wash our. Ah,

Lizzie (Actor): we didn’t, I forgot. They put the goats butter onto a plate.

Beth (Actor): We have been up since five.

Lizzie (Actor): Jerry pops his head round the door.

Toby (Actor): Hello peasants.

Beth (Actor): Hello, Jerry.

Alex (Actor): Hello, Jerry. How’s the linens workers Collective coming along? Fine. Jerry, are you rehearsing a dance drama about a combine harvester?

Very good. Jerry,

Toby (Actor): eh, there’s a touch of Julie Christie to you, Barbara.

Beth (Actor): Oh, do you like the look?

Toby (Actor): Is Omar Sharif popping around later? Fray Nots.

Just Harry the pig man. Harry, the pig. Oh, for heaven’s sake.

Beth (Actor): Yes. Pinky and perky are coming back all primed and ready. Have you missed them?

Toby (Actor): We thought you got rid of the pigs. Jesus Margo’s only just getting over the goat attack. She even talked to Mr. Pearson about putting out barbed wire. I managed to dissuade her.

It won’t happen again. We promise. The chickens in the greenhouse were one thing. Now the pigs Margot draws the line at pigs. You won’t hear a squeal out of them. Actually, we’ve got guests this evening. I promise. I’ll mute the [00:35:00] pigs. Jerry, you, you’ve been very patient. No, it’s not that. We wondered if you’d join us.

I’m doing golf with Sir, and then he and Felicity are coming round for supper. So we wondered if you’d, you know, like to,

Beth (Actor): oh, we can’t really, we wouldn’t want to. You know,

Toby (Actor): Margo’s got one of her mysterious campaigns afoot. She says she needs your help. So she’s planning a feast. Thanks. But

Alex (Actor): it’s just that we don’t really eat from tins.

Toby (Actor): How? Dare you. It’s not from tins, it’s from the new freezer.

Alex (Actor): Well, we’re more into eating our own produce. The bounty of the land and all that. Whatever the bloody

Toby (Actor): starlings have in snaffle, look, Tom Margo’s machinations to one side. I’ve been working like Bill to get Sir to come round to the idea of you getting back to JJM.

But Jerry, not full time. Just some freelancing just to help out. And it also would help me. We need you. The marsupials are an endangered species, really. But maybe if you added

Alex (Actor): [00:36:00] Tom, I mean there might be a way to Tom. Of course. Look, I tell you what, we’ll pop round later. We’ve got some presents for you anyway.

Some of our produce, righto.

Toby (Actor): Looking forward to sampling it. What’s this? Looks good. It’s.

Alex (Actor): It’s,

Lizzie (Actor): yeah, before anyone can stop him, he takes a spoonful of goats butter. Ah,

Beth (Actor): it’s work in progress.

Laura: The good life, the well-known and very popular British TV sitcom is going to be staged. Is that right?

Jeremy: It is. It’s, it’s, it’s ready to go.

We would be now in the West end and yeah, we were gonna start rehearsals in, you must’ve had this story so often from people, but we were gonna start rehearsals in April and we’re all cast up and we are designed and there it is. Oh. Um, and it’ll happen. It’ll happen at some point when, when people can get back into theaters and mm-hmm.

In numbers enough to pay for actors and, you know.

Laura: Can I ask who you [00:37:00] cast

Jeremy: at the moment? Funnily enough, the people we cast are now not free because of, because of telly and, and movies. And so you can if you like, but in fact the people who were cast, Catherine Parkinson was cast as, as Barbara. Do you know Catherine?

Laura: Yep, yep, yep.

Jeremy: But she’s now not available, so we’re now talking to other actors, but it’s rather hard to talk to actors right now because I don’t know when we’ll be able to do it, but I’m directing it and that was, uh, an extract and I haven’t heard that bit. And I mean, we did one reading, but it’s nice to hear.

It made me laugh. Did you like it?

Laura: Yes, absolutely. Yes. And did you

Jeremy: giggle?

Laura: Did you laugh? Yes. Yes, I did. I mean, it’s very pressurizing for the actors who have to, um, perform as Richard Bry and Felicity Campbell. Well, of

Jeremy: course they don’t, you know, that’s the funny thing there. We have talked about that a lot.

Is that. When the script comes and when I work with actors, I’ll be giving them people who won’t be playing Richard Bryers and Sophist Kendall. They’ll be playing Tom and Barbara. And the nice thing about the original, it was written [00:38:00] for actors, you know? And so the people involved, uh, when it was first done in the seventies, were the character, actually there were egg born actors.

That’s the reason they all got together. ’cause lots of ’em were in the Norman Conquest and the sales productions. Oh yeah. So Ty Candle, uh, Paul Reddington, uh, Richard Bryars were, as it were stage actors, and they were given the scripts and they would said, what do you make of this? And they gave it a go. So similarly when I do it, I think it’ll be hard enough to play Tom, let alone playing Richard Bryars, as it were.

But of course, that’s the challenge to play a play. With characters saying what they want and what they need and why they’re doing what they’re doing, rather than reflecting anything else. So that is the challenge.

Laura: It would depend on your audience. There’ll be loads of people who are too young for the original, and so they’ll just come and see an enjoyable aborn esque type play.

And then there’ll be a much more mature audience who’ll be sitting there. There will be comparisons made, and of course there may be favorable comparisons. There’s no reason why not.

Jeremy: Funnily enough, we did a reading and a few people under the age of 30 came. [00:39:00] And they were delighted by it. Had no idea who these people were, what was going on.

They thought it was a piece about people making an allotment in their back garden, which is exactly what it’s about.

It is, yes,

Jeremy: and about, you know, the vegans next door and so on. Then everyone said, oh, it’s just like now. I was aroused with my flatmates all the time. They said. And at one point I really thought, I know what I’m going to do to adapt.

’cause I, again, it was a commission. The people who, the, the heirs as it were, the estate of the original authors commissioned me to write the stage version of it. And one of the thoughts I had was, which should be quite fun. I’ll do it now. I’ll set it in 2020 or 2019 as it was. And play it like completely modern.

And what would it be now? So that the goods would have an illegal immigrant living with them, as it were. And they’d have to pretend he was the French teacher when the, when the lead bets came.

Oh, right.

Jeremy: All that stuff. And that was quite fun because it suddenly realized that how much of it could be now.

Really could be now. But in fact [00:40:00] I was guided away from that by, by the rights holders who said no. But I think what we want is something that will remind people of the world. It inhabits and a lot of it, in fact, it’s all pretty much original. There are little hints at various, I mean, good life Completists will recognize a line here, a line there.

Mm-hmm. And I, I’m sort of bilingual in good life now ’cause I’m having immersed myself in the, in the TV shows, which is a delight. A delight. They’re so neatly written and the nice thing is actually looking at the writing as opposed to performances. You know, it’s interesting, it’s like what happened was just like friends, is that having casted in later series, the writers were actually writing into the mouths of the actors who were playing the parts.

But originally in trends, you know, someone wrote all these. Characters and then people had to find what they could from them. And again, like friends, what really impressed me with the Good Life was the flossing, the beautiful flossing [00:41:00] within the sitcom form within your half hour, and the settings and how cleverly a problem came up.

But the real challenge as a writer and as a playwright, I guess, is that. They like each other. They all adore each other.

Laura: So conflict is difficult to simulate.

Jeremy: Conflict is really hard because they’re actually all middle class people. It’s not like the os, as it were in seventies terms, move in next door or indeed the black family.

Do you remember there was, you know that would be yes. Love

Laura: our neighbor. Yeah, exactly. Shame. I know that.

Jeremy: I know, but it’s not like that. There isn’t a a class difference. There isn’t. The only difference is one group is letting the side down, but actually they all adore each other. And the other thing, which is nice, and I hadn’t really spotted, they all fancy each other.

So when I was a kid watching it, I just thought these jolly people. But in fact, Barbara is always flirting with Jerry, who’s looking down up front. And Margo is always delightfully flirting with Tom. And [00:42:00] there’s a just a hint of, not of wife swapping, but there’s a touch of Suburban, well,

Laura: there is a Christmas episode, if I remember rightly, where Margo gets a bit drunk and Tom makes a sort of pass at her.

Yeah, yeah. And Jerry’s always making comments about Barbara.

Jeremy: Yeah. But the reason for that is it’s. Just there all the time. And here’s the other weird thing, they didn’t have kids.

That’s true. Yeah. They didn’t have

Jeremy: kids. And the reason for that is that they live in a sitcom. So that’s something I really had to address.

The kids thing and the sex thing and writing people who live in a sitcom like they’re real people was really interesting. So I guess it’s an off cut because it’s hasn’t yet to be done. So you want, you ask for stuff that hasn’t been done yet. So there we are.

Laura: Well, yes. Well, thank you very much. That was a, that was an absolute treat that think the good life, the good life’s being made.

Yes. Fingers crossed. It will be made. I’m sure it will be. Yeah.

Jeremy: I mean, yeah. The nice thing about it, Laura, is it doesn’t date,

Laura: no.

Jeremy: So it’ll happen next year or the year after. And we are now [00:43:00] recasting and, um. We’re having meetings about it now.

Laura: Right. Final question. So you’ve written and directed plays, you’ve done musicals, opera, you’ve translated some of the great classics.

What would you say is your favorite job of all of those?

Jeremy: Gosh, there’s a lot to be said for scoring a movie.

Laura: Oh, you get to watch a lot of naked women, legitimately lots of naked women, men, and

Jeremy: play the piano while you’re doing so. But also it’s a very, really quick process and fun. You mention off cuts because.

I’ve had complete scores for movies that have been removed, and likewise, I’ve been the beneficiary of other composers who’ve had scores removed, and I’ve come in and that happens a huge amount in the movie world for very simple reasons. If a movie is not working, or a producer thinks this movie isn’t working, there’s not a lot they can fix, they can’t reshoot it, they can’t re cast it.

The one thing they can do is put a new score on it. Right, and even the [00:44:00] composers who write full-time movie score composers have had scores removed and replaced by someone else. Sometimes me, and similarly, it’s happened to me. It’s just sort of part of it, but actually the process of receiving a finished and edited movie to then being in a studio with the Royal Fundamental Orchestra is about four weeks of your life.

Very often that quick. Wow. And that means that in that time you have to not only write the music and orchestrate the music and get it past your producers and so on. So it’s a very exhausting and very often an all night process. Mm-hmm. But it’s a wonderful thing. And at the end of it, if it works out, you’ve got your score.

It’s only a movie. Very often they make a CD of it as well, and that’s a very satisfying. Event, and it’s much more quick than, for example, directing a musical, which could take you four or five years.

Laura: Yes. Well, it’s been enlightening and [00:45:00] very entertaining to talk to you, Jeremy Sams. Thank you for sharing the contents of your with us.

Jeremy: Pleasure and really took rich places. I never thought I’d revisit.

Laura: The Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shavin with special thanks to this week’s guest, Jeremy Sams The Offcuts were performed by Lizzie Roper, David Holt, Alex Lowe, Emma Clarke, Toby Longworth, and Beth Chalmers, and the music was by me. For more details about this episode, visit offcutsdrawer.com and please do subscribe, rate and review us.

Thanks for listening.