We are apologize for the inconvenience but you need to download
more modern browser in order to be able to browse our page

Download Safari
Download Safari
Download Chrome
Download Chrome
Download Firefox
Download Firefox
Download IE 10+
Download IE 10+

Chris Honer knew I could write theatre songs, but he had no reason to suspect I’d be able to write dialogue or structure an entire show. All the same, he asked me to write and compose a new adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s classic. It’s wonderful when someone has faith in you.

I was at an age when I was trying to prove a lot of stuff to myself. My head was full of ideas, concepts that I’d picked up about structuring music-theatre work that I wanted to put into practice. For example, I thought it would be helpful/clever to make Pinocchio’s songs counterpoint each other and reveal this by bringing them all together at the end to signify to the audience that the real boy had been latent in the puppet all along. So the bass line in Pinocchio’s first song became the melody of his second song, etc. He had four songs altogether, so to counterpoint them perfectly was a challenge that I didn’t quite rise to. I’m not sure, even if I had, that especially the children in the audience would have noticed, let alone sat up in their seats in appreciation of my glorious technique. Vanity, vanity…

Chris (who directed) and the lovely cast did their very best to make the show work. A lot of the time it did.  But some of the songs were not child-friendly — wordy, self-consciously sophisticated, more suitable for adults really.  I was better pleased, and perhaps more surprised, by the scenes, which zipped along. I regret not having written more libretti. It’s such an interesting job.  I didn’t get a chance to write another until many years later.