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SANDPIT THEATRE PRODUCTION OF
JEFF WAYNE'S MUSICAL VERSION OF THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

St. Albans - February 2002

Text written By Rob Wallace (Musical Director)

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I was lucky enough to be involved with an official production of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of The Worlds back in February 2002 as musical director. It was performed at the Sandpit Theatre in St. Albans, UK www.sandpittheatre.co.uk part of Sandringham school where my wife works as a drama teacher. The theatre had just been built and they wanted a BIG production to launch it, which would show off all the new facilities.

I have always been a big fan of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of The Worlds so I suggested it because it would incorporate music, lights, drama, dance and SFX and also, because I didn’t think it had ever been put on as a show before, it would have a unique appeal. I managed to track down Jeff Wayne and it turned out that he lived quite close to us so I was able to negotiate the rights via email and actually got to meet him when I visited his house to collect the score. He was an extremely nice guy and invited us in for tea and we had a great chat in his studio. He was very gracious, despite having recently hurt his leg in a car accident, and even let us take a couple of pictures (something I don’t normally do but then it is not every day you get to meet a great man like Jeff Wayne).

The rights to perform the show specified that it had to be played in it's entirety with no deviation from the script or the soundtrack.  This meant that we had to play the whole piece from beginning to end without a break, except for an interval after Thunderchild. We did not use any backing tracks and even the SFX were played live, including the Martian Ullas. This was all achieved with just seven band members - three keyboard players, two guitarists (one of which played Parson Nathaniel but that's another story), a drummer and myself on bass.

Apart from the music, the narrator has the hardest job of them all. He has to come in at specific times with his lines and only has a fixed time in which to say them. This requires a lot of concentration because, if you think about it, he has no cues for when to start talking like you would get in a normal play. He has to know the music and take his cues from that and, because the lines have to fit in with specific sections, he also has to get all the words in correctly without rushing them or missing any out and he has to be acting while he is doing it. The other monumental problem for a narrator is that, no matter what he does, he is always going to be compared to the great Richard Burton.

For our production the directors split the role of the Journalist into two and the lines were shared between them. This was so that one journalist acted as narrator for the story and the second journalist was his other self and could continue the story from within the action. It worked very well and helped make it clear to the audience what was going on.

Our Artilleryman was a bit dodgy at first.  He was the only one who auditioned for the part and he was very keen so we had to go with him. I remember at rehearsals, the directors had a hard time with him because he was very inconsistent and I was a bit disappointed because BNW is my favourite track from the album and I felt he was letting the show down. Then, suddenly at a late rehearsal he pulled it all together and blew us all away. When we finished playing the song, the band looked at each other and said "Wow, where did that come from?!" After that, he was excellent and BNW was one of the show's highlights. He was still slightly maverick but I think that suited the part. The part of the Artilleryman is very underrated. I think it would make an excellent audition piece for any budding actor. It is a twelve minute tour de force of full on singing and acting and is not an easy song to sing either as it has lots of different sections within it. When you come off stage after singing that song, you know you have worked hard.

The show itself was incredibly challenging for all concerned, especially the musicians but was a fantastic success. It sold out in no time.  It was a great personal achievement to pull something like this off and, to date, it is still the best show I have ever done. It was a real pleasure to play the music live that had haunted me as a ten year old when I first bought the album.

As I discovered from talking to Jeff, Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of The Worlds has been put on many times around the world and he has also conducted orchestral performances of it himself. "No one would have believed in the first years of the 21st century that a bunch of nutters from St Albans would put on a live version of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of The Worlds". But we did – and it was brilliant !!