David Essex has All the Fun of the Fair

11:57am Wednesday 3rd September 2008

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Singer, songwriter and 1970s heartthrob David Essex talks to Kerry Ann Eustice about his new musical, All the Fun of the Fair - partly inspired by his life, featuring all his music

If there is one person my mum is guaranteed to swoon whenever on TV, radio or indeed mentioned in passing, it's David Essex. The hits speak for themselves, but when I meet him in person I begin to see what she was harping on about. He's really charming and funny.

But it's clear he's only interested in talking about his new show, All the Fun of the Fair, with the exception of a brief aside to talk about an obsessive fan.

"I remember there was a fan who was going to jump off a cliff if she didn't meet me,"

"I remember there was a lady who was going to jump off a cliff if she didn't meet me," he said when quizzed on the Beatlemania-esque effect he had on fans.

Essex has been dipping in and out of musicals his whole career. It was, of course, Godspell which launched his star in the 1980s. And now he's co-created (with Boogie Nights writer Jon Conway) a musical show of his own, where his back catalogue of classic hits, such as A Winter's Tale, Rock On and Hold Me Close, will provide the soundtrack.

"I've always been fascinated by the dark underbelly of funfairs."

"I've always been fascinated by funfairs and the dark underbelly of funfairs," said David of where the idea for All the Fun of the Fair came from.

"I've always been fascinated by the dark underbelly of funfairs."

Fairs are pretty taken with him too it transpires, whenever he visits one owners refuse to let him pay.

"They're fantastic, they feel there's some kind of allegiance," he said.

"In 1975, I wrote All the Fun of the Fair, the song and the album, which had a kind of thematic feel about it. It had Hold me Close on it and all the rest of it.

"So when Jon Conway and I started to think about doing a show together, having worked on Boogie Nights 2, it was because of his circus background and when I was 14, I worked on a fair and we thought, that'll be a good, interesting subject. It's its own insular world.

"The veneer is have a good time' but there's a strange dark undertone. We don't really know that world and we wanted to explore it, that's why we're doing it."

All the Fun of the Fair is a 1970s-set (what David calls a "simpler" and "more romantic" time) love story which follows Levi Lee (Essex) as he deals with the day-to-day running of his fast becoming derelict fairground, fends off the affections of an enthusiastic divorcee and keeps on top of his ambitious son's fiery love life.

"We've come up with a very powerful story."

"I think we've come up with a very powerful story," said David.

"It's not stuck on music for the sake of it, it moves the plot along.

"It's more of a play with music. It's not a jukebox show." David explains, for example, his early-career hit Rock On is introduced when he and Louise English (who plays a mysterious gypsy fortune teller who has warnings for Levi's future) reminisce about the about the "old days".

"The song was written about iconic 1950s images, James Dean, Blue Suede Shoes all the rest of it, so it's very comfortably integrated," said David "Unless you were a real follower of me, there are songs people won't have heard before too," added David.

"It's more of a play with music. It's not a jukebox show."

If you are a "real follower" of David you are bound to spot the parallels between the show and David's life. "There is," said David of whether there is anything in the show inspired by his own life.

"The show really is about relationships, unrequited love - well, I've been pretty lucky on the unrequited love front - but also relationships between fathers and sons, a possessive father, young lovers, love affairs, all those things.

"The father and son thing is certainly something I can relate to. There's a really difficult period for teenage boys where they start to realise maybe their fathers are not gods and they sort of resent it until they get into their twenties when they become people again, so we deal with that."

Fairly heavy material for a musical really. But that's the nature of this production, it's been about pushing boundaries.

"It is," agrees David when asked whether it's an ambitious project.

"I'm prerecording everything because I want to fill the auditorium with sound, in a filmic way, instead of having a band or a small orchestra.

"I wanted to make the sound special, all enveloping. Musically and everything else make it like a film score."

"So we can just move the sound to create generators, carousels and big dippers and you feel you're there in that environment.

"I wanted to make the sound special, all enveloping. Musically and everything else make it's like a film score."

The sets are going to be impressive too - with enough sound trickery and prop to get audiences dizzier than a waltzer ride. The musical supervisor, Olly Ashmore, revealed to Leisure just this week how amazing a carefully-choreographed bumper car sequence is looking.

"The cast drive the dodgem cars, so I'm very pleased there's not an orchestra in the pit."

"We've got dodgem cars, carousel carriages," added David. "What's worrying me though is the cast drive the dodgem cars, so I'm very pleased there's not an orchestra in the pit."

Musical supervisor Olly also told us he'd been carting actual motorbikes down stairs to rehearsals and, it transpires, the props could have been even more ambitious.

David said: "Jon Conway and I had all these plans. We have three guys who do this incredible motorbike act. Because a lot of it is about the Wall of Death in the fairground and we had all that lined up.

"But now," he says before adopting a Mr Bean-like jobsworth voice, "It's a health and safety problem."

"So we've got round that in a very interesting and theatrically exciting way," he added.

If putting a show of this scale together doesn't sound like enough to deal with, fresh from a 48-date tour this summer David performed in Dagenham at a big outdoor concerts also featuring Status Quo.

"It's nice to be able to do a few things, because my concentration level is minimal."

"It's nice to go from that into the more structured, if you like, but wider canvas of musicals. It's nice to be able to do a few things, because my concentration level is minimal so to do different things is good.

"I started in blues bands. I had a manager who was like a mentor to me, he was a theatre critic and academic, and he, when I was about 17 or 18 would take me to see first and second nights, which he would review. I thought how civilised it was after playing in cellars and people throwing bottles at us.

"Luckily I do seem to be able to work in various mediums and that's great for me, because as I leave one I can go to another."

Finally, I'm eager to learn what the future holds for All the Fun of Fair? Will it be pitching up its dodgems in the West End, perhaps?

"We'll see what happens. At the moment we just want to get it right. I hope it relates. I think it will, I think it's very powerful."

But are you confident?

"Quietly confident," he says, in fittingly hushed tones.

All the Fun of the Fair, Sep 12 to Sep 20 at The Churchill, Bromley. 0870 060 6620.