Story of growing up is complete Madness

8:21am Thursday 3rd July 2008

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Twenty years ago, if you’d asked the various members of Madness whether they were into West End musicals, their response would probably have been unprintable.

Before they became the porkpie hat-wearing pop/ska combo who brought some fun to the UK’s ska scene, the boys from Madness were a bunch of mates growing up in North London, ducking and diving in and out of scrapes...playing football in the park, kicking pushbikes after dark, pulling hair and eating dirt, to quote some of their best-known lyrics.

The stories of their youth were captured in hits like Baggy Trousers, It Must Be Love and House Of Fun which, accompanied by the band’s cartoon-like tight suits, wacky videos, silly dances and all-round infectious sense of fun, made them the most popular band of the late 1970s/early 1980s ska revival.

Who’d have thought back then that those very same Madness songs would be the inspiration for an Olivier award-winning musical love story? Six years ago that’s what happened when Our House was launched in London’s West End.

Described as a ‘touching tale of life, love and heartbreak’, it’s the story of 16-year-old Joe Casey who doesn’t realise just how much the world around him is changing – until one fateful day when something happens to tear his world in two.

Written by Tim Firth, who wrote the movie Calendar Girls, the show is about the joy and pain of first love and features more than 15 Madness hits, including My Girl, Wings Of A Dove, It Must Be Love and, of course, Our House. An instant stage hit, it’s now touring the UK, starring Steve Brookstein, winner of the first series of X Factor, and Gwyneth Strong, best known as Cassandra in Only Fools And Horses, as Joe’s mum and dad.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Suggs describes the show as “one of the best things I’ve ever seen.”

“We’d had the idea of doing a musical for some time because our songs are so narrative, they’re little stories in themselves, but we didn’t have the ‘wherewithal’,” he says. “Then we were approached by a couple of people and they seemed like the right people. Once we got the writer, Tim Firth, and he started explaining how he saw it, we realised we had something good on our hands.

“Without sounding like I’m blowing my own trumpet, it really is a tremendous show and the great people at the Olivier awards agreed. It’s a fantastic romp through the underbelly of London life as seen through the eyes of a young couple and all the trials and tribulations that go with growing up in London. The music’s not bad neither.

“One of the things I’m most proud about with this musical is that we could very easily have just done a sing-a-long-a Madness, but it’s quite a complex story about a kid who has two choices in life when he’s very young. He’s got the choice to do the wrong thing, which is the path his dad took, or the right thing. We see those choices unfold in a rather dramatic, fabulous way.”

Suggs believes the musical has a wide appeal, largely because of the music.

“For some peculiar reason, Madness has always appealed to everybody and we still have this great affinity with very young children to people of my age and older,” he says.

“The greatest experiences of being involved, initially, was seeing the way people work in arranging the songs. We’d thought about doing it ourselves, but I’d never felt so confident about the fact that you’ve got somebody else who understands a completely different way of doing it.

“The songs weave in and out of each other. You’ll recognise passages of Madness songs then suddenly you won’t and you’ll realise you’re into It Must Be Love and out of Baggy Trousers.

“Mainly the songs work in dramatising the story; that’s really the best thing about the show – the continuity between the story and our songs. We didn’t want to write something particularly biographical, but what Tim Firth did was take all the narrative which is our lives in the songs, and the story almost made its own path through the show.”

Suggs admits that he’s “not a huge fan of musicals” but says a strength of Our House is that it’s seamless between songs and narrative.

“So many of our songs were narrative; think of Baggy Trousers about going to school, My Girl about your first love affair, and you’re off on a story already. Tim cleverly wrote a story that was pretty biographical but an amalgamation of all the band’s lives.

“We all grew up in roughly the same area in North London where the musical is set, and had all the trials and tribulations of growing up in an urban environment. And it’s a beautiful love story!”

He added: “The other great joy for me of going to see it was the audience reaction. It really did get everybody because it’s a story of all our lives, blundering about as a teenager into adulthood and all the mistakes that come with that. It’s a slightly moral story as well.

“It really does have the highs and lows, and if it doesn’t get you crying at the end, well, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a sentimental old fool.”

Another aspect of the band’s adolescence captured in the show is the dancing they all enjoyed while growing up. “We were all very into dancing as a band and that’s been greatly choreographed into the show,” says Suggs. “Scenes like Baggy Trousers really capture the energy of what we were, transferred to the theatrical stage in the most amazing way.

“The music really does appeal to everybody. I’m not a great fan of musicals necessarily, but the great ones like Oliver and West Side Story, I think it’s up there with those.”

• Our House runs at the Alhambra from July 21 to 26. For tickets ring (01274) 432000.