True Blue is a musical about Margaret Thatcher
August: A process of re-recording the songs for True Blue has begun and the results should be appearing on this website soon. In particular new versions of the songs from Act Two.
July: Copies of script and score floating around various theatre groups. Any theatre company (amateur or professional) interested in looking over the script please get in touch.
February: Just as four scenes
of True Blue were finally performed in South London, publicity for
Thatcher the musical! 's opening south of Coventry reached a crescendo.
It seems rather appropriate that, in the spirit of free enterprise, there
should be two musicals about Margaret Thatcher though hopefully True Blue
and Thatcher! The Musical will be sufficiently different to both thrive.
January:
The play was first workshopped with a cast of young inner city actors none of whom had started primary
school when Margaret left office. The advantage of this is that they have no
baggage from the time and also they will be coming at the story as a piece of
drama rather than something that they actually lived through. This should also
allow the audience to detach from their own memories of the time and concentrate
on the story as it unfolds in front of them onstage.
True Blue aims to appeal to an audience not necessarily familiar with the 1970s and '80s which was one reason a young cast was selected to workshop the four scenes. A young, inner London, multi racial cast -not exactly the Tory party in the 1980s- for whom the drama had to work as a story, rather than relying on people's memory of the Thatcher epoch (in musical terms or otherwise). More on the workshop and streaming video of two of the scenes can be found here or opposite.
Original Press Release and background to True Blue
MPEG of No Such Thing as Society
MPEG of when Margaret's around
For more information please e-mail:
trueblue at fandmpublications.co.uk