Sneak Peek at Musical MISS NIGHTINGALE!

Hey Mr. Fallon's what? You know I'm feeling hot

Miss Nightingale is set in 1942 and it's a tale of love, friendship and scandal

The core Miss Nightingale is, she's a cabaret singer, so it's this act that is put together to be entertainment during the war at a new club that is opening in Leicester Square

but then alongside all of that there's a lot of different relationships that unfold and are built

up and come crashing down what we're trying to achieve is that that blitz time spirit of everyone

knew the war was happening of course but there was this idea that you had to carry on with your life

and live it to the full so that's like the main drive of the story is that everyone's trying to

just to kind of live each day as if it was their last

This show, it started life a long time ago, over a decade ago actually

and it's very much a coming together of both our family histories

So there's one character in the show who is a Polish Jewish refugee

and Toby's family, well half of his family are Jewish refugees, that came over either just before the war or during the war

And it's also the story about a working class northern lass trying to make her way

And I come from a family of very strong women very feisty women who weren happy in the way that they were expected to behave in a man world Music is fantastic it really really good really cleverly written

and it's this wonderful sort of pastiche of British Music Hall combined with kind of Weimar Republic sort of

because my character comes over from Germany brings all that cabaret um yeah cabaret feel of

it with these kind of you know on par chordian-ish sort of um feel there's there's really two distinct

types of music there's the music in the club because it's set in a club he runs a club I am

the musical director and pianist of the club so the club songs are these kind of really raunchy

jazzy up-tempo 40s numbers that make you feel like you know you're in the blitz in in wartime

but then there's also concurrently to that there's the actual story that's going on

outside of the club with all of the characters falling in love and fighting and arguing and getting together and breaking up

and so those songs are much more soaring ballads and much more

musical theatre maybe how you'd expect it Mina Liebe Berlin She's a flower

with sweet nectar in Part her petals and taste I think our characters and the way our story comes together it a central male love story that is not played for laughs it not played as like you know something odd or unusual it played as something very you know I guess we are the emotional heart of the story and us coming together in the way we

you know, and you just really don't see that, I don't think, you know, it's very real

We're getting more of that now, but so often it's still very much the gay best friend

who is, you know, a great character and maybe has one number

but they generally don't have a relationship, or if they do, it's a very chaste relationship

where they may hold hands with their boyfriend or girlfriend and there may be a little peck on the cheek

And it feels like it's time to sort of move on from that and to actually have, you know, an LGBT relationship

a same-sex relationship, front and centre, which is what we do in Miss Nightingale. So it has a love story

but that love story just happens to be between two men. And I think it's really important growing up as a gay man

I didn't see that representation. You had to look for those sort of coded references

or identify with often those female characters who were gay men but presented as women

And I think it's so lovely with a show like ours and also a show like Jamie, which is made in Sheffield as well

We're a Sheffield company, so we sort of feel like we're sister shows

And it feels like that's starting to change, that you've got those stories out there

you know, sort of unashamedly, fabulously gay, queer, People arrive, they arrive into 1942 and they come into our club, into our world and then from that point onwards they are immersed in that world of 1942

We don't have to act, we're just like we are in a club. And it's a beautiful space, it's really really special, it's really intimate

I think the audience will have a really lovely time and feel as though they're really part of the action, as if they're part of the cabaret audience and are sitting there and watching it

but also have these wonderful little moments of intimacy between George and Frank and between Maggie and Tom

They're right there, aren't they? Some of them, yeah, I mean, the tables come right up to the stage

You should come and see the show because it's going to be a great night out. It's going to be something that's quite unique

especially in town at the moment. And, yeah, we're going to create that world for you

and hopefully you'll come out of it having laughed and cried. That's the idea, isn't it

Yeah, that is the idea. Sometimes at the same time, maybe. We won't take it lying down unless that's how we want to take it. Snowball