Writer gives away his musical
The Catford Boy who played alongside Harry Cripps at Millwall, then First Division football in Finland but gave up the game for a career in journalism, has now written a musical about George Orwell that he is willing to give away to any impresario or theatre company who wants to put it on the stage, writes Michael Holland
‘The only cost to them,’ he emphasises, ‘will be £8.99 for the book of the show – script, songs and lyrics – just published on Amazon.’
The journalist, who once wrote for several local publications in SE London, explained that he has no experience of writing musicals but does have a great love of Orwell and the man’s political beliefs that aligned nicely with his own. Orwell was a writer who spent a lot of time in SE London while writing his hard-hitting novels that resonated with the bottom layers of society.
It was while interviewing Greenwich Theatre’s Artistic Director James Haddrell for the Labour Council’s weekly newspaper that he decided to tell him about his idea for the George Orwell musical, which at that time was exactly that – an idea, with precisely nothing written, neither a note nor a syllable.
The theatre’s director told Peter to have a go, so he set about getting some words on paper and finding a local singer-songwriter musician to help with the music. A chance meeting in Lee Green Sainsbury’s car park turned into teacher and Charlton fan Carl Picton climbing on board: ‘We knocked out eight songs in about eight months,’ Peter says satisfyingly. ‘It was only the music that Carl needed to provide as the lyrics all come from Orwell’s own words.’
So, with the musical finished, a cast was put together and in 2012 ‘One Georgie Orwell’ played for four nights at the Greenwich Theatre, and after creating a bit of interest there the show had a week in New York’s Lower East Side’s Teatro Latea where Dione Venables, founder of the Orwell Society, went along and wrote a lovely review.
Now, eleven years on, I asked Peter about this latest move: ‘It’s pretty obvious that George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four are more relevant than ever, Trump IS Napoleon and it could be argued that Nigel Farage is a natural for Squealer.’
And the title One Georgie Orwell? ‘I chose the football chant style as a working-class tribute to the great man.’
And now Peter Cordwell hopes that someone with good Socialist blood in their veins will take up the baton and run with it. All he asks is that he and Carl Picton get a mention.
The book can be purchased here with a foreword by Orwell expert Professor Tim Crook. All you need then is a cast, crew and a stage.
