Chapter 4. Stag
At university I did a joint honours degree in both Drama and English. For my English thesis, as has been just mentioned, I focussed on Lancashire dialect writing with reference to key local political events (such as Peterloo). For my Drama thesis, my enquiry centred around the influence of early folk and pagan rituals on the later development of theatre. I became fascinated by such rituals and customs and traditions and wanted to find ways of harnessing their raw dramatic power and energy into new contemporary work. This had been the impetus behind parts of 'The Tall Tree' (see above) which had incorporated Morris dancing and a Mummers Play. It was written alongside the development of a song cycle Chris and I worked on in the early 70's around the former community of Shaw Town, an area that bordered Flixton and Urmston, where Chris and I had each grown up. I suppose, looking back, we wanted to try and trace a line of continuity between the lives of the people who lived there when it was still known as Shaw Town with the town we knew ourselves and now saw around us. For the through line we wrote about a road, a cinder path known locally as Penny Lane, believe it or not, which linked various key landmarks that can still be found today nestling between the new estates:
From Brooklyn Grange to De Brooke Court Farm
The road runs ever on
Copper Beech tree, Sycamore, lean
Towards the sun
And grow...
And in the silence if you strain
Your ears you might just hear
(The sound of) hunting horns and horses' hooves
Swiftly drawing near -
Whoa!
With 'Stag' we wanted to take this much further and much deeper. That incursion of the past breaking through in occasional glimpses and echoes – that was the kind of thing I think I was trying to capture.
'Stag' tells the story* of a young, musically gifted young woman (Sally) who becomes haunted as a child by a series of recurring dreams, dominated by the mysterious and enigmatic figure of Herne the Hunter. Then in life Sally has a few key encounters with strangers that significantly shape the future course of her life. These strangers might, or might not, be incarnations of Herne, re-enactments of her dreams; or they may just be the manifestations of a growing psychosis. The audience is left to decide.
(*A fuller version of the story can be found on the sleeve notes of the CD of all the music put together some years ago by Chris).
Instead of the more conventional romances with their happy-ever-after endings that one normally associates with the musical genre, we wanted to subvert and replace those with something that was altogether darker, more Gothic and infused with the traditions of pagan folk rituals, while remaining firmly rooted in the contemporary.
To help us realise this ambition, initially we had the story focus on the possibility of Sally re-enacting an ages-old ritual that allowed us to slip the narrative between two very distinct time-frames, and we used the Shaw Town Song Cycle as a framework for this, while we also brought back the White Rose Queen and The Tall Tree from that first play we had collaborated on. In addition we wrote a great many new songs, so that by the time we were ready to start rehearsals there were well over 30 songs, and the contemporary aspect of the story itself shifted between the 70's and the 50's, this too being reflected musically.
It was certainly original and quite unlike most people's idea of a traditional musical, and it had a certain mysterious and powerful atmospheric hold that it wielded over audiences, but it was also quite a mess, with the narrative lurching all over the place. The shifts in time, though necessary, were confusing; the realisation of the distant pagan past far too specific (and therefore no longer frightening), and the slipping between dreaming and waking far too arbitrary. It was also, at something like three and a half hours, way too long, and I don't think anybody really understood what was going on. Even Chris and I were unsure at times, and we'd written the thing!
Having said that, Chris once again did a quite magnificent job in writing a brilliant score: the music is astonishing in its breadth and variety, and is always judged exactly right. He again put together another fantastic band, using many of the musicians who had played for 'Hair' plus a number of additions, notably Alan on sax. The cast responded gamely to not really knowing what the whole thing was about and demonstrated again the real strength and hallmark of a Genesis production – the superb, committed ensemble playing – and there were particularly memorable central performances by Alison Davis as Sally and Louis Grant as Herne, who exhibited a real chemistry between them and made the whole preposterous plot utterly plausible by their skill and integrity.
When it finished its first run (at Altrincham Garrick again in 1977) I knew that we hadn't pulled it off as I had hoped. But I also knew that underneath all the extraneous “stuff” that cluttered it all up, so that it had practically sunk beneath the sheer weight and volume of the material, there was the nugget of a really good show: we just hadn't found it yet. Two years later, however, in 1979 at The Grange Arts Centre Oldham and again at The Royal Exchange Manchester, I believe that we did.