Ben Elton/Andrew Lloyd Webber musical prepares for Liverpool Premiere

Mar 13 2008 by Joe Riley

Joe Riley talks exclusively to Ben Elton about the musical he has written with Andrew Lloyd Webber that’s opening at Lipa

IT’S THE new globe-trotting Lloyd Webber musical, and it’s being premiered not in the West End, nor on Broadway, but in Liverpool.

Paul McCartney’s performance school Lipa had the guts to ask for the privilege, and the world’s most successful show creator and his famous collaborator had the confidence to say yes.

Ben Elton, veteran scriptwriter of The Young Ones and Blackadder, has travelled a long way from motormouth stand-up scourge of Thatcherism to laid-back creator and director of stage musicals.

And this is the next biggie – to be red-carpeted in Toronto next year, and already chosen as the main cultural contribution to South Africa’s 2010 World Cup.

The Boys In the Photograph is a major revision of the Lloyd Webber/Elton show The Beautiful Game – and thereby lies a clue to the re-launch.

"We wanted to change the title so people would stop thinking it was just a soccer musical," reveals Ben Elton.

Yes, there is a football team central to the plot.

But this is also Belfast 1969, at the start of the troubles: a tale of teenagers from both sides of the political, social and religious divide. The boys who are bonded by a team spirit, and the girls who hang out with them.

It could, insists Ben, equally have featured a netball team and a string of guys.

"It is about ordinary young people living in extraordinary and difficult times. The show could be set in any split community," he says.

"When I first presented the story to Andrew, I had the very convoluted idea that it could be performed in a series of places, and the location could shift from Belfast to Kosovo or where-ever. But that proved too complicated.

"Like any good tales, at its heart is a love story, and whether or not it can survive despite violence and hatred."

The original millennium year London production got good reviews.

The Sunday Times hailed it as Lloyd Webber’s greatest musical to date (which was quite a statement given Joseph, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and Phantom).

The Beautiful Game ran for a year, so why close it down and why re-write?

"It ended very bleakly. The conclusion saw the hero ending up as a terrorist."

Then along came 9/11, the Iraq war, and the 7/7 London outrages.

"We now feel that the initial premise was wrong, and that good story-telling should be uplifting," admits Ben.

"Neither Andrew nor I think that human nature is irredeemably corrupt. There’s a line in the show which declares that no child was ever born to hate, and that’s what we believe."

They also believe – absolutely – in Lipa’s ability and expertise to provide a magnificent curtain-raiser on the new version.

Ben and Andrew have ditched the original publicity blurb about it being a workshop production: "That sounds like people sitting around in a studio in jeans and reading from scripts and asking how this or that should go."