About

I write in all fields where there are words to be spoken or sung. I have written six musicals, four screenplays, four plays and a hundred songs. Whatever it is that I’m working on, it’s with a view to put it in front of an audience. I spend more time on musicals, plays and songs because I love the immediacy of theatre and live music. You can’t beat the honesty of an audience’s reaction.

I teach at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and London Studio Centre. I was the Musical Director of the Foundation Course showcase at Arts Educational Chiswick for five years and have been visiting staff at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts and Bird College. Working with all these talented students and colleagues greatly informs my writing.

My work as a musician has taken me to venues as diverse as Abbey Road and The National Theatre; as a musical director I’ve worked in theatres, hotels and museums and many things in between; I’ve accompanied many a ballet and tap class, gigged with popstars of a bygone age and arranged music for a drag act or two, but nothing gives me greater pleasure than writing and seeing it animated by the colourful characters I’ve been lucky enough to meet along the way.

I suppose what I’m trying to do is to capture a moment as honestly as possible – be it a mood captured in a pop song, an encounter between two people or a solitary figure singing onstage. I try to string enough of these moments together to make the story complete, and I hope by so doing that it’s entertaining.

“If you can know where you’re going, you’ve gone.” – Stephen Sondheim

Writing is re-writing is a well known axiom, but it’s amazing how much time you waste not knowing what you want to say and carrying on regardless. I used to think writing it all out of your system was the solution, but refining from a point of quantity isn’t really good enough; it has to come from a point of quality – or at least a point of understanding what you were trying to say in the first place. If there’s anything I can share with you it’s that. Not so much a case of write what you know but know what you want to write before you put digit to keypad.

I wish I’d done that ten years ago.