Robbie! The Musical

Robbie was conceived as a musical by a strange twist of fate.     Around 1980  Bruce Graham was working in the pit orchestra of the London Palladium during the run of Hans Andersen, starring Tommy Steele.     

With much time off between matinees and the evening shows, Bruce took up reading the works of Robert Burns, with a view to staging a musical in the Hans Andersen genre.       It became quite an obsession with him, as Burn's writings are so strong,  and he did eventually finish the musical.    Unfortunately, when timed, it ran for six and a half hours!!!       It had to be severely clipped back!   (More than a few times!)

In 1982 Bruce had moved into Andrew Lloyd-Webber's show 'Song and Dance' in  the Palace Theatre, starring Marti Webb and Wayne Sleep.   At this time it was proof-read by the legendary Hollywood musical writer Alan J. Lerner, who gave his opinions on it, and some useful recommendations for the musical being performed.      Again, being a busy session musician in the London studios during the daytime and shows in the evenings, the musical was placed in a cardboard box and stored.

Eventually, it was lost, literally, and it seemed that it would have been relegated to posterity as a non-event.         (It was actually physically lost between 1982 and 2006!!! )       When it finally resurfaced in 2006 after a break of 24 years, Bruce polished it up, cut it back to two hours, including an interval.      

Bruce's wife Sharon read the new version and didn't want the musical to be forgotten again, so she encouraged him to promote it and get it staged somewhere.      In the time between the original script and the revised version, the working conditions in the theatre in London's West End had changed dramatically, and the professional companies were cutting down on the amount of people onstage, and in the pit.

  As Robbie - the Musical  needs a large chorus it is now more suited to amateur operatic societies because they need the larger show in order to give their members something to do  onstage.      Many of today's professionally written musicals have only a few characters in them.

Being one of Britain's top arrangers, Bruce has himself arranged all the orchestral parts for a seven-piece line-up and Conductor.     There are also many (optionally) added parts which can be added to bring the orchestra up to a larger size.

Robbie - the Musical   At present it is being reviewed by a number of companies for the next few seasons as we have just past the 250th anniversary year of Robert Burns' birth.     There has been more books written about Burns than anyone else in history.

The second adaptation is in the form of a Concert Evening, with full chorus, soloists, and narration.    This gives Choral Societies the opportunity to present the concert, without the headaches of staging the full musical, and with savings on scenery, costumes, and extra rehearsal time.