Robbie - the Musical      

The History behind 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.     

There was a lot of time off between matinees and the evening shows, so 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 the writings are so strong,  and he did eventually finish the musical.    Unfortunately, when timed, it ran for six and a half hours!!!       It was severely clipped back to two and three quarter hours, (plus an interval.)

By this time 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 Alan Jay Lerner, who gave his opinions on it, and recommendations for its'  being performed.                 Again, being a busy session musician in the London studios during the daytime, the musical was placed in a cardboard box and stored.

Eventually, it was lost, and it seemed that it would have been relegated to posterity as a non-event.         (It was actually 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 one-hour acts, (plus 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 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 larger 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 the 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 many (optionally) added parts which can be added to bring the orchestra up to a larger size.

Robbie - the Musical  is at present being reviewed by a number of companies for the  2009 season as this will be the 250th anniversary year of Robert Burns' birth.