Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

It’s such as shame that when theatre types turn films into stage musicals they always pick sensitive films for sensitive people. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Dirty Dancing, Billy Elliot: you know the score. Why is there no musical based on The Guns of Navaroneor Kiss Me Deadly?

Well, Robyn Hitchcock, the eccentric British songwriter, has been commissioned to write a musical based on the Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry classic Magnum Force. “It’s a film that seemed to be on all the time when I was on tour,” Hitchcock says. “By the fifth time I saw it, I became addicted to it. It’s taken a very strange hold on my life.”