Go West: It's Morrissey - The Musical

MORRISSEY - The Musical! It just had to happen. Due to open next year in the Lyric Theatre in London, the show is based around 20 of The Smiths songs and will actually be called Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others.

The Smiths - who are legally only Morrissey and Marr - have given their blessing to their project, but only after receiving solemn assurances that the show would be "the very antithesis of Mama Mia". So don't expect it to feature on the West End bring-them-along- in-a-coach-after-they've-seen-Buckingham Palace circuit, as is the case with the Rod Stewart and Queen shows.

There will be no inane "narrative" linking the songs. This will be an altogether new take on the "popular music- based stage show"; its main theme will be "dislocation" (that will look good on the ads) and the producers will be "teasing out the complex emotions of the band's songs".

The people behind the show, Andrew Wale and Perrin Manzer Allen, are best known for Jacques Brel's Anonymous Society, in which translations of the Belgian's singer's works were used to "create a series of highly charged interlinking performance fragments". Forget all notions of a sing-along-a-Smiths night.

The songs will be arranged for string quartet with a percussive lute accompaniment and sung live by the cast of six.

It appears that there's still a bit of a tussle between Wale/ Allen and Morrissey/Marr as to what the 20 songs should be. Memo to Wale/Allen: there's only going to be one winner in that battle.

The show will be a "film without a text" and will "evolve through a loose pastiche of scenes linked to each of the songs; video sequences may also be included," say Wale/Allen. "It certainly isn't a biographical look at The Smiths."

All very impressionistic, but I'm not that sure about the lute thing and the dancers - an interpretative dance of How Soon Is Now? Either way, the show looks as being as complex as the relationships within the band itself.

The venture is just another demonstration of how the traditional performing arts are increasingly turning towards the potent box-office appeal of popular music. Already we've had Merce Cunningham choreographing dance pieces to the music of Radiohead and Sigur Ros; we've had the English National Opera ramraiding the Glastonbury Festival; both Talvin Singh and Asian Dub Foundation are currently working on popular music/ opera crossover projects; and just last week the British Royal Ballet announced that Christopher Bruce is to choreograph three songs by Jimi Hendrix for the troupe's next performance.

The ostensible reason behind these "daring new collaborations" is that they act as a bridge between high art and popular culture. So Jimi Hendrix fans are going to go to the ballet just because they're using his music? And Radiohead fans are going to attend contemporary physical theatre events? (Actually, they probably will.)

It's not so much a crisis in the "high arts" as a realisation among its practitioners that the lights of the media will shine that bit brighter upon them if a pop culture reference is included. It really can't be that long before we're all eagerly awaiting the new ITV series Sculpture Idol.

For "daring", read "novelty value" when it comes to many of these ridiculous crossover events. When it works, as when ENO came down to Glastonbury and did their usual Wagner set, it works because they're playing to their strengths - and not including I Believe in a Thing Called Love in their set, even if it is the orchestrated version.

The Queen and Rod Stewart shows are one thing: they're basically just expensive karaoke nights for the terminally dim. But video installations and choreographed dance movements for The Smiths? We'll get back to you on that one.

[ bboyd@irish-times.ie ]