The Scotsman 16 September 2024
When you think about musical-theatre writing partnerships, you imagine earnest young people hunched over a piano in the Brill Building, batting musical phrases and lyrical ideas across the keys. You picture them living and breathing every moment together until the score is complete.
That was not how things were for Andy McGregor and Isla Cowan. Their work on To Save The Sea, a musical touring Scotland from this month, began in lockdown. Cowan, the Edinburgh playwright, had seen a tweet by McGregor, composer and artistic director of Glasgow’s Sleeping Warrior theatre company, looking for a collaborator for a large-scale sung-through musical.
“I was researching environmental activism and came across the story of the Brent Spar in 1995 when Greenpeace activists scaled and occupied the oil store,” says Cowan. “The story of what happened at the Brent Spar is so spectacular and theatrical – there are people hanging off the oil store, giant water cannons, the police arrive and it turns into an international political saga. It didn’t feel like something I could capture in a play. It needed the heightened reality of a musical. We had a Zoom call and Andy loved the idea as much as I did.” [READ MORE]