https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera Tue, 07 Apr 2026 04:41:38 +0100 https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/39/reviews https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/39
The Dundee Courier reviewed the premiere of Nan Garland -



"Truly Original"



"Boasts a number of brilliantly-written songs"



[size=12]Dundee Rep Theatre women's singing group Loadsaweeminsingin' performed the premiere of Michael Marra's If The Moon Can Be Believed to a packed house at the theatre last night.



The new comic operetta - which is almost a complete sellout - is written by the renowned Dundee artiste, writer and musician and is being presented to celebrate the tenth anniiversary of the singing ensemble, which operates under the umbrella of the theatre's successful Community Company.



It is a hilarous tale of a a camp of truants made up of womwen of all ages who ran away from school many years ago to make their home in the wilderness.



Here they have been taught questionable knowledge by a character known as the Professor, completely unaware that school is over and too frightened to return.



The story follows what happens when one of the camp's founding members falls foul of the police. A wild and whacky plan is hatched to avoid the long arm of the law, and the ensuing chaos features a boy band, half a pantomime horse, and a band of marauding policewoman attempting to keep them on the straight and narrow.



If The Moon Can Be Believed is a truly-original production that boasts a number of brilliantly written songs providing many laughs for the whole audience.



The performance from the colourfully-costumed cast are individually memorable not only for vocal accomplishment but also for comic timing.



What all this creates is the wonderful atmosphere that can only be achieved through theatre for and by the community.



2004 Dundee Courier and Advertiser[/size] ]]> Sun, 26 Sep 2004 19:18:04 +0100 https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/37/story-synopsis https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/37


Nan Garland, a founding member of the camp, tells how her parents wanted her to marry a repulsive boy, the son of their wealthy friends, to escape debt. Instead she ran away and now lives in this haven.



[size=12]Some of the women have disguised themselves as men and return from working in the world. One of them, who works as the front-half of a rag-and-bone man's horse, tells Nan that she overheard a policeman discussing the warrant for someone who sounds just like Nan. Distraught, her and the Professor plan to tell the women they need to run away again.



Before they can do this, the camp is overrun by foolish policewomen who ineptly search the place, completely missing Nan. A cannier one amongst them takes Nan to one side and suggests they split the reward offered by her parents. She tells Nan that she is adopted and puts aside her plea of poverty on behalf of her parents as inadmissable evidence.



When the police leave, the women realise they need a plan to stay together. Rose comes up with a cunning idea. She is a twin and if she pretends to be Nan and takes the police off on a wild goose chase to her sister's house and slips away, they will hopefully arrest her sister (whose husband is a lawyer and will get her off).



Just as the plan is forming, the women are taken by surprise by the miraculous appearance of the most gorgeous boyband ever. The boyband dedicate their song to Nan and as per the plan, Rose steps up.



As truely astonishing events unfold, it becomes clear the boyband are not all they seem. Things become further complicated as both Nan's adoptive mother and her real mother turn up to battle over her, cheered on by the police...............[/size] ]]> Sat, 11 Sep 2004 23:21:39 +0100 https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/33/dundee-the-opera https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/33


[size=12]Michael Marra walks into the foyer of Dundee Rep and peers around anxiously, a meerkat of a man wearing a beret. His nervousness is easily explained. For the past six months he has not seen much of the world outside the makeshift recording studio in his Newtyle home. There, working every day, he has been consumed by a project that marks a radical departure f or Scotlands most celebrated songwriter.

I was beginning to worry about the isolation, he says once we find a seat and some black coffee. As my wife pointed out, I get strange. The voice is unmistakable a rich growl that sounds as if someone has set his throat on fire then put the flames out with a tumbler of Laphroaig.







Up close it seems a big voice for such a small man. Marra, 52 next month, has an air of vulnerability about him. Yet the clear eyes in the pockmarked face are mischievous and hold your gaze, and as he smokes his roll-ups he talks with the conviction of a man who knows he is at the height of his powers.



A sign of this confidence is his new project an opera. The choice may raise some eyebrows among those who cherish Marra for his mastery of the perfectly whittled four-minute song, finding the extraordinary in ordinary Dundonian experiences. But he says the time seemed right to try something on a bigger scale and to build on his experience of theatre writing. I wanted something complicated, he says.



Marras guiding lights will be Guys and Dolls, Gilbert and Sullivan, West Side Story and Puccini. Im pitting myself against those standards, he says with a nervous laugh. People like Puccini wanted big hits and they were writing tunes that have stood the test of time. I want it to be solid.



Due to be finished at the end of this month, the opera has the working title of Nan Garland.



Its about a group of truants plunkers as we call them in Dundee who, as they get older, just keep it up. They hide in the forest and keep it going into adulthood. And they start their own society.



People come and join them. Some of them go out to work in the normal world, pretending to be members of society but only to get funds to keep their own society going. There are complications because the police come looking for one of them, but basically their society prevails because of how they conduct it.



The working title is the name of the central character. Ive never met a woman called Nan that I didnt like. And its also a name that women are not given these days, and I like that.



The plot is not Marras he asked the Irish writer Michael Duke, formerly associate director of the Dundee Rep and now in charge of Tinderbox theatre in Belfast, to come up with a synopsis.



The result has been a liberation for Marra, who describes his usual songwriting process as a blur and a scuffle. Writing to somebody elses plot has been a release. The job is clearer. You know where you are heading. There is no fight about it. I find it quite a calm process, which is strange for me.



Commissioned by Dundee Rep and featuring a Dundonian choir called Loadsaweeminsingin, the opera will make a virtue of not being rooted in any one place even if for Marra it is hovering above a perfect part of Angus.



Also due for release is a book of short stories called Karma Mechanics, adding yet another aspect to Marras artistic output. It is being published by an old friend, Mick McCluskey, who runs a firm called Intro2 from his home in the Sidlaw Hills above Dundee.



Marra now lives in Angus, but the city on the Tay remains his touchstone, its pubs, history, footballers and failings lovingly chronicled in songs that can veer off into magic realism. This is seen in songs such as Frida Kahlos Visit to the Taybridge Bar, when St Peter at the pearly gates sends the Mexican painter to one of Marras favourite howfs.



For any artist Dundee is just the perfect place to look at the rest of the world, he says. Charles Mingus had a book called Beneath the Underdog. I always thought they should put that under Dundee on the sign outside the city.



Dundonians, he says, are the ultimate tough crowd. The last thing you do in Dundee is try to impress. Its absolutely not on. That for any artist is a great place to be you work harder.



The reason for these attitudes, he says, is the citys curious social structure. I just cannot think of any place else where there is more or less one class of people.



If there is a Dundonian middle class, I point out that most of them are probably here in the Rep eating lunch. Aye, and we can deal with them, he growls. Theyre not giving us any trouble.





Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.

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This is Michael's latest mix of the soundtrack and is available in four tracks... OVERTURE, ACT ONE, ACT TWO, and FINALE.



These are the tracks that the cast at Dundee Rep are rehearsing with in the final few weeks prior to Production.

]]> Mon, 02 Aug 2004 22:26:06 +0100 https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/28/first-performances-of-the-opera https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/28






Tickets are now on sale

for the first performances of Nan Garland - The Opera . This production

is by Dundee Rep and is to be performed by Loadsaweeminsingin. These

initial performances are titled, If The Moon Can Be Believed
A glorious musical romp in which a ragged band of female truants resort

to extreme and ridiculous measures to protect their hard-won haven when

its safety is threatened by the outside world. Enter a hapless chorus

of policewomen, two mothers fighting over the same daughter, a passing

boyband and half of a pantomime horse and you have a fantastic mellee

of melodious confusion. Gilbert & Sullivan meet Michael Marra

- what more could a body want?
Loadsaweeminsingin , (aka Dundee Rep Womens Singing Group) are

a 50-strong acapella ensemble whose raucous spirit and rich harmonies

never fail to win hearts and critical acclaim. If The Moon Can

Be Believed (Nan Garland - The Opera) is their 10th Anniversary

Production, and will be staged in Dundee Rep on Thursday 26th, Friday

27th and Saturday 28th August 2004 at 7.45pm. Matinee: Saturday 2.30pm.

Bookings: tel. 01382 223530 or Online at www.dundeerep.co.uk










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AGNES DAILLY has run away from home to join the group as she is about to be found out for truancy.. She has been worried about her Highers and has endured bullying since she went to secondary school. She is a very clever girl who doesn't like the idea of her exam results deciding her future, and is heading for the camp with very mixed emotions. Agnes heard about the camp from an English teacher who was impressed by her contribution to her 'Lord Of The Flies' debate although, her impassioned speech had been all but drowned out by her torturers chanting 'Anxious! Anxious!' Agnes loves the songs of Morrisey and the stories of Alice Munro.

more...



KATHLEEN PHIN cycled to work in the office of Kestrel Marine for five years before resigning over a bitter personal dispute with a manager. The following week she won the pools; a very large sum of money which she used to travel all over Europe cycling between expensive hotels and spending money on acts of kindness towards the old and young. During a visit to Inverewe Gardens she met a man called Raymond Hunter from Cumbernauld who she allowed to repair her bicycle while she had a cup of tea. Raymond asked her to marry him before they left the cafeteria. Kathleen politely turned him down and cycled off to Perth where she was reminded of the camp by a travelling woman who told Kathleen that she was a remarkably lucky woman. She is a Miles Davis disciple.



ROSE MacMASTER's twin sister Debbie inadvertantly killed her budgie while Rose was camping for the weekend at the back of Alyth. Debbie didn't feed the bird and there was a furious row after which Rose ran away with a carnival hand who taught her how to drink. She travelled with the carnival all over the North of England for a year, regularly being ejected from pubs for crying the budgie's name out of context. One night in a pub in Newcastle she fell in with Esther Porteous who was making her way northwards and told Rose about 'ABSENTIA', "... where the birdsong was better than the radio..". She stopped drinking and made her way to the camp where she became one of the most pragmatic and helpful members of the society. Rose is strong, reliable and secretly, a Slim Whitman fan.



ESTHER PORTEOUS trained as a Nanny at the Norland Institute where she was the top student in her year. After leaving college she became a croupier in a secret casino in Anstruther where she met a South African drummer with whom she went to Cape Town. Esther fell for the music of the townships and became an agitator in the struggle against Apartheid. She had a tape recorder and made many quality recordings of songs banned by the government, sending them to radio stations and friends around the world. Raising funds for these songwriters became her obsession and she came to be regarded as an angel by the music community. There was a rumour that Dollar Brand had written a tune for her. Esther has never said why she came back and nobody has asked her about it. She replied to an ad in the paper for a Nanny's job.



MERGRET SCANLON was a shop steward in Timex up until its closure, when she stole the X from the big sign during the night, helped by her friend Kathleen Phin. They met when Mergret was delivering money raised by the Timex workers for the occupation force at the Smith and Hutton sit-in. One of the boilermakers was a member of Kathleen's cycling club and she was there to make a contribution also. Mergret was married very briefly and her husband was killed in the Falkland Islands. She moved to the camp not long after the Timex closure having visited many times over the years. She is familiar with many of the old bothy ballads and the songs of the travelling people.



NAN GARLAND is a very strong swimmer and admires the work of Joni Mitchell and Liz L

ochhead.





All other cast members apart from the police have been at the camp since their early teens.]]> Wed, 28 Apr 2004 14:58:49 +0100 https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/10/online-radio https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/10


Just click to open your media player and begin listening!
You can also listen to other music by Michael Marra at Radio Marra



Just click to open your media player. ]]> Wed, 28 Apr 2004 14:57:29 +0100 https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/9/nan-garland-the-opera https://musical1.com/nan-garland-the-opera/blog/9


The Copyright to all the Music, Lyrics, and Images, belongs to Michael Marra.



All works on this website are Copyright Protected.





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This site is still under construction but it WILL be finished soon.



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