Metta Theatre has announced the premiere of the first episode of the film of a brand-new musical, CELLS, written, developed and recorded entirely during lockdown by the award-winning writer/director P Burton-Morgan and composer Ben Glasstone.
CELLS stars Metta’s recently announced Patron, the Olivier award winning Clive Rowe alongside rising star Lem Knights. The cast album is also available now via Spotify and other digital platforms accessible here.
A university science lab. A kebab shop at 2am. An online gaming forum. Two strangers’ lives become intertwined. Alan Bennett meets The Streets in this tender and uplifting new work, giving voice to the lives of two everyday blokes.
Metta have partnered with three major regional venues – Royal & Derngate Northampton, Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch and the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough – with each partner venue hosting subsequent episodes on their websites, as follows:
EPISODE 2: Tuesday 20 April Royal & Derngate
EPISODE 3: Weds 21 April Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch
EPISODE 4: Thurs 22 April Stephen Joseph Theatre
EPISODE 5: Friday 23 April Royal & Derngate
EPISODE 6: Saturday 24 April Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch
EPISODE 7: Sunday 25 April Stephen Joseph Theatre
The full film will be available on Monday 26 April and will be free to all to access via YouTube with a suggested donation (£3 per episode, £10 for the whole film) – all of which will go to the three regional theatres to help support their recovery.
https://www.mettatheatre.co.uk/cells
P Burton-Morgan, who in 2020 won the Writers Guild of Great Britain Award for musical theatre book writing for In the Willows explains, “It’s extraordinary to think about what we achieved in 2 days of rehearsal, 2 days in the recording studio and just 4 days of filming. But what’s even more extraordinary is how this piece – which was written as, and one day hopefully soon will be produced as, a stage musical, exists so fully as a film in its own right. It’s thrilling to stretch two artforms to meet each other and I hope paves the way for more theatre projects that are not merely ‘captured’ on film (and of course as an album too) but exist across a diversity of media forms as a myriad of artworks in their own right.”
Clive Rowe said, “It’s so rare to work on such a new and innovative piece of musical/theatre/film. P Burton-Morgan’s wonderful book and lyrics, brought vividly to life by Ben Glasstone’s music, create an exquisitely crafted landscape for Neil and JoJo to express their visions of the world they live in. And working with fresh new talent Lem Knights was pure joy.”
