Northern Broadside’s associate director and composer Conrad Nelson stresses the
key role of live music in their productions. The actors all perform multiple roles in the three plays that make up Barrie Rutter’s production of
The War of the Roses, but most of them also play musical instruments, sometimes off-stage, at other times as an integral part of the action. These are first and foremost actors, not musicians, and, as the actor Andy Cryer, (Catesby in
Richard III) explains, this sometimes means having to acquire new musical skills very quickly.
The music in Northern Broadsides productions is never incidental, it is always integrated into the staging. For example, in the first of the three plays,
Henry VI,
the fight between the English hero Lord Talbot and the French heroine, Joan of Arc, is staged by having Talbot standing on a heavy moving platform on which is suspended a huge drum that he plays energetically to punctuate his bellicose words. The booming of that drum exactly matches the bombast coming from his mouth. Joan, on the other hand, dances victoriously round him to a jaunty tune played by three on-stage actor/musicians. Her music emphasises her freedom and mobility in contrast to the heavy and cumbersome booming of Talbot.
Conrad Nelson, who plays the title role in
Richard III, composed all the music used in
The Wars of the Roses including
the terrific jazz-style piece which most of the company play and which opens the modern dress production of
Richard III. Music punctuates the action of the entire play adding to the atmosphere and the meaning. Towards the end of the story, the climactic Battle of Bosworth that finally sees Richard defeated is performed by the actors using not only Shakespeare’s text, but drumming, rhythmical
dancing in heavy wooden clogs, and by an on-stage band composed of three saxophones, a trumpet, and a double bass.
