Crush

Theatre Royal Brighton, New Road, Tuesday, September 22, to Saturday, September 26

BAD Girls and Waterloo Road writer Maureen Chadwick admits she loved the world of the all-girls boarding school as recreated in the Mallory Towers and St Trinian’s books.

“My mum introduced me to those books when I was a kid, and I found out her mum had introduced her to them,” she says in the week Crush made its world premiere in Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre.

“They were an all-girl world, where girls could be the star of the show. Most readers of those books would never have ever gone to boarding school themselves.”

A fellow fan of the genre was musician and lyricist Kath Gotts, who also worked with Chadwick on the musical adaptation of cult ITV drama series Bad Girls.

So Crush was born – a tale set in an all-girls boarding school in 1963, just as the UK is about to undergo a major cultural and social shift.

Set up by a former Suffragette Dame Dorothea Dosserdale School For Girls is open to both fee-paying girls and those from working class families on a scholarship.

But its tradition of fostering free spirits looks like it might disappear with the arrival of new headmistress Miss Bleacher.

“It was a common theme in those books,” says Chadwick. “A new headmistress comes in and it’s all for one, and one for all as the girls try to overthrow a tyrant.

“In the opening number she sets out her stall, announcing her view on education for girls is all about being the breeders of future leaders yet to come – the future mothers of the future sons of England.”

The Victorian values are in strict opposition to what the real all-girls schools of the period, like Roedean and Cheltenham, were doing.

“They were trying to educate girls so they could have an independent life and earn their own income,” says Chadwick.

“There’s a social revolution under way, but the headmistress represents the old orders who want to turn the clock back to more conventional Victorian values, rather than the spirit of the founder of the school.”

Part of the new headmistress's desire comes out of the discovery of “unnatural behaviour” going on between two sixth-formers in the Art Room – one of many issues the musical tackles.

Crush has teamed up with Diversity Role Models and Stonewall to create a schools’ programme exploring homophobia and issues of bullying using the musical as a basis.

“There is a particular niche prejudice about anything lesbian that people think it has to be serious-minded,” says Chadwick.

“You can’t have fun with that particular subject in the way La Cage Aux Folles does about gay men.

“I think with Crush we are going back to an older tradition of musical comedy, in the vein of Guys And Dolls, or Sweet Charity, rather than Avenue Q, Spamalot or The Book Of Mormon.

“We aren’t sending up anything, we take these adolescent emotions very seriously, but at the same time we can have fun with the conventions of the genre.”

Leading the cast are Rosemary Ashe as the formidable Miss Bleacher, Sara Crowe as the energetic Miss Austin, and Kirsty Malpass as the mysterious new hockey teacher Miss Givings.

In writing the musical Chadwick was keen to get inside the head of her tyrant, as she was with Bad Girls’ sexual predator Jim Fenner.

“We have to know what it’s like if we were her,” says Chadwick. “Our headmistress does have a back story which emerges – and it’s not something the audience will expect!

“Part of the style of doing a story set in a world derived from schoolgirl novels is the world is a little bit preposterous. We enjoy being preposterous – chances are in a musical comedy things are going to turn out all right in the end!”

The Brighton visit is part of a short run to try the new musical out. It will come to director Anna Linstrum's home city straight from its debut run at Coventry, and will later move on to the Richmond Theatre.

“It’s the whole process with a new musical,” says Chadwick. “We have had various workshops in the past with invited audiences to test it out, but the point of this short run was to properly try it out with different audiences.

“We hope people are back from their summer holidays ready for the autumn term to come back to school with us. Onwards and upwards – hockey sticks to the fore!”

Starts 7.30pm, 2.30pm matinees, tickets from £12.90. Call 08448 717650.