This musical about Joan Littlewood’s life story is told with her own uncompromising honesty and reveals a mighty love story at its heart.
One woman with a revolution to stage
Anti-establishment, visionary, rude and glorious, Joan Littlewood fired the imagination of a generation. Based on her life story, Sam Kenyon’s musical charts the emotional highs and lows of Joan’s journey from The East End to the West End.
Joan Littlewood was the anarchic revolutionary of 20th century theatre. Her unique Theatre Workshop was responsible for a raft of successes including Oh, What A Lovely War!, and breathed new life into the Theatre Royal Stratford East.
Told with her own uncompromising honesty, this musical reveals a mighty love story at its heart. Miss Littlewood played in the Swan Theatre in the summer of 2018.
THE PLOT
The year is 1914 and Joan Littlewood is born to a teenage single mother in Stockwell, London. Opinionated from a young age, Joan attends the theatre and decides that she could do a better job putting on a show, and so begins Joan’s career in theatre.
We then re-join Joan in her late teens as she is developing her career. She receives a scholarship to attend RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) but is disillusioned by her experiences there and decides to quit before graduating. Joan then walks to Manchester where she meets like-minded left-wing theatricals and begins working on performances with the group. There Joan begins a relationship with fellow member of the group Jimmie Miller and falls pregnant with his child before deciding to have an abortion.
Moving forward to 1937, Joan is still in Manchester, however her relationship with Jimmie is coming to an end when he takes interest in a new member of the group Jean Newlove. Gerry Raffles then joins them and catches Joan’s eye. The left-wing company then name themselves the Theatre Union aiming to unite communities and reflect real life. As the company become increasingly radical censors crack down on the group, which ironically pushes them to become more provocative. Meanwhile, Joan and Gerry’s relationship becomes more intimate.
In 1945, Joan goes to the Arts Council with hopes of securing funding for a new play however they refuse to offer finance to her work claiming it is too much of a risk. During this period the company have no base and are constantly moving around and putting on shows in different towns, whilst Gerry is trying to find a permanent base for them. A new woman Barbara Young joins the company and Joan becomes upset when Gerry and Barbara have an affair. By 1953, Gerry has come through on his promise to find the company a permanent base in Stratford, East London. Moving on to 1958, Jimmie decides to leave the company claiming the programme has become to focused on crowd-pleasers, however many other actors and writers start becoming involved in Joan’s work.
In the early 1960s Gerry is blatantly having flings with other women and so Joan leaves him claiming she’s fallen in love with another man, architect Cedric Price, who she goes to Paris with. However, in 1963 she receives news that Gerry has been in an accident and returns home to see him. Gerry convinces Joan to return to London and continue working.
In the mid-1960s Barbara Windsor auditions for the company and Joan is immediately impressed by her, sparking the beginning of a great working relationship. There are tensions in rehearsals for Joan’s newest show when the script hasn’t been finalised but in the end the show comes together becoming the hit Oh, What a Lovely War!
Time goes by and we learn the peaks and pits of Joan’s career in the 1960s and 1970s. However, in 1975 Gerry passes away and Joan regrets not appreciating her time with him more, arguing he was the only person who came close to truly understanding her.
