Jenifer Toksvig

Book & lyrics by Jenifer Toksvig
Music by Cathy Shostak
Directed by David Gilmore
Musical Supervisor Mark Warman

In our story, Nelson is played by two people simultaneously, a boy and a man, so we can see both his instinctive reactions and his measured responses. The man is his conscience, the boy his truth. We meet the boy first, as Nelson joins the navy at the age of 12 - alone, afraid, but already very able.

This scene is a flashback - the first of many, for the show actually takes place in real-time on the day of the Battle of Trafalgar: the day Nelson died.

We follow him through the day, and as we do so, we also follow a gun crew below decks. Samuel Miller is excited to have received a letter from home. 'Molly', who is the same age as Nelson was when he joined up, is desperately trying to keep up with everyone. George F. Herbert has a secret to keep. John Harris ribs Joshua Brown about his love for his girlfriend, and John Jamieson tries to keep them all alive.

As Nelson struggles to run his private life as successfully as he runs a ship, the men below decks try to focus on the battle rather than on home. They must all prepare themselves for the possibility that they will make the ultimate sacrifice; for their country, for their loved ones, for each other. One question plagues them all...

The Boy encourages Nelson to focus on the upcoming battle rather than on Emma Hamilton.

Frances, Nelson's wife, receives the occasional letter from him, and they are very distant and impersonal.

The Gun Crew sort through their few belongings to write their last will and testament before the battle: something they are fairly used to doing. They try to be upbeat about it.

Nelson and Sir William Hamilton come to an agreement with regard to Sir William's wife, Emma

Mark played and we all sang through the songs and read all the parts. It's always odd to hear the show out loud for the first time. It was very, very different then. The gun crew barely existed, and Act II was little more than a sketch of ideas.

Act II was still sketchy, but the gun crew began to be developed at this stage.

With an invited audience, and some very useful feedback. The women in Nelson's life were notably absent in this draft.

A brief airing to give us the chance to see the work and make more changes.

With the gun crew now more fully developed, the women were able to step forward more than they had. Now we started to consider the way in which our device of having two people play Nelson should be working. The development we did during this workshop process resulted in a Fifth Draft: the show actually presented at the final reading. We are currently developing that into a Sixth Draft.

Featuring performers from the Soho Theatre reading, we were delighted to see the audience spontaneously wave their Union Jacks during Band of Brothers.

 

We were featured on LBC's lunchtime slot during a show dedicated to the subject of Nelson. Some of the fantastic performers from our Soho Theatre reading came into the studio to perform Band of Brothers live, with Mark Warman at the piano. The lovely Bonnie Langford very kindly performed Not a Word From You. We spent the rest of the day talking about the show and playing the music on various local BBC radio stations.