Jane Horrocks is to celebrate the post-punk northern new wave of her youth in a production next year which is part-dance, part-gig and, she insists, zero talking.
Accompanied by a live band and dancers, Horrocks is to perform cover versions of tracks by bands which might include Soft Cell, the Human League and Joy Division for a new show at London’s Young Vic opening in March 2016.
It is a difficult concept to explain, Horrocks admits, but she is clear about what will not be in the show, which is called If You Kiss Me, Kiss Me.
“I think I had lost a little bit of faith in theatre,” she said. “I found when I went to see plays and they played a fantastic piece of music at the beginning of the play then stopped that fantastic piece of music, I felt very disappointed. I thought: ‘Oh why do they have to talk now?’ Why not play the music again?
“Then I thought: ‘Why don’t you do a show, use these brilliant pieces of music and give them a theatricality?’ It will be a combo of a gig and a show.”
It will be theatre but definitely not a musical. “I really don’t respond to musicals and a lot of the time it is to do with the speaking. It’s ‘why are you speaking now?’ It’s that merging of singing and speaking I don’t really get and there will be no speaking in this show.”
The show will be directed and choreographed by Aletta Collins, an associate artist at the Royal Opera House whose commercial work includes Bend It Like Beckham.
The production will not be telling a linear story, although there will be a theme running through it. Nor will it be a Pan’s People on Top of the Pops show. “It is an expression of the music through the dance rather than high kicks and leaping,” said Horrocks, before adding: “There will be a certain amount of leaping as well.”
The music was the soundtrack to her adolescence growing up in Lancashire in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“I was a post-punk child and massively into bands like Joy Division. I listened to them over and over. It is amazing, having known all the lyrics then I can still recall all the lyrics and the order of the tracks of the album. I know exactly what’s coming next – I listened to them that much.”
It will attract people of a certain age who can’t think of a better night out than listening to Horrocks sing Soft Cell songs but she hopes for a younger audience too. “That’s why we’ve been trying to rework a lot of the tracks. They’re all perfect songs but we’ll do a different take on quite a lot of them. I see 18-year-olds walking around with Joy Division T-shirts on which makes me feel very old. It is brilliant that those bands are still highly thought of by the current generation.”
Horrocks, who was last on stage last year in East is East, will forever be remembered for her performance in the film Little Voice where she mimicked Shirley Bassey, Judy Garland and Edith Piaf, but this show will be a long way from that, she said. “I think it will show a very different side to me, it is a much darker version of me that people will see,” she said. “This show is like a dream for me, I’ve not felt this creatively inspired for a very long time.”
David Lan, the Young Vic’s artistic director, called it “a new kind of show” and he was thrilled to have Horrocks, a friend of the theatre, back after performances there in Annie Get Your Gun in 2009 and The Good Soul of Szechuan in 2008.
The Horrocks project was named as part of a 2016 season which will include a revival of Blue/Orange, a new version of Lorca’s Yerma and a play tackling the subject of female genital mutilation.
That play is called Cuttin’ It, by Charlene James, which centres on two 15-year-old Somali girls living in the UK. Lan said the aim was for it to find its widest possible audience so it is being co-produced with the Royal Court and will also play at Birmingham Rep, Sheffield Crucible and the Yard theatre in east London.
The revival of Joe Penhall’s psychiatric hospital-set Blue/Orange, first performed at the National Theatre 15 years ago, will be directed by Matthew Xia, while Yerma will be directed by Australian director Simon Stone, whose adaptation of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck was last year seen at the Barbican.
