Ever since the box-office receipts for Mamma Mia! were published (30 million happy punters and counting), the music world has been rushing with unseemly haste towards the boards. They call them "Jukebox Musicals", where a flimsy back-story is thrown at a bunch of popular songs in an effort to be classified as "musical theatre".
Even the best in the bad bunch here - the Madness Our House musical - couldn't quite cut the commercial ice. It was similar with the worst of the bad bunch - Ben Elton's Tonight's The Night, which was based on the songs of Rod Stewart.
It did seem that it was lights out for musical theatre when a trio of big-budget shows based on the music of Elvis, John Lennon and The Beach Boys all stuttered to premature halts two years ago. The combined losses of the three shows was estimated at $30 million.
"With that sort of money going down the pan, these shows have proved - despite the success of Mamma Mia! - that this is not a magic formula for successful musicals," remarked trade newspaper, The Stage, at the time of their closure. "There's no point in putting on a collection of songs that people could just stay at home and listen to on their CDs instead. The thing about Mamma Mia! is it is a well-crafted musical. It's a great feel-good show in its own right - whether or not it has Abba's music attached to it."
None of this has stopped the advanced plans for two ambitious new musical projects. Gorillaz (in the shape of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett) are putting the finishing touches to the musical Monkey: Journey to the West (based on the classic 16th-century Chinese book Monkey King) while The Flaming Lips are currently working with West Wing creator, Aaron Sorkin, to turn the band's Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots album into a Broadway musical next year.
What both have simultaneously going for and against them is that they are skewed away from the very exacting demands of musical theatre. Both, no doubt, will be after the "artier" end of the market and will be judged accordingly; it will hinder because neither is the type of shows that the audience arrives to in a coach.
The Monkey musical will be a big son et lumiere extravaganza with Shaolin martial arts and circus trickery thrown into the mix. The operatic score by Albarn will be a first for the former Blur man, who will be composing for a 30-piece orchestra using both Western and traditional Chinese instruments. All a long way from cheeky-chappie Britpop, but annoyingly for his critics, Albarn has shown himself to be a most proficient musician, whether turning his hand to Mali folk music or dub reggae. Artist Jamie Hewlett has been charged with creating a "visual universe" for a production that will feature "spider maidens" and "skeleton demons".
Early predictions of the show are that it will either be a spectacular failure or will end up in Las Vegas battling it out with Cirque du Soleil. The show debuts in Manchester this June.
The Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots musical is the brainchild of Des McAnuf, the director of The Who's Tommy stage show. Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne already has the basic plot for the musical mapped out: "There's the real world and then there's this fantastical world" he says. "This girl, the Yoshimi character, is dying of something. And these two guys are battling to come visit her in the hospital. And as one of the boyfriends envisions trying to save the girl, he enters this other dimension where Yoshimi is this Japanese warrior and the pink robots are an incarnation of her disease. It's almost like the disease has to win in order for her soul to survive . . . or something like that . . . it sounds bizarre, but so does a musical about a 'deaf, dumb, and blind' pinball virtuoso. And that turned out okay."
