Kay Mellor is an award-winning writer for stage and TV. She is the mastermind who wrote Band of Gold, and now she has adapted the very popular Fat Friends as a musical along with music by Nicholas Lloyd Webber.
Kay said that Josh Andrews who produces the show initially approached her to do the book of a musical that he was working on, but she rejected that idea and asked if he would look at her idea for a musical based on the immensely successful TV show Fat Friends.
The show centres on the lives of a group of overweight friends who struggle with the absurdities of modern dieting. The TV version launched James Corden’s career and the musical features Scotland’s own Elaine C Smith.
Our reviewer Mike Smith thinks it is excellent and Kay herself explained how you might feel after seeing it. She said : “I defy anyone to walk out of that auditorium not feeling good about themselves. When it opened in Leeds one woman came along three times!”
In the video below we met her as she watched rehearsals attentively. It was a lovely half hour when she explained that she is quite proprietorial of this new work
She said that she follows this show in particular because she loves it. She also wrote ‘A Passionate Woman’ based largely on a story her mother told her, but said : “I don’t follow A Passionate Woman now. I might not go to one of my shows in a new theatre now. I did a bit in the beginning, in the early days but this is still very very new. It’s a musical and I am still finding moments , I am still honing it. You ask my cast they must be bored to tears with me!. I change the lines, and after every performance I end up with about three pages of notes. If people are paying money to come and see something they need to see the very best that it can be. I feel that I have a responsibility to make it as good as I possibly can. I will keep striving to hone it and make it better all the time.”
A chat with Kay Mellor – writer of Fat Friends from The Edinburgh Reporter On Vimeo on Vimeo.
Thursday 19 – Sunday 21 April
EDINBURGH Playhouse / 0844 871 3014 / tickets here.
Mon 30 April – Sat 5 May
GLASGOW King’s Theatre / 0844 871 7648 / tickets here.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
