Cartoon de Salvo: theatrical jukebox
Friday, May 16th, 2008
Hard Hearted Hannah and Other Stories is also kind of a band. We’re a beardy-weirdy folk band, and each night we play tunes inspired by the Jug Band tradition of the American South on random select, only live. Then we ask three audience members to pick three tunes from our repertoire, and we work them into that night’s tale. The chosen music can tip the tone of the story in so many variable directions, and has become one of the elements of the show by which I’m most intrigued.
The idea for this music came about when I saw a fantastic gig by the (Refried) Ginger Jug Band one rainy Monday morning in the Rose Pub at Broadstairs Folk Week.   I was blown away by their spirit and joyousness. As it happened, that day I was frankly feeling pretty down about theatre-land, and thinking that it would be a lot less bother, and cooler, to be in a band instead. And then I noticed that gig was somehow like a Cartoon de Salvo one, which cheered me up no end. It reminded me why Bri and I started the theatre company in the first place – something I can’t quite put in to words here – but maybe reader you’ll come and see our show (OPENING THIS WEEK AT THE LYRIC – PLUG PLUG!!!), and you’ll see what I mean in that abstractly eloquent way that music has over other art-forms.
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So a year on we spent a morning with the band in a tent during Broadstairs Folk Week blowing raspberries into a cider jug. Then we scratched Hard Hearted Hannah… at the Lyric Firsts season last November, and incorporated some jug tunes into our first attempts improvising a brand new story in one night. Feedback implied that the music was perhaps one idea too many. But we kept it in, adding more tunes into the show as we went along on the road. We started to add in other standards and traditionals, songs that had universal themes and songs that had shaped our lives. We scoured the lyrics of Tom Waits, Randy Newman, Hank Williams and Nick Cave for their story potential.
Sometimes the lyrics dictate classical story characters – such as a femme fatale or rolling stone. Sometimes the lyrics dictate very strongly the story we have to tell – such as the title song ‘Hard Hearted Hannah, the meanest girl in town’ who would ‘pour water on a drowning man.’  And then there’s contribution to our stories made by the combination of the three songs chosen on any given night, both in terms of content and style. Three nights ago in Brighton, two heart-broken songs, and one about sex, informed the tale of a rejected lady whose relationship was rekindled beyond the grave. But interestingly, more and more it’s not the lyrics, it’s the feeling of the song that informs the story.
I co-directed with Tom Morris a Guy Dartnell solo show a few years ago called Un-sung. Guy is an amazingly wild improvisor who works on a longer, braver leash than most of us will, and we explored how pop songs can become definitive in key moments in our lives. I guess hearing those songs in Broadstairs was a key moment. And in the way that we project our own feelings and stories onto great songs, the music itself in Hard Hearted Hannah takes on more meaning in each new imagined context that it finds itself in.
And it’s clearly cooler to be in a band.
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