Northern Irish couple writing medical drama musical inspired by the music of Taylor Swift
Think 'Grey's Anatomy' meets 'The Last Five Years' meets 'You Belong With Me'
If musicals meets Grey's Anatomy meets Taylor Swift sound like a dream combo to you, then a new play coming to Belfast will be right up your street.
Delicate: Their Musical is a new jukebox musical currently in workshop with the aim of performing to sold-out crowds by the end of the year.
The brainchild of couple Diarmuid and Victoria McLaughlin, the wheels are in motion ahead of a 'first review' performance next month.
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After toying around with the idea of writing something inspired by the global popstar for over a year, the newly married couple told Belfast Live about their hopes for the musical concept and bringing something a little different to the stage in Belfast.
Diarmuid, a Drama and English teacher, has been involved in theatre and performing for most of his life and it was the mutual passion for musicals with Victoria, also a teacher, that made them sit down and begin to write Delicate.
"Someone wasn't a big massive fan of Taylor Swift when we first met but gradually broke him down," Victoria laughed
"Obviously, both love musicals and I think with the Eras tour that I was happening last year, I was thinking there's no way that there's not a Taylor Swift musical."
After looking into it, one had been attempted at a college level back in 2014 but it never went any further.
Diarmuid said: "In the build-up and all the sort of the excitement of the Eras tour going on, Victoria kind of batted that idea around - I had written one show before when I was 18 and I thought I would love to get back into writing again.
"It has kind of run from there. Victoria is also a massive Grey's Anatomy fan, as is Taylor Swift, so our premise came from the idea that you don't really see a medical drama often on the stage."
Delicate: Their Musical uses the back catalogue of Taylor Swift to tell the story of a heart surgeon and a brain surgeon caught between following their heads or their hearts while working in the same hospital.
Audiences can expect to hear some of her biggest hits but also some of her older or lesser-known tunes that the biggest Swifites will go wild for - all woven into the story and performed for a musical audience.
Diarmuid continued: "We have been writing and rewriting since about February last year and we've kind of ramped things up now this year with the aim to put something on stage and we've got that now.
"We're having our first 'snippet' performance as part of a Scratch Night at Accidental Theatre where we are showing part of the second act where we've picked three songs and three scenes to perform on a small scale.
"The idea is that the next phase would be doing a full workshop in the summer with the hope of getting it produced fully on stage by the turn of the year."
A Scratch Night is an opportunity for artists to get involved to display their work-in-progress and audiences will have a chance to give their feedback on what they think about each piece.
Having now cast the production with local talent and getting Victoria's teaching colleague and "fellow Swiftie" to come on as musical director, the couple have seen the project transform before their eyes and cannot wait to show Belfast a teaser of what is to come on May 22.
The team will then be able to take any feedback received at the show and use that to finalise what they want Delicate: Their Musical to look and sound like.
Victoria continued: "Like anything, until it's fully ready to go, you're constantly thinking of things that might be worth changing or editing or we're still changing things at the moment - even before this performance and before we even started rehearsals."
"We're constantly rewriting and it's such an amazing process to be able to do something like that," Diaruid added.
"For this performance, the piece will be on for 20 minutes and then it gets reviewed by the public, then we take that information, go away and then we put it into the next phase of making it more detailed and a bigger production."
The ending for the musical still remains unwritten and Victoria said they have even considered having different performances of the musical have different endings when it heads into full productions so audiences can expect to be in for a surprise when attending the show.
To get tickets to see the preview performance of a snippet of the musical, see here
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