Loserville

Loserville is a musical with music and lyrics by James Bourne and Elliot Davis originally created for Youth Music Theatre UK. The story is based on an album, Welcome to Loserville from Bourne's second band, Son of Dork.

Synopsis

The musical is set in the town of Loserville, USA, in 1971. Michael Dork, in his final year of school, has been working at Arch Industries, trying to develop a method to allow computers to communicate with each other. He is aided by his friend Lucas, who is writing a novel called Galaxy Battles. Holly Manson is a new student at his school, and wants to be the first female astronaut - she starts to help Michael with his work. Over time, both Michael and Lucas fall for Holly, and decide over a game of Rock paper scissors that Michael should ask her out.

Eddie, the narcissistic son of the owner of Arch Industries, is expecting to be given a plum job in the company, but is unexpectedly told he will be going to military school, causing his girlfriend, Leia, to break up with him. He acquires incriminating photos of Holly, and blackmails her into working for him, in the hopes that he will prove to his father that he deserves a job. He promises Lucas that he will get his book published, in return for Lucas giving him Michael's work, but Eddie double-crosses Lucas and throws his book in the bin.

At Arch, Holly makes a breakthrough, realising that the computers need to be given an address to send messages to. Eddie calls a press conference, but Holly calls Lucas and asks him to tell Michael that she just needed Eddie to trust her so she could access Michael's work at Arch. She lets Michael send the first message, and exposes Eddie as a fraud. The two are reunited, and in the celebrations Leia tells Lucas that she read and loved his book, but thinks it should instead be a film.

Productions

West End

The show was originally created, produced and performed by Youth Music Theatre UK in 2009 where it played at South Hill Park Arts Centre in Bracknell.^[1] James Bourne and Elliot Davis then went on to work again with Youth Music Theatre UK to create new musical Out There. Bourne is also a patron on Youth Music Theatre UK, along with Ed Sheeran, Peter Duncan and Zoe Wanamaker. The production then went on to play at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Summer 2012, opened at the Garrick Theatre on 17 October 2012, following previews from 1 October. It was directed by Steven Dexter, designed by Francis O'Connor, choreographed by Nick Winston, costumes by O'Connor & Stephen Snell, sound by Simon Baker and lighting by Howard Harrison. The production was originally set to run until 2 March 2013, but closed early on 5 January 2013.^[2] The first school production of Loserville was performed by students from Temple Moor High School (Leeds), Sutton High School (London) and Sutton Grammar School for Boys in March 2014. In May 2015, Loserville was performed for the first time in Latin America, by the Musical Theatre Company of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Sinaloa. Loserville is confirmed to be produced at Belvoir Players Studio Theatre (Belfast Northern Ireland) in mid June. The dates are not confirmed yet but it will run around 13th June

Musical numbers

Cast

The principal original casts of all productions of Loserville.

West End Ensemble: Jade Albertsen, Sophie Ayres, Laura Bennett, Matthew Bradley, Andrew Carthy, Segun Fawole, Freya Field, Nathan Graham, Dan Krikler, Ashley Luke Lloyd, Megan Louch, Heather Scott-Martin, Shane Walshe and Sarah Watson

License

Loserville is now available to license through Josef Weinberger Ltd for amateur and professional licenses.^[4]

References

External links

• Official website