An imaginary (but weirdly plausible) collaboration between Bram Stoker and his fellow West End Theatre denizens Gilbert and Sullivan in1898; previewed once at the Savoy Theatre and then “lost” until now…

This began life as a one-off joke for the BBC Radio 2 comedy show “It’s Been A Bad Week” in 2001; in 2024 I revisited the idea and extended it to a ten minute “mini musical” for YouTube, which got a lot of attention after I edited the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola movie to it:

I’m currently working on extending it to a 60 minute version with a view to actually staging it as a full comic operetta in the autumn of 2026.

Another imginary “lost” musical; in this scenario, Elvis, encouraged by the positive reviews of his acting in the 1960 western “Flaming Star” decides to cement his thespian bonafides by playing Hamlet. Alarmed, Col. Tom manages to persuade Elvis to at least appear in a musical version of the play, but the project was abandoned after the songs had been demo’d…

My son Micah provided the wonderful illustrations for this video ;

I decided not to include the whole of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy in the vide but I did write and record it in its entirety and post it separately:

As most movie fans know, a full original orchestral score for Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” had been composed (by Alex North) and recorded, before Kubrick decided at the last minute to ditch it and score the film entirely with classical music “needle drops”.
What few people realise is that MGM has become so alarmed at Kubrick’s indecision with regard to the film’s musical score (with the release date fast approaching) that they contacted songwriting duo Kander & Ebb, who at that time were the toast of Broadway after the acclaim garnered by their groundbreaking show “Cabaret” (they would go on to achieve similar success with “Chicago”), with a view to giving Kubrick another option…

Kander & Ebb had only composed these few pieces before Kubrick fixed on the classical score; it’s not known if he ever heard these songs or what his opinion might have been…

Now, fully arranged and completely made up for the first time, here at last is Kander & Ebb’s 2001: A Space Odyssey…

The fourth and last (so far) of my YouTube mini-musicals; the fictitious (but, as ever, weirdly plausible) back story of which is as follows:

While it’s a well known fact that Bruce Dickinson is a huge fan of Doctor Who and The Prisoner, not many people know that his favourite SF series was in fact The Clangers… In 1989, perhaps encouraged by Nicko McBrain’s recent triumph on The Sooty Show, Bruce tried to buy the remake rights to The Clangers, re-scoring the 1969 episode “The Egg” as a proof of concept.
Unfortunately he was unsuccessful in his bid, and eventually the BBC rebooted the show in 2015 (narrated by Michael Palin, rather than Iron Maiden).

Here for the first time is that re-scored episode (featuring my son Micah Benn on lead vocals) …