Little Lark of London

I’ve been a fan of Police Cops since seeing Badass Be Thy Name at the VAULT Festival back in February, so as soon as I saw they were putting on a full-length musical at the Southwark Playhouse, I knew I had to see it. Police Cops: The Musical is an absolutely brilliant show which takes the group’s original 60-minute play and expands it with more cast members and original songs.

Recently, I had the chance to talk to Nathan Parkinson, one third of the Police Cops team, about the show and what it has been like to create such a hilarious musical. We discussed the origins of the comedic trio, what Parkinson hopes audiences take away from the show, and even how it’s changed since its recent run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!

So can you tell us a bit about the history of Police Cops as a group?

Yeah! So we formed out of East  15 Acting School. Me, Tom and Zach, we were all on the Acting and Contemporary Theatre course, which is run by Uri Roodner who’s a Gaulier-trained clown. So there was a lot of comedy within the course. The course is very European-devised theatre, and clowning comes into that, so there was comedy within the course. We were in the same class and we got put together as a group during our comedy module to make a scene. We hadn’t worked together that much in the previous modules, so it was quite cool and interesting to actually just be put together. It was all quite serendipitous how it happened. And then we made a scene and were like, “Oh, that’s, that’s really funny to us!” And we brought it back to the class and the rest of the class didn’t seem too impressed with it, but we still liked it! [Laughs]

[Laughs]

And so we plugged on with it. And then during our comedy module, we developed a few more scenes, and then we presented it in our end of term show. We got really good feedback from the teachers and some of the people in our year. We just parodied action films for it. After we graduated, we went off and did a few projects on our own, and then we hooked up in 2015, the year after I graduated and said, “Should we develop that into a proper show?” So that was the beginning of the company and us deciding to make our first show, which was called Police Cops, based on those scenes.

What has it been like collaborating for all these years?

It’s quite an experience. Working so closely with two other people for eight years, we’re all kind of like brothers. It’s deeper than a friendship, because we spat and argue all the time over creative differences! [Laughs] But I think that conflict is really good because it allows us to not just all agree and keep on challenging each other, which has been to our benefit. It’s about finding that right balance between people that you agree with enough, that disagree with enough as well to keep things interesting and make sure you’re not going too far down the wrong kind of path. But it’s a great relationship and I’m super grateful for it. And super grateful to be working with two guys that I respect so much and value as artists as well as people.

What was it like creating your first musical?

So much harder than I thought! To have such arrogance to have not thought it would be that hard . . . But I think we were just so naive about the process and what it would be like. With our other shows, we always made mistakes. We’d do one draft, that was our first preview of a show. 70% of it would be good and 30% of it would suck, and we’d be like, “Okay, these are the areas that can change.” With this, we did our first draft of it, and it was pretty bad! [Laughs] There was a lot that we really didn’t know. Because it was an adaptation of our first show, we thought it might be easier because it was like, “We’ve already got a story, we’ve got a script, we’ve got characters,” but in some ways it was more difficult than just starting fresh because we had to insert songs which had to tell a story into a script that was already working as a story. At first, I think the songs felt a bit shoehorned in. And we didn’t really know much about songwriting and comedy songwriting. So it’s been a real learning experience. But there was enough there from the beginning for us to think, “Okay, there is something here, and we are getting enough good feedback to persevere.” But it was definitely a challenge. But as we’ve gone on, we’ve learned a lot. We’re harsh critics of ourselves, and we’re never really satisfied, which I think helps us get to better places eventually. It’s been a real challenge, but it’s been so creatively freeing and so fun to do something that we’ve never done before. None of us have ever tried to write comedy songs! So it’s been really tough, but also really fun and creatively engaging.

What made you choose to turn Police Cops  into a musical?

We made three shows, and we were quite bored with the format that we had. There’s only so much you can do with a three man cast and 50 minutes in a studio space. We were doing very well in that space, and it felt like there was more demand for our shows to be longer, for us to be able to play in venues that were bigger, so that we could get more audience in. But to go bigger, you need to make work that’s bigger. So we wanted to work with new artists, to open up the cast, to do a bigger show. We’ve always been a three-person cast. And now we’re a five person cast, we’ve got a band, and we’ve got more of a set. Our thing has always been to entertain as many people as possible, and it felt like we’d reached a limitation with our previous format and wanted to go to a bigger format so we could entertain more people. And we’re all massive fans of musical theatre. I did musicals when I was a kid, so that’s like my first love, really, and then just moved away from it due to going into drama school. And not being that good a singer, truth be told, but good enough to get away with it within a group of people who are better than me! [Laughs]

What has it been like bringing the show to London after its run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival?

It’s been really creatively freeing! In Edinburgh, you have to stick to such a tight schedule. You only have a certain amount of tech time at the very beginning when all the lighting and sound have to be programmed in. So if you want to change things as you’re going through the run, it’s really difficult. It’s really hard to say, “Oh, we want to change this song a bit, we want to cut out that verse,” or, “We want to change this scene,” or, “We’ve written a new scene and need some new sound effects in it.” You’re locked into doing whatever you programme on that first day, because you can’t get into the space to change anything. And so that can be a real struggle, to have to perform something that you have ideas about how to improve, but you’re not allowed to improve them as such. So it’s really great being in London because we have the space during the day and we can make changes and edit things. We have a great team around us who are up for coming in early and changing things. They’re really dedicated to the project. So it’s really liberating doing this compared to being on the strict festival routine.

Do you have any scenes or songs that are favourites in the show?

Definitely have ones that aren’t my favourites! 

[Laughs]

It was that thing that I was just saying about being able to change stuff, like some of my scenes I was like, “Oh God, this material isn’t working and I have to perform it every night and get tumbleweeds as a response.” So that was definitely not good. But now we’ve been able to edit stuff. I’m enjoying everything now! I guess my favourite song would probably be one called “Down in Mexico” because it’s got a little bit of audience participation in it, so that keeps it fun. They kind of lead it and they can go very different every night – keeps it fresh and that’s always nice. There’s another one where I get to be a cowboy – I just like being a cowboy! “Best Damn Police Cops Ever,” that one’s good.

What do you hope audiences take away from the show?

Really, just that they’ve had a good time. That’s all we really want to give people – a good night out. We’ve done some touring to secondary schools and colleges, and we tried to make the show as low an age barrier as we can, so that we can get to as many audiences as we can. So our shows are 12+. We love it when we get students and teenagers coming up to us saying it’s their favourite thing they’ve ever seen in the theatre or it’s the first thing they’ve ever seen in the theatre and it was the thing that they thought, “Yeah, I’ll go to that.” Because it’s quite accessible. It’s a parody of action movies and it can appeal to quite a broad audience. So it’s cool when it feels like you’ve inspired some younger people to get into theatre or theatre-making. That’s nice. But generally, if people leave and we know that they’ve had an hour and 45 minutes of laughter and entertainment, that’s what we’re really aiming for.

And finally, how would you describe Police Cops: The Musical in one word?

Chaotic! Really controlled chaos. 

Police Cops: The Musical runs at Southwark Playhouse Borough from 8 September to 14 October.

Photo Credit: Pamela Raith