Singer-songwriter contributes new music to London musical based on Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend
P.J. Harvey has shared the demo for “Eugene Alone,” one of the songs she co-wrote for a stage musical titled London Tide that opened today in London.
Harvey and Ben Power co-wrote the original songs for the National Theatre show, which is based on Charles Dickens’s final novel, Our Mutual Friend.
As Harvey’s typewritten lyrics draft reveals “Eugene Alone” was penned for the novel-turned-musical character Eugene Wrayburn.
“Whenever I approached writing a song for a character I would discuss with Ben and [director Ian Rickson] what the character is going through at that time, and what emotion needed to be expressed through the music. We would talk about what had happened immediately before, what was going to happen next, time of day or night…,” Harvey said of the song in a statement.
“As the play evolved we began to see how we could make the songs work hard for us in a way that meant that Ben could edit text from the body of the play as the song had expressed much of it.”
In addition to the demo, London Tide also uploaded a rehearsal rendition of the song as performed by Jamael Westman, who plays Eugene Wrayburn in the play.
“Jamael has been wonderful to work with and understands all of the emotions that needed to be conveyed within the song,” Harvey added.
London Tide arrives less than a year after Harvey released I Inside the Old Year Dying, the singer-songwriter’s first LP in seven years.
