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Ricky Gervais assists at rehearsals with Anne Chmelewsky (right), the opera’s composer |
Fact! The Office all set to become operatic hit
Cult TV workplace comedy gets a stage production makeover
EVEN with all his hubris and inflated self-worth, David Brent probably never imagined he would one day be talked of in the same tones as Don Giovanni or Rigoletto.
Ricky Gervais’ fictional boss from The Office is to get a promotion of sorts next week when the character appears in an opera version of the hit BBC comedy series at Proud Camden.
Classically trained baritone and Paddington resident Matthew Wright will squeeze into a fat suit and articulate the phrases “Brentmeister General” and “vis a vis you have not yet passed your forklift drivers test” as the puffed-up office despot.
Verdi would have blanched at the challenge – how do you score Gareth’s stapler being set in jelly? But not 25-year-old St John’s Wood composer Anne Chmelewsky.
She created The Office – The Opera as a way to exact revenge on a “pretentious” classical music course she attended at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2006.
“I didn’t enjoy it so I decided to take the piss a bit.
“For one of my modules, I thought of the most ridiculous thing I could do as an opera,” said Ms Chmelewsky.
But it did not end there. The co-writer of The Office series, Stephen Merchant, heard about the show and approached the company of music students and friends about working on a sketch for Comic Relief earlier this year.
A series of online documentaries showing Ms Chmelewsky “going a bit mad” as she tried to realise her vision raised £3,500 to stage a shorter version of the show at Lauderdale House in March. At Proud, the cast,which includes a beatboxer as Tim, will be backed by a professional orchestra.
When Brent cries rape during a customer service role play session he steals the conductor’s baton.
The Office joins a list of famous talkies recently converted to song. Musical versions of Shrek, Ikea and Jade Goody’s life story are all doing the rounds or in the offing.
Mr Wright, who claims to have met several David Brents during his time in office jobs as a customer service rep and a “debt consolidator”, said: “We try to recreate those awkward moments and make them understandable to a theatrical audience.”
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