Benjamin Till's 'BRASS'

National Youth Music Theatre’s (NYMT) summer season this year iuncludes Brass, a specially commissioned new musical from Benjamin Till to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War.

Brass is based on the real-life Leeds Pals, a battalion of friends who enlisted to fight in the Great War and suffered unimaginable losses on the first day of the infamous Battle of the Somme. The musical also tells the story of the Pals’ sweethearts and sisters, all of whom work in a large munitions factory called Barnbow, in Crossgates, Leeds. The Barnbow Lassies were strong-willed and extremely brave women renowned for their hell-raising behaviour. Working with TNT and packing shells caused their skin to turn bright yellow to the extent that they became known as the canaries. The Pals were all members of a brass band which was disbanded when the men left for France. In their absence, their women folk reformed the band, and learn to play the Pals’ instruments so that could welcome their menfolk when they returned triumphantly from the front.

Brass will be premièred at the City Varieties Music Hall in Leeds on the very stage where many of the real life Leeds Pals signed up.

Other productions by NYMT this year include;

THE RAGGED CHILD – WEDNESDAY 23 – SUNDAY 27 JULY @ ROSE THEATRE, KINGSTON

National Youth Music Theatre returns to the Rose Theatre Kingston as part of the International Youth Arts Festival with The Ragged Child – Jeremy James Taylor OBE and Frank Whately’s production, which won the coveted Edinburgh Fringe Festival Award in 1987.

THE HIRED MAN – WEDNESDAY 13 – SATURDAY 16 AUGUST @ ST. JAMES THEATRE, LONDON

Based on Melvyn Bragg's stirring novel of Cumbrian rural and industrial working life, set in the first quarter of the twentieth century, The Hired Man tells the story of one family's - Bragg's grandparents' - journey from land labourers to colliers and back to the land.