Hereward Kaye, composer, singer, song writer

Fast-forward a decade, and I’m living in Spain, in Andalucia. We’re in the middle of nowhere, a dustbowl of darting geckos under a brutal sun. We have no television, no telephone line. Just a dodgy mobile in an area surrounded by mountains. It never seems to work. We do have a pool to swim in. But it sure as hell isn’t guitar-shaped! Then one night, startlingly, the mobile rings. Only that afternoon I’d located the aerial in the dog’s water bowl, dried it off and stuck it back on with parcel tape.
“Hereward?” comes the gravel-dry voice. “Cameron.”



			Moby Dick - The Musical Call me Hereward. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely – I’m playing a wine bar in Hampstead. Having little or no money in the hat, and nothing to interest me in my song, I thought I would gaze around a little and see if I could spot Robert Longden. He is an actor/writer acquaintance who’s been invited to create a ‘pageant’ at Camden Lock, as part of the Camden Jazz festival - something watery. He’s decided on Moby Dick – or A MID-SUMMER NIGHT’S DICK, as he’s rather snappily called it - and invited me to write the songs.
	For its second incarnation, Moby Dick mercifully goes through a name change and expands from pageant to musical, at a gay roller-disco in Clapham.

			A benefactor donates a backdrop of Venice that simply has to be incorporated, and so, at the stroke of Robert’s pen, the spittoon-rattling sea dogs of Melville’s classic instantly transform into the genteel ‘gels’ of Muriel Spark’s Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, arriving in Piazza St. Marco singing my hastily concocted school hymn and preparing to perform – MOBY DICK IN VENICE! A third production follows, on a Swedish grain carrier moored in Bristol. But the backdrop won’t fit and so Venice is ditched, though not the school uniforms. Miss Brodie’s ‘crème de la crème’ transmogrify into the hellish belles of St. Trinians.
	Years later, Robert re-arrives in my life, with accompanying script, ‘written’ by bossy boots Head Girl Fifi Clampwell ‘to raise funds and save St. Godleys from closure’. It’s a good read: bizarre, anarchic, alive. Now he wants a tape of five songs. He’s going to firebomb Producerland. Five songs, one fire-bombing and five rejection-slips later, Robert has a message from Cameron Mackintosh on his ansaphone, offering us the Old Fire Station theatre in Oxford. Cameron also sticks us some moolah to stage the show, which is a first, We’ve never had any actual money before. (Read the personal account - The Ship Hits the Fan)
	Oxford is a resounding success and the following year, MOBY DICK – A WHALE OF A TALE opens in the West End, at The Piccadilly.

	Visit the Moby Dick website!

	Fast-forward a decade, and I’m living in Spain, in Andalucia. We’re in the middle of nowhere, a dustbowl of darting geckos under a brutal sun. We have no television, no telephone line. Just a dodgy mobile in an area surrounded by mountains. It never seems to work. We do have a pool to swim in. But it sure as hell isn’t guitar-shaped! Then one night, startlingly, the mobile rings. Only that afternoon I’d located the aerial in the dog’s water bowl, dried it off and stuck it back on with parcel tape. “*Hereward?” comes the gravel-dry voice. “Cameron.*”
	Next thing I know, I’m on a plane to New York, where, alongside Cameron, Russell Ochoki and a first-class cast - many of them moonlighting from Broadway shows - we ‘translate’ Moby into American and stage a workshop presentation. As a result, the show gets a full page in the M.T.I. catalogue (www.mtishows.com) and continues to grow across America, with a steadily increasing number of productions in schools and colleges, as word gets around.