Tullamore woman aims to bring second musical to London stage
Former Tullamore resident Fiona O’Malley is on a roll. After successful runs for her first musical The Daily Fail at the International Youth Arts Festival and at London’s off West End earlier this year, the 25-year-old former Sacred Heart School student is now back with a second musical - Grim: a New Musical.
Between the ages of six and 21 home for Fiona was St Coleman’s Terrace in Tullamore. With particular encouragement from English teacher Pauline McKenna, Fiona went on to study four languages at NUIG and a Masters in Journalism at Kingston University in the UK. Along with writing musicals, she has worked for Vogue magazine, The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Irish Times.
“It’s definitely life in the fast lane,” Fiona told the Offaly Independent this week. “We’re incredibly busy but incredibly lucky to be doing what we love.”
Working alongside composer Joseph Alexander, director Adam Wollerton and choreographer Rachel Kelly as The Untold Theatre Company, the foursome have managed to transition from a potential one-off show to what Fiona hopes will is the second of many.
“The musical [The Daily Fail] made a fantastic progression from the festival workshop phase to the central London running,” she said.
“We took on board all of the constructive criticism, made a lot of changes and edits and overall it was a much stronger production which was, thankfully, well received by the public and critics which resulted in fantastic four star reviews.”
The success of The Daily Fail has also had a knock-on effect on Fiona’s follow-up composition, with more central London theatres interested in hosting it.
“Grim: a New Musical couldn’t be more different to The Daily Fail,” Fiona said. “The latter is a satirical comedy. Grim is a beautiful tragedy. It’s a very dark love story about the collision of the two most powerful forces in the world: the power of death versus the power of love. It’s about the Grim Reaper falling in love with Cupid - the angel of death falling for the angel of love - but she cannot be with him as it will ultimately be his demise.”
Auditions for Grim are set for London post-Christmas, with Fiona particularly interested in recruiting people who can not only act, but sing and dance too to a world-class level.
A miniature performance of Grim will be staged in May, before The Untold Theatre Company will workshop it and bring it to central London for an off West End showing and perhaps even a West End showing in 2014.
Though based in London full time now, Fiona still thinks of Tullamore and how she might mix work and a future visit.
“Having grown up in Tullamore, I’d really love to bring one of our productions back someday but our theatre company isn’t even a year old yet and we simply don’t have the budget to tour right now. Hopefully I’ll someday be able to bring something back and made people proud. That would be lovely.”