Theatre Work
Savage Amusement (1978)
Music Soundtrack by Mick Ford and Robert Hickson. Savage Amusement revolves around five young people living in a Manchester squat. The play depicts the social unrest bubbling in the city which would lead to riots in real life only a few years later. The music was hard, raw, heavily influenced by the punk revolution of 1976.
Jungle Music (1979)
Written by Peter Flannery for Contact Theatre Manchester.
Music Soundtrack and onstage songs written by Mick Ford and Robert Hickson.
A challenging, political play from Flannery, set in working class Manchester dealing with police corruption, social upheaval and young people’s despair. The songs, inspired by the city’s violent counterculture, were performed by a live band, including Robert, and featured strongly in the production.
Macbeth (1983)
The music was electronic and percussive, reflecting the play’s atmosphere of menace and violence, weaving a path of its own through and between scenes in order to build tension and suspense.
Henry IV Part 1 (1984)
Music soundtrack by Mick Ford and Robert Hickson. Robert also directed.
The music had to have a medieval feel despite being played on modern instruments, saxophone rather than trumpet fanfares for instance, and featured synth contributions too from Jeremy Blackford.
Savage in Limbo (1989)
Music Soundtrack by Mick Ford and Robert Hickson, Robert also directed.
Set in a down-at-heel bar in New York, Denise Savage, disaffected and angry, bemoans her empty life, as do all the other four characters in this tragi-comedy by Oscar-winning Shanley. All are 32 years old, feeling their age and fearful of their futures. The music simply played in the beginning and played out the end of the play. It’s dreamlike, flowing, with more than a nod to Philip Glass or Terry Riley.
Higher than Babel (1999)
Written by Andrew Caldecott, Bridewell Theatre.
Music Soundtrack by Mick Ford and Robert Hickson.
Morals and politics. Galileo challenges the church by claiming the
Earth is not the centre of the universe, but travels round the Sun.
When he’s arrested, his science book is rescued and smuggled away
by his young protogé, Scioni. It turns up centuries later, in Nazi Germany, and the wife of a physicist saves it from the book-burnings. It was obvious – medieval, acoustic-based music for 17th Century
Galileo, and sparse, minimalist, percussive music for the 20th Century
Nazis. Drawing them together into a unified style was fascinating.