GOYA is a Musical Theatre Review award winning company making Queer music theatre based in London and Oxford, presenting two new musicals at the Pleasance Courtyard in 2023: Four Felons and a Funeral (13.45, Upstairs) and Actually, Love (15.45, The Green).
Four Felons and a Funeral is written by Sam Woof and Math Roberts. It is a rom-com road-trip musical about four friends on a cross-country road-trip to scatter their friends' ashes. It is a feel-good show about grief, friendship and found family; about letting go of people we’ve lost, and learning to lean on the ones we’ve got. Four Felons was included in the top picks for The Stage and WhatsOnStage for this year's Fringe.
Actually, Love is written by Sam Woof. Rom-coms and pop songs collide in a musical rollercoaster charting the highs and lows of gender trouble, romantic clichés and open-mic nights. Alex is a songwriter struggling with writers’ block. Stevie is an actor auditioning for a rom com. When they bump into each other after many years, their worlds come crashing together. Actually, Love was a a WhatsOnStage pick of the Fringe, and featured in Binge Fringe magazine's guide to best Queer theatre at the Fringe.
Why the Fringe? What do you hope to experience?
Last year was our first ever trip to the Fringe. It was wild and exciting and a little unhinged. We made three new shows, performed for thousands of people and won the Musical Theatre Review’s Special Award. Having cut our teeth, we’re back with two new shows, Actually, Love and Four Felons and a Funeral. As the titles suggest (thanks Richard Curtis) both are big joyous rom coms and are playing at the Pleasance Courtyard all month. We make queer music theatre, and we’re really excited about sharing these brand new musicals with audiences in Edinburgh this year!
How far is it important for this production to be theatre rather than, say, film? Is theatre an important medium for you?
We love theatre. The intimacy of it, the messiness, the fact that sometimes people just start singing. Of course, this story could be a film, but we love how close the audience are in theatre, how involved they are in the action of the show. This is a story about coming together, and so it’s fitting that the medium requires that of its audience.
Where did the idea for the show come from?
Well actually, the idea for Four Felons arrived while we were driving back from the fringe last year. As we barrelled down the M1 in a slightly-crowded bright-red Volkswagen Beetle, we couldn’t stop thinking about making a road trip musical. A year later, here we are. The show has grown massively since then, tackling big questions around queerness and grief, but always maintaining the joyous chaos of the road trip genre.
How does the theme of grief lead to a feel-good show?
Good question! It’s true the words ‘grief’ and ‘feel-good’ don’t often go together. But loss is a big experience, and as big experiences tend to do, it can take you from crying over a frozen lasagne in Tescos to uncontrollably laughing at squirrels in a public park. It can make you want to scream at bookshelves, and give up eating avocados, and move to Milton Keynes. Losing people you love can make you do strange things, lots of them funny and nothing to do with shedding tears. Losing is a very human experience. We all lose things all the time, and we hope Four Felons celebrates these losses, whilst also allowing its characters to look into the sunrise unafraid.
What can audiences expect to feel and take away from the production?
People fight, they cry, they make terrible mistakes, but Four Felons is a really warm show. That’s what we hope people take, a sense of warmth, of love, and a lot of laughter too. This is a story about lots of different queer people with very different stories. They don’t always see eye to eye. In fact, they’re pretty chaotic. But as they wrestle with the death of their best friend, they are forced to come together, and find a way to carry on. That’s what we want. Oh and it’s a musical, so we want them to leave humming the tunes.
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