Musical - The Book of Job

Simon Clayton is a satirist, a singer and an epic poet. Other than co-fronting the indie band The Indelicates he’s responsible for bringing us a children’s novel about kung fu monks, and a version of Milton’s Paradise Lost done in the style of an Elvis movie. His latest project is a musical version of The Book of Job, which deals with one of the most philosophically difficult Old Testament stories, and re-renders it as an Andrew Lloyd Weber style sing-along. Job is the one where Satan tests a religiously faithful man with a series of horrific trials and tribulations to attempt to make him renounce God. His animals are stolen, his sheep are slain, his sons and daughters are killed in a storm. And then he gets a plague of boils.

“We stand in front of scripts, with six actors and one guitar,” says the director, “telling people what would be happening on stage if we had the budget. Strangely, it seems to work. People go away remembering things they haven’t seen.” When asked about why he chose such an offbeat subject for his latest work, he has a serious answer and a flippant one. “It’s a work that has a hardcore theological message which is relevant today, even if you’re not religious,” he says. “And I am confident that this work is, at the very least, the third best ever musical to be based on a biblical character whose name begins with the letter 'J'. AL