Beauty and the Bastard: A Spoonful of Disney

James: Probably has to be 'Why Should I Worry' from Oliver & Company. I had a soft spot for kittens and Billy Joel as a kid. Somebody at Disney definitely hit the jackpot when they decided on that combination.

Maxine: Aladdin basically blew my mind when I was a kid. It was such sensory overload. Songs like 'Friend Like Me' and 'Prince Ali', I remember those vividly. Prior to that I thought Mary Poppins was the best thing I’d ever seen and 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' is a favourite of mine. I mostly remember those rollicking songs. But I agree 'Baby Mine' is so heartbreaking. And the scene is just animation brilliance when she rocks that baby in her trunk, Oh my heart.

I have a feeling you would have heard Brian Wilson’s 2011 Disney album, Songs in the Key of Disney. Eloquent proof that even the greatest Disney classics can be utterly ruined. In any case you take quite a different approach to ol’ Brian. Can you tell us how you interpret and adapt these songs? And how do they hold up in a cabaret setting?

James: I will not take your bait and publicly ridicule Brian Wilson. Give the man a sandpit, a fistful of LSD and a toy piano and he comes up with Pet Sounds. Put me in the same situation, and I would probably just spend the night using my shoes as puppets.

Maxine and I take a much simpler approach to interpreting a lot of these songs. We don’t have any backing vocalists, or a string section (you wouldn’t believe how much the SSO wanted per show), so we rely on our innate showmanship to compensate.

Maxine:: Usually I wouldn’t abide anyone trash talking the beautiful genius of Brian Wilson but in this case I’ll allow it. I’ve only really heard 'Heigh Ho' from that album and it was… interesting.

Our approach is pretty open. One of us will have an idea about how to perform a song and we’ll work on that. It’s a very big responsibility interpreting these songs. These are people’s most cherished memories and if you mess with them in a way that ruins that for someone or offends them god will strike you down. You must be pure of heart.

We listen to the songs and study the lyrics and then sit around and play them and start asking ourselves and each other “What is this song really about?” “When you strip all the orchestration away, what kind of song is it?” That informs the arrangement. Some of our arrangements have moved the songs away from their original context but we have tried to preserve everyone’s memories. I would never want to commit heresy in the church of Walt.

There are also other considerations. For example some of the songs are greatly enhanced by their position in the film and there are visual jokes that bear out their meaning. You have to find a way around that. In some cases there are whole sections of dialogue in the middle of songs and without that dialogue the song doesn’t actually make sense anymore. Like in 'Poor Unfortunate Souls' from The Little Mermaid. There is a large section of dialogue in the middle that contains an important plot point. Ursula explains that Ariel will have to give up her voice in order to be human and have a chance and getting her man. When the song starts up again the lyrics assume that the listener knows all that. Two singers with acoustic guitars, breaking out of a song to do lines from an animated film would have been a bit contrived. Just a bit. So instead we wrote an extra verse to remind people of the deal without breaking out of the song.

As far as how the songs hold up in a cabaret setting, they translate remarkably well. Cabaret is very adult. You know, people sit around and they’re freshly showered and there’s a theatre and they’re drinking wine. It’s all very civilised. And then you start singing these songs that are so precious to people, you really feel the joy in the room and it’s very gratifying. I think people understand what we’re doing and they appreciate it. Our audiences are happy lot; they want to have a good time.

However, because it’s Beauty and the Bastard, James and I feel free to antagonise each other in between songs and that can be very amusing. James comes from a long line of bastards and we look into his family heritage as part of the show because, and this is amazing, our family histories are entwined and are actually the factual basis for some well-known fairytales. You can’t really explore that kind of topical stuff unless you’re in an intimate cabaret-style setting.

Are there a couple of your own interpretations that strike you as completely turning the original on its head? I feel the melancholy quality of your ‘It’s a Small World’, for example, has to be heard to be believed.

We have a bit of fun with a lot of the songs, I think. 'Colours of the Wind' is performed as a protest song, 'Prince Ali' has a bit of a raw, Patti Smith vibe about it.

It has been a real mission of ours to not 'cover' any of the songs. There are enough Tribute Shows out there.

Maxine: 'It’s a Small World' is probably the most on-its-head version of all the songs we include in the show. Its inversion is the most poignant too. It’s a great song for that though. It’s so malleable and the lyrics are so full of the history of having heard them so often. The there is the genius of their fundamentality. It acknowledges the sad and the happy. It’s pretty zen really. I could imagine coming up with many interpretations of that song. James and I have argued about it though. He has a different version of the song that he thinks is more appropriate. I cried and got my way but, you never know, he is such a bastard we might end up doing both versions as part of the show.  Possibly.  

Some of the other arrangements twist the meaning somewhat. 'Bare Necessities' springs to mind. In our version it becomes a kind of sexy bluesy round. You want the twisted arrangement to serve the adult mind while preserving the song itself in order to show off how good the songs are and how they are still poignant even though we have grown up.

That’s the other thing. The reason we even began doing this show is that we realised how utterly impressive these songs are. I mean they’re not just kid’s jingles or filler for a film script. They are really brilliantly written and lovingly arranged songs. Thoughtful and entertaining. They generally can stand up to many interpretations and come out sounding pretty incredible.

There’s still a danger, isn’t there, that some people will dismiss a show of Disney songs as child’s play. How would you respond to that charge?

James: Pistols at dawn.

Maxine: That is damn fine question. The way I see it a child’s world is filled with noble ideas. It’s a simple place but not simplistic. The ideas and themes of these songs are so incredibly intense and deep, they go right to the heart of the human condition and when we are kids they are our main source of entertainment. Isn’t it wonderful that as children all of our entertainment is devoted to instilling us with the kind of hope and dignified forbearance that the rest of our experience of life will try to beat out of us?

I think the appeal of bringing these songs to new context is that we get to revisit that childhood mind, not necessarily the childhood, which may have been unhappy. But we can experience again the simple mind of our childhood, in which we first began to come to grips with the gap between the ideal world we long for and the real world we live in. I don’t think calling it child’s play is an insult. Children are very noble.

Favourite all-time original song from the Disney catalogue?

James: Easy. 'Part of Your World' from The Little Mermaid. A really beautifully written song.

Maxine: I can’t choose one. 'When You Wish Upon a Star' is great and I really love 'Some Day My Prince Will Come'. I enjoy performing both of those. 'Part of Your World' is just amazing as well and I really enjoy singing it. But it’s very difficult to choose one.  

James: You’ll have to come and see the show.

Maxine: Lots.