A fun-filled family musical, created by Horrible Histories’ Gerard Foster and Richie Webb, debuts at Birmingham Hippodrome next month. No Such Thing As Wolves is the second of the venue’s My First Musical commissions, following on from the success of last year’s offering, The Jingleclaw. This year’s production, directed by Emily Ling Williams, follows Hettie the Hedgehog as she opts to throw a party instead of settling down into hibernation. What’s On chatted to Gerard, Richie and Emily to find out more…

Birmingham Hippodrome’s My First Musical initiative returns this December with a brand-new adventure for children aged three and older. 

Following the success of last year’s production, The Jingleclaw, this year’s offering features a wintery woodland party and two naughty wolves…

For fun-filled stories for children, you don’t need to look much further than the creators of the BBC’s hit TV show, Horrible Histories. One of the series’ writers, Gerard Foster (Gez), and principal composer Richie Webb have joined forces again to write No Such Thing As Wolves, directed by Emily Ling Williams.  

Gez and Richie are certainly no strangers to writing for a younger audience, even if creating a kids’ musical is new territory.

“It wasn’t a challenge to go ‘How are we going to get into the mindset of that audience’ because we’re just hard-wired into that already,” Gez explains. “We’re in this strange position - we are newbies to theatre writing, but we’re totally wizened old hacks at the TV game.”

“It’s like starting a new career, but with the knowledge we’ve got,” adds Richie. “It feels really lucky, at this stage in our careers, to do something that feels genuinely new and exciting. We are new to this world, but we are bringing quite a lot of experience, so we feel quite confident that things are working.”

The duo have found that the biggest difference between collaborating to make TV, and creating a musical from scratch, is that working on No Such Thing As Wolves has been a much more sociable experience.

“When you’re writing episodes of stuff for TV, you’re just in your room,” says Gez. “You might be talking to a script editor or producer, but you never get to meet the cast, you never get to talk about the set and the costumes.”

“We’ve spent time with the actors, the director, with the musical supervisor - it’s been great,” says Richie. “That sense of a wider collaboration has been brilliant. It’s such a great team.”
While the pair share space in the credits of many well-known TV shows, it’s a long time since they’ve worked together, face-to-face.

“Even though we’ve both worked a huge amount in kids’ TV over the last 25-plus years, we haven’t actually worked together for a long time,” says Gez. “We met at university and were in a sketch team together - that was where our career journey began. Then we did a couple of years of kids’ TV - Live & Kicking, Saturday morning TV - but we haven’t properly worked together on anything since then… We said ‘We really must write a musical together’ every time we met during the last 20 years, and it’s finally happened!”

Now, the (snow)ball is rolling, and No Such Thing As Wolves has a home for the winter at the Hippodrome. The production’s director, Emily Ling Williams, gives a whistle-stop tour of the story.

“The show is about Hettie the hedgehog. Her dad loves her very much but is also very protective, so he tells her that ‘There’s no such thing as wolves.’ He’s always very careful about trying to keep her reined in, and making sure that she hibernates through winter. Then, one day, Hettie meets Sydney the squirrel, a backpacking, very free-spirited creature, who befriends her and says ‘Instead of hibernating, why don’t we throw a party tomorrow?’ So they decide to throw a party. Two wolves, Wiffy and Woofy, receive an invite and decide that this would be the perfect place to carry out their dastardly plan: to chop down all the trees and turn them into flat-pack furniture. So we have a real crisis on our hands!”

With all the fun and silliness of a classic animal caper, the story also hides some important messages beneath its lighthearted exterior.

“It’s about growing up, and it’s about friendship,” Gez explains. “It’s that real classic fairytale thing of stepping out into the world, away from your safe environment - facing up to those fears and learning that you can do it. We really wanted to create something that felt instantly classic, and which has that real fairytale feel to it.” 

The show’s planned design is fitting for a fairytale setting, and Emily hopes they will be able to transform the space into a wintery woodland wonderland: “There’s a really important tree in the story - Hetty’s tree, that she grows up in - so we really wanted to lean into the magic, giving people the feeling that they really are going into the woods and the forest. It’s a wintery forest, and they throw a party, so we wanted to get a magical party feeling as well, with lights and snow.”

One of the challenges of staging a production featuring live musicians is ensuring that they are visible - and, more importantly, audible - when there is limited space on the stage. In No Such Thing As Wolves, the team have found a solution: a treehouse for the band.

“We have a nice combination of permanent musicians in the band, and some of the actors, when they’re not on stage, appear in the treehouse as musical birds,” explains Richie. “Our birds provide the instrumentation and backing vocals. Then, when they come down, they’re in different costumes. It’s quite a nice mix. It’s not like the band are hidden away and the music’s just happening; the children will be able to see the band playing.”

The production is shaping up to be the perfect choice for the festive season - and in the Hippodrome’s smaller space, the Patrick Studio, the smaller members of the audience should feel perfectly at home...

“It’s a lovely intimate space, although there are plenty of seats in there,” says Richie. “Wherever the children are sat, it’s a great view. I think they’ll really feel a part of it.” 

“I think it’s such a feelgood show,” says Emily. “There’s such a sense of how important friendship is, family, and also appreciating the natural world. I think it’s really uplifting - there are definitely lots of jokes. I think people of all ages will find it very funny.”

“We want them to be singing along and laughing along,” says Gez, “It’s really playful, really warm, sweet and charming.”

When it comes to the music, there are plenty of catchy tunes which the company can’t wait to hear come to life on stage. Emily is most excited to hear the very first song: “Seasons Of The Forest - we go through all of the seasons, on loop. So that’s going to be a really big opening number that I’m excited to see.”

And for Richie, the proof that the show has been a hit with the audience will come at the very end: “I’ll be standing at the exit door, hoping that as they come out, they’re humming the last, intensely catchy Let’s Have A Party song!”

Feature by Jessica Clixby

No Such Thing As Wolves shows at Birmingham Hippodrome’s Patrick Studio from Sat 6 December until Sun 4 January