> Mhairi McCall on Pretty Knickers Productions most ambitious show yet, Mary Queen of Rock - SNACK: Music, film, arts and culture magazine for Scotland

Mhairi McCall on Pretty Knickers Productions most ambitious show yet, Mary Queen of Rock

Pretty Knickers Productions began in 2017 as a university assignment on an acting course, to create a production company and put on a show at the Fringe. The six women were advised against having an all-female group by their tutors, partly because there’s a lack of stories and shows they could use.

Now, they have several self-written and critically acclaimed shows under their belt and are committed to writing those stories of women – particularly where the characters aren’t simply relegated to the roles of daughter, wife, mother. SNACK sat down with Mhairi McCall, one of the founders of PKP, who also co-wrote and stars in their latest production, their most ambitious yet: Mary, Queen of Rock!

You’re one of three writers (with Calum Ferguson and Lewis Lauder) and also the lead in your new Fringe show, Mary, Queen of Rock! How tempting is it to keep editing as you rehearse?

I’m really bad for not taking off my writer hat and then putting my actor hat on, cramming them both on at the same time. I’ve been a bit better at it this year, but I’m constantly thinking ‘How could that be better?’

It feels like there’s three stages. There’s us in the room writing it, thinking it’s absolutely great. Then you hear the actors saying it and you think, ‘Why did we write that?’ The third level is the audience. When we did Salamander the first time I thought I didn’t know where to take the script, and by the end of running it at the Fringe we had a million ideas of what to add and what to subtract, so maybe this will be the same. It will change, definitely, but I’ve never written a musical before so we don’t know.

What’s the process been like compared to previous shows, writing your first musical?

I naively didn’t think it was going to be as hard as it was – I’ve written shows, I’ve written plays with songs, so how different could it possibly be? 

I’m lucky that I have the collaboration of the three of us. I come from trained musical theatre and so I have, in my biased opinion, an idea of what makes musicals good and bad. I’ve always written in a storyteller kind of way.

Our musical director Lewis is in a rock band and has an MFA in playwriting. We were struggling with Mary – we got the bare bones down and she was passive – so we were like, ‘Lewis, can you go and make Mary cool?’ The script was night and day. Calum is always really good with the structure of everything, how it’s going to work as an entire show, the nitty gritty. So we come together with different strengths. 

There’s one song in this show that was my fourth attempt at that song – not a rewrite, that’s me binning it three times and going back to the drawing board! You eventually end up with something that it should have been all along. It’s having the guts to say to your friends and co-workers ‘this isn’t it’.

Writing is so lonely, so isolating – my first experience of writing with somebody else was with Calum on Salamander and was amazing because when I don’t have an idea, he has an idea. We make each other’s ideas better.

It’s been a total collaboration – the band have been huge collaborators on it too. We said ‘these are the chords and this is how the melody sounds, can you do this on the drums?’ That [not giving specific sheet music] could have gone horribly wrong… but the band is nailing it. 

Along with the songs, we are trying to condense a huge story into an 80-minute slot, and it’s a real person’s story – you can only take so many liberties. 

You’re playing the queen of rock in this. Out of her and your previous characters in Out, Sob Story, Salamander and other shows PKP have created, who’s been your favourite to play?

I really like to play a baddie. In Sob Story my character Sophie was the real leader of the group – nasty girl, putting everybody in their place, and then she got her comeuppance in the end.

If you ask me at the end of this Fringe run, I think Mary will overtake her. The show is about her music and being an artist and I was so involved in the writing of it, as well, that I feel very close to it. How history remembers her is very interesting; she was fighting a battle from the day she was born.

At the heart of the show, it’s a story about a woman who time and time again tried her best but was dragged down by men at every turn. Drawing parallels between her and big female icons, like Taylor Swift – you know how we love to build up women in the media just to tear them down? The fact is, we remember women a lot on their failures. How PKP formed, how we came together, has always been about creating work that tells female stories, shows female relationships; how women actually talk to each other. 

Mary, Queen of Rock! is at the Assembly Rooms Ballroom from Aug 1–6, 8–13, 15–20 and 22–25.

Photo Credits: Pretty Knickers Productions

You May Also Like

Interview – Carol Morley – Out Of Blue

Director Carol Morley has long been making a name for herself in the film ...