Toy Show — The Musical: 'We had a silly dream and now it’s reality'
Katherine Drohan and Jane Murphy: Producers of Toy Show - The Musical, at RTE HQ, Dublin. Photo: Gareth Chaney/Collins Photos
Almost three years ago, Jane Murphy and Katherine Drohan decided to take a gamble. The two worked together in RTÉ and they approached the station’s powers-that-be with a unique proposal. They wanted to take the magic of the one-night-only Late Late Toy Show and turn it into a musical.
It seemed ridiculously ambitious, but the RTÉ hierarchy loved their idea and Jane and Katherine, then producers on The Late Late Show, developed a two-year plan. Then Covid hit, and the pair were focused on the challenges of delivering the flagship weekly chat show without an audience. As Jane says, they could have dropped the idea a hundred times. “There were a hundred excuses, a hundred reasons to park this and move on.”
But they had created a story, focusing on a little girl named Nell, and they couldn’t let her go. She was our hero, says Jane, “she was in our hearts and we had to give her life.” For Katherine, the Toy Show of 2020, in the middle of lockdown, highlighted its essential essence. “It’s a celebration of childhood and everything we learn from kids and everything they teach us and we’ve put all of that into the musical. We’ve put all of that into Nell, we’ve put all of that into her brother Luan and her friends on the street and the kids in the school.”
Nell has an important mission. She is determined to recreate her mam’s favourite Toy Show night traditions but not everyone in her family want to remember the past. When disaster strikes, she and her friends must save the day.
“It’s turning the lens around on to us at home watching it,” says Katherine, although, ironically, she has never watched it on the night at home with her twin girls because she’s always been at work. Jane, a self-confessed musical theatre ‘freak’, says that as medium in which the Toy Show could live, the theatre show feels perfect. It’s full of the elements that make the Toy Show so special – music, songs and live performance. But while the TV Toy Show studio audience is adults-only, crucially everyone can come to the theatre and enjoy that collective experience together.
However, bringing it to life had big challenges. The Toy Show is the most precious brand in RTÉ, says Jane, a mother of three. More than simply a TV show, for many, the night it is broadcast heralds the official start of Christmas. Jane and Katherine didn’t want to just recreate the show on a theatre stage. Instead, they wanted to showcase the essential essence of the Toy Show. “What fuels the Toy Show every year is the wonderful gift that is childhood and children and all the mad things they do and the funny things they do and the heartfelt things they do,” says Jane.
Their hope was to match massive ambition of the Toy Show team who every year aim to surpass the previous show. They asked themselves if they could possibly “make a brand-new top-class West End worthy Irish musical, with Irish kids, creatives and an Irish director and Irish actors and put it on and make it a success here. I think that we’ve done that,” says Katharine.
“We trust in the material, we trust in the kids, we trust in a little girl coming to the theatre and seeing another little girl on stage and having a connection with that little girl. And we’ve thrown in great lights and dancing and costumes. What’s at the heart of this show is what’s at the heart of the TV Toy Show. It’s connected deeply and we have to believe in it.” Finding the right Nell was crucial, and Jane and Katherine discovered three. They triple cast the kids, says Jane, because the children can only work a certain number of hours as they are so young. “They are phenomenal. They’re all very different but they’re all Nell. We saw hundreds of kids, but these three girls were born to play Nell.”
One of the girls cast as Nell has Toy Show history. Doireann NcNally, 11, sang Elton John’s Tiny Dancer on the iconic show when she was just eight years old. She will share the role with 10-year-old Ceola Dunne and Clare Keely, 12.
Doireann isn’t the only Toy Show alumni. Katherine says that there are other kids involved who were also on the Toy Show, quite recognisable children. “You’ll know them when you see them,” says Jane.
Katherine has a long history of association with the Toy Show, having worked on it for 12 years, and she has been involved with meeting and choosing the kids who appear on it.
“I’ve worked on the Toy Show as a researcher, then as a producer and as executive producer on the Late Late Show all the way along since Ryan’s first year, so I’m very much embedded in the Toy Show and how it’s grown from a show about toys to a show about kids, family and love.” For her, Adam King is an absolute hero. “He was such a symbol for hope and love and joy in our 2020 pandemic show. He really embodied the essence of the Toy Show. A little child, who has his own difficulties and faces his daily challenges, just gave everyone a reality check and a reason to smile.”
Jane, whose background is in current affairs, says that Saoirse Ruane, who appeared on the same night as Adam, sums up everything that the Toy Show has become. “She very selflessly came on the show to say, ‘look I have my treatment, people fundraised for me, I have this little bit of money left over and I’d like to give it to somebody else because I know times are hard’. I could cry thinking about her now. Within a couple of hours of her appearance, there was six and a half million euro donated to the show.” What’s so brilliant about the Toy Show, says Katherine, is that it can be a moment of connection for the whole country. The next day, people are saying ‘that was my favourite bit’ and ‘did you see that’.
The musical is aimed squarely at families, hoping to attract the same audience as the Toy Show, which is everybody from grandparents to young kids.
While neither Jane nor Katherine have a theatre background, Katherine says that the project is about “giving something to people that we know we can give. We might not have produced a theatre production before, but we know that we can do that. Producing is about getting the right people in the room. Producing is supporting people. Producing is recognising a good idea and building that up to make it work.” The show has been made as accessible as possible with several ISL-signed and sensory-friendly performances. Jane and Katherine want the children in the audience to feel at home in the theatre and be inspired by it: this is not a venue where children will be shushed if they choose to sing along.
Katherine says that “the best compliment we can get from anyone who comes to see this is to hear them laughing or to see them emotionally moved by it, to feel something, that’s what’s a win”.
“If we can say to the thousands of people who come to see this show that a 12-year-old girl can be the hero of the piece and save a family and save a community and be empowered, we’ve already won,” says Jane
“That’s the payoff for us and I know that that sounds too good to be true or Pollyanna, but we feel that we’ve already won, we’ve created a story whereby a little girl shows the way and that’s what the world needs at the moment – and a story that tells you to listen to children.”
And their ambition isn’t limited to this Christmas. The dream is that it becomes a Christmas tradition, says Jane, that you meet up with your family or your extended family and you meet up and you go to the show again. The musical is a passion project for both, and Jane is quick to point out how privileged they feel.
“We’ve had this silly dream and now it’s a reality and that’s what’s so amazing about it.”
- Toy Show The Musical runs from December 10 in The Convention Centre, Dublin. Tickets from €25.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
