From songs about slapping dough to scripting the perfect innuendo, the creators of a new musical explain the ingredients for bringing the wildly successful TV show to the stage
, was approached a few years ago by the theatre producer Mark Goucher to see if she was interested in developing a musical based on Bake Off; then she started speaking to Richard McKerrow, the creator and producer of the TV show. “It was one of those where you go ‘yes’ straight away,” she says. “One of the things I like most is making new work.”
“It fits our voice well,” says Cleary. She and Brunger have worked together for nearly 15 years, first taking shows to Edinburgh – “one was about cabin crew [Jet Set Go! in 2008], the other was about actors behind the scenes on a soap opera,” says Brunger – and then writing work for children. Their best-known musical is the adaptation of, which had a West End run in 2019. “Our work really is a collection of eccentric and iconic characters,” says Brunger.
Anyone who has watched Bake Off knows that it’s about the craft and the skill, but there are bittersweet layers. “Baking is different from cooking,” says Kavanaugh. “You cook for yourself, but it’s unusual to bake for yourself. So baking is an act of giving and sharing, and what that means to the different contestants. That sounds quite earnest, but it’s serious for some of them, and less serious for others.
There’s one song called The Perfect Petit Four and another, says Cleary, called Slap It Like That, “which is inspired by a clip from one of the episodes where Paul Hollywood [one of the two judges] slaps down a strudel on a bench and they all try to do the same. It’s very funny and some of the strudel goes flying everywhere.” She laughs. “We both watched it and went: ‘Can we turn it into a song?’ And we did.
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