Matthew Strachan | Composer & Lyricist

November 2010
Matthew provided music for the premiere of Tim Luscombe's play, HUNGRY GHOSTS at the Orange Tree Theatre this November. Tim Luscombe directed with design by Tim Meacock.

Top British racing driver Tyler Jones arrives in Shanghai for the Chinese Grand Prix. His life comprises airports, hotels, racetracks, corporate events and 'brolly dollies'. For Tyler, Shanghai is no different from Bahrain or Melbourne. He’s happy to toe the corporate party line as long as he can do what he lives to do: race cars. But when he meets and falls for Chinese dissident Pin-de, their worlds collide. Racing ambition seems suddenly futile set against Pin-de’s struggle for survival in authoritarian China. How can he square his new found awareness about the reality of life and death in China, and help Pin-de, without losing everything he has?

'full of passion'
The Times

'...the author's own production has a hectic vitality, and is well acted.'
The Guardian

'...could hardly be more topical or on the button.'
Time Out

February 2010
Matthew has just finished writing music for THE PROMISE a new play by Ben Brown, directed by Alan Strachan at the Orange Tree Theatre.

It's the beginning of World War I and Herbert Samuel, the first practising Jew ever to sit in a British Cabinet, dreams of using British power to back a return of the Jews to Palestine after 1800 years. However, his cousin, Edwin Montagu, also in the Cabinet, and also Jewish, is implacably opposed to the idea, a conflict complicated by Montagu's passion for the young beautiful aristocrat, Venetia Stanley, a confidante of the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. As Venetia's developing relationship with Montagu threatens the status quo, personal and political concerns become increasingly tangled.

Politics, religion and love collide with world-changing effect in this new play of political and sexual intrigue, and the origins of Israel.

Brown's LARKIN WITH WOMEN won the TMA Best New Play award in 2000, and was presented at the Orange Tree Theatre in 2006 directed by Alan Strachan with Oliver Ford Davies as Larkin. THE PROMISE is Brown's latest play and this is its world premiere.

'Riveting...historical drama at its dialectical best'
The Guardian

'delivers a great deal of information in a consistently engrossing manner'
The Independent

November 2009
Matthew has composed a musical score for Nigel Dennis's play THE MAKING OF MOO at the Orange Tree Theatre this autumn. Sam Walters will be directing and the design will be by Tim Meacock.

At the farewell ceremony for the creator of the new dam, a murder is committed. The engineer, Frederick Compton, learns that while he may have brought this backward nation electricity and water, he has killed their river god. He and his wife cannot simply abandon the country to a lawless, godless future. They must stay. A new god must be created.

First presented at the Royal Court with a cast that included Joan Plowright, John Osborne and George Devine as the civil engineer turned high priest, who said of this biting satire "exactly what I want to have said in my theatre."

'intelligent, funny and blasphemous'
What's on Stage

September 2009
Matthew Strachan and Bernie Gaughan's second musical play, SILK, was workshopped and performed at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond in September 2009. Paul Prescott (La Bonne Crepe, WHO'S THE DADDY, DUSTY) directed, with musical direction by Stephen Ridley (MUSIC MAN, Stiles and Drewe's PETER PAN) and choreography by Lizzi Gee (DADDY COOL, BILLY ELLIOT).

The cast included David Burt, Rosalie Craig, Stephen Carlile, David Birrell, Nicola Sloane and Sevan Stephan.