Comedy writer Mike Bennett tells Richard Osley why he has set himself the challenge of trying to make a musical about the world of ska

SO, we’ve had pop musicals about rock ‘n’ roll, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. We’ve had mad musicals about disco dancing, borrowing from The Bee Gees and Abba.
We’ve had musicals on roller skates and scratchy actors dressed up as cats. We’ve had horrible Ben Elton musicals devoted to Rod Stewart and Queen, really horrible, and try-hard shows centring on Bollywood, salsa, 1980s glam, ugh!, and even hip hop. It’s become a musical minefield out there.
Some shows capture the imagination, other shows are carted off the stage almost as soon as they open – whatever happened to Mike Reid’s Oscar Wilde musical?
But Mike Bennett – comedy writer and record producer, once of indie band The Fall – is unruffled as he gets ready to serve up his new show: a pop musical about one of his true passions, ska music.
Will the stutter-dance ska fans and, allow me use of at least one stereotype, the chilled-out reggae fans be up for a manic comedy musical? We’ll see. But Bennett has gambled before and come up smelling of roses – this is a man who proudly recalls the moment he remixed rubbish rock trio Emerson, Lake and Palmer with a drum ‘n’ bass beat.
When the New Journal caught up with him late on Friday, he is sunk into a rehearsal room sofa, clutching a pint of lager.
In between reminisces of days when he produced records for Tro-jan, perhaps the most famous reggae label of them all, he seems confident that Last Train To Skaville, a ska spectacular, will do what musicals are supposed to do – put smiles on faces.
For those who don’t know, ska is a branch of reggae based around an insistent dance beat, which dates back to late 1950s.
The show has its big road test at the Upstairs At The Gatehouse theatre in Highgate with five shows next week.
If it attracts enough interest it could be a sometime West End hit – if the idea flops we might never hear of it again.
Bennett says: “I’m not boasting, I’m really not but I have had nine shows, musicals and non-musicals, and I’ve got nine shows away. And I think this show can raise a smile as well.”
Bennett once wrote jokes for Frankie Howard and wisecracks for The Muppets. Don’t worry, he never got confused between the two and left Kermit spurting out Carry On innuendo.
He reckons the humour injected into Skaville is right for the genre, even if you can expect some groanworthy gags along the way – one character is called Lorraine: cue ‘I can see clearly now Lorraine has gone’.
“I trace ska back to the 1960s,” Bennett explains. “There were some serious acts but there were acts that I’ve produced in the past that were about having fun.
“You think of Bad Manners or Buster Bloodvessel. And there was Madness – they had an Ealing comedy stroke Punch and Judy spirit about them. It might seem strange but I think ska and humour can go hand in hand.”
Bennett launches into the storyline of Skaville.
It’s long and complicated and may leave you baffled, something about superheroes and villains prancing around to a rocksteady beat.
But it sounds fun.
There is a character who shoots a deputy sheriff and another that ends up seeking redemption. I bet you can’t guess what songs they use.
For those that haven’t been paying attention, that would be Bob Marley’s I Shot The Sheriff and Redemption Song.
You can hear the Trojan purists groaning from here to Kingston, Kingston-upon-Thames at least. But Bennett doesn’t care.
“It’s a bastardised version of Redemption Song but I don’t care,” he chirps.
“People will say that it’s sacrilege but they said I was crazy when I was remixing records with drum ‘n’ bass.”
I put it to him that ska’s star has faded and that record buyers have lost interest since its 1980s heyday.
He isn’t impressed but before he can answer, actress Thaila Zucchi, wearing a cowboy hat and pampering herself with make-up on a nearby table, chips in.
“People used to go on to me about Bob Marley and reggae and ska and I didn’t really know what they were going on about,” she says.
“But being in the show has really got me into it. Now I know what people we’re saying. It has opened my eyes to different kinds of music.”
Thaila used to be in a cheesy, her word, pop band called the Allstars – “we had a record at number nine” – and is also part of the team of pranksters working for Channel 4 that water-gunned Tom Cruise in Leicester Square a few weeks back.
But right now, she is playing Helen Back (so named because she’s been to Hell and Back).
Back to Bennett, and he is ready to tell me ska still means big fun.
“There will be people who remember the scene as it was. People think of The Specials and The Beat,” he says.
“But I have been working with The Beat again and they have a new record coming out this year.”
He is backed up by hearsay reports from Glastonbury that suggest The Beat’s revival was one of the recent festival’s best moments.
Bennett insists: “There are people who will be coming to ska all over again. There are some classic songs by The Specials and The Beat in the show and there are some new ones. It’s right for all ages.”
And by the end of our brief meeting he is wearing a pork pie hat and shades and has got me convinced that I should spend the weekend digging out the long-lost Trojan boxsets.

• Last Train To Skaville opens Upstairs At The Gatehouse on Wednesday, July 20 and runs until Sunday, July 24. 0208 340 3488.