Malcolm Sircom

Published Tuesday 5 August 2008 at 12:00 by Alan Sircom

My father, writer, musician and musical director Malcolm Sircom died on June 11, aged 73. He enjoyed a long career in the theatre, first as musical director in music hall and pantomime, before switching to writing review and musicals through the sixties to the nineties.

Born in 1934, Malcolm was educated at Highgate and he read music at Cambridge University before embarking on his early professional career working in regional theatre, including Farnham, Worcester and Hornchurch. He also worked extensively in old time music hall, where he met my mother and Malcolm’s first wife, the actress Patsy Rowlands.

One of his early successes was his musical direction of Cinderella at the Ashcroft Theatre, Croydon in the Christmas 1964 season. He was also a part of the review movement in the sixties, and his review And All That JazzÉ played at Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch in 1968.

By the late sixties, he became musical director for the Derby Playhouse, during which time he met the actress Judith Boyd. They married in 1973. He was musical director of the inaugural production of My Fair Lady at the new Derby Playhouse theatre building in September 1975.

In the early eighties, he toured with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Bud ‘n’ Ches with Leslie Crowther and Bernie Winters.

Malcolm also adapted Roger Hargreaves’ popular Mr Men books for the London stage - his Mr Men Musical ran at the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End across the Christmas season in 1985. He then spent four years criss-crossing the UK (and, briefly, Israel) as musical director for the Paul Barnard production of The Rocky Horror Show.

During this time, he formed an amateur choir in Derby - the Modern Christian Choir - to perform his rock mass and rock passion, Incident at Golgotha. He also wrote a Requiem Mass for the choir, which was performed at the Buxton Festival.

He started writing school musicals in the nineties, starting with Ebenezer (a musical version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol), which premiered in 1992 at St Benedict School, Derby. He wrote school musicals with versions specifically for primary and secondary school students, and subsequently formed a partnership with Musicline Publications, through which his shows have been performed at schools worldwide.

Malcolm’s school musicals included a retelling of Dickens’ Oliver Twist - Olivia! (subtitled A Female Oliver!) - and also Dream On, a reworking of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as his own creations, such as The Rocky Monster Show. Malcolm was exceptionally adept at synthesising diverse themes into a single child-friendly musical, such as his Pinafore Pirates musical, which combines elements of five Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in one.

Away from the theatre, Malcolm was a keen sportsman. He was a leg-spin bowler and played for the Stage Cricket Club in the seventies, and for Brailsford Cricket Club until the age of 71.

He is also survived by his wife Judith, their son Jamie and daughter Kate.