The Stage

Novelist Eoin Colfer to write ‘swing’ musical

Published Friday 16 October 2009 at 17:06 by Michael Quinn

The novelist Eoin Colfer has revealed he is writing a musical to be staged at next year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The Irish-born author has just published And Another Thing…, the sixth instalment in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, the first not to be written by original author Douglas Adams. Colfer came to fame in 1991 with the first of his own fantasy-comedy novels featuring the teenage criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl.

In an interview with the BBC, Colfer said he was “taking time off” to write a musical called Lords of Love, which would be “a swing musical – just two guys in a bar”.

Colfer said the work would be “quite funny, but it’s bittersweet, very sad too. It’s a bit like if you can imagine Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis never really made it, and now they’re 50 and 55 and they are trying to do a reunion tour”.

Lords of Love is Colfer’s second musical. His first was an ambitious re-telling of an Irish legend with dragons and the destruction of an entire city performed in his hometown of Wexford.