A musical is in the works about the life of Twiggy, charting how a working-class teenager from Neasden became the most famous model in Britain almost overnight with one haircut.
Ben Elton has written Close Up — The Twiggy Musical, which will star Elena Skye as the eponymous lead when it opens on September 16 at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, where it will run until November 18.
The now 73-year-old Twiggy grew up in north-west London under the more humble name of Lesley Hornby. A photo of her with a more androgynous look of cropped hair catapulted her into the big time in October 1966. Her hairdresser boyfriend, Nigel Davies, became her manager, changed his name to Justin de Villeneuve, and persuaded her to change her name to Twiggy, from her childhood nickname Twigs (because of her thin build).
Twiggy, who went on to become an actor and fashion designer, told the Guardian of her rise: “It happened almost overnight. One day I was an ordinary schoolgirl and the next I was ‘the face of 1966’. It was madness but wonderful.”
The model was only 16 when the iconic image threw her into the deep end of London’s showbusiness scene. The play will reflect a famous period in the history of the West End, with the glamour and seediness of the era recently being reflected in the 2021 film Last Night in Soho and the 2013 movie The Look of Love.
The play pays tribute to the longevity and work of Twiggy, who was made a dame in 2019 for services to fashion, the arts, and charity. It also explores how she broke down barriers in becoming famous despite her less privileged upbringing.
“For girls like me, being a model wasn’t an option as a job,” she said.
“If you think of all the models before me, they were usually middle- or upper-class, and some went to finishing schools. They modelled until they got married. I was probably the first working-class model.”
She added that she was “flattered” that Ben Elton, who wrote the material for the We Will Rock You musical as well as television comedies such as Blackadder and Upstart Crow, was writing a play about her life.
Elton told the Guardian: “[Sixties London] felt like a time of endless possibilities, a different Britain, when for a brief shining moment working-class people really had their shot, from the Beatles for about 10 years onwards.
“It was very cool, very fashionable, and almost imperative to be working-class, and those that weren’t pretended they were. It was a period when social mobility exploded.”
Close Up will be in the middle of a musical sandwich at Menier Chocolate Factory, which will start its mini-season with an adaption of Graham Greene’s thriller The Third Man and end with a “reinvention” of Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures.
For more information, visit the theatre’s site here.
