The creators of a new musical about the Post Office Horizon scandal are appealing to postal workers to form part of the choir for the production, which they say can help heal communities affected by the issue.
Make Good: the Post Office Scandal is based on interviews with two post office operators from Shropshire whose lives were ruined when Fujitsu’s flawed computer software Horizon made it appear there were shortfalls in their accounting.
Jeanie O’Hare, who wrote the script, said: “They have been our guide to make sure we are doing the story right – not only technical stuff but the deep dive into the crushing heartbreak, the shame and what it feels like to be an ordinary person and the power of the state is coming down on you.”
Co-produced by Pentabus and New Perspectives, the show will tour village halls around Shropshire initially, to audiences of 100-120 people.
O’Hare – who commissioned the hit Matilda, the musical before becoming chair of playwriting at Yale School of Drama – said the story offers a chance for the community to have a “conversation with itself”.
She said: “The subpostmasters actively created community – that is their superpower and song the best analogy for that. They create warmth, community and support and that’s what we all need. We are going back into the communities where the damage was done.”
Olivier-award nominee Jim Fortune, who wrote the music and lyrics, said they would love the show’s choir to be made up of those affected by the scandal, which impacted at least 900 post office operators and is the subject of a government inquiry.
“Our dream is to build a choir for this show from within the communities, especially postal workers,” he said. “If they want to join our choir, they’d be very welcome.”
Fortune said that the idea of people being in confrontation with technology is a theme throughout the musical, with the production’s band being made up of analogue equipment, including a typewriter, a dial-up modem, and “stuff before the cloud and clever computer programmers made everything ‘better’”.
O’Hare said: “This was during the era when that terrible catchphrase ‘computer says no’ was in the ether. People were coming up against these magical machines and they weren’t able to argue their position as a human being.
“The focus on the show was always what was happening to the subpostmasters and their families but Horizon is very present as a force operating on their lives that doesn’t have to answer for itself.”
Fortune said, despite being a musical, it will still be hard hitting and that song is often the most powerful way to unpack traumatic events.
He said: “I think song is protest and it is the only and best way that I would know how to deal with emotions and politics at this level – just because we’re doing it in a theatre, doesn’t mean we’re doing Grease.”
O’Hare believes that the story, which captured audiences in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, has resonated so much because many people recognise the plight of postal workers.
“The subpostmasters are the canaries in the coalmine,” she said. “They were right there as we moved into the digital era from the analogue era. All the mistakes that developed as digital technology unfolded have played out and affected their lives.”
Fortune added: “It means so much to us culturally that there’s a huge sense of betrayal.”
The Make Good creative team didn’t want to say whether former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells, or former business improvement director Angela van den Bogerd, will feature in the musical but said discussions were ongoing.
O’Hare said: “There are people who are caricatures already but we are in the middle of the conversation on how named those people will be.”
Make Good will tour from October to December for six weeks, starting at Ludlow Assembly Rooms on 18-19 October. Further venues, including a London run, will be announced.
