THIS HAPPY BREED tells the story of an English family in the period between World War I and World War II.  The play is in three acts, each containing three scenes.  There is a passage of time between every scene, most being at least 1 year.  The scene changes in our production involved both sets and costumes.

This level of transformation takes time. Rather than make the audience sit in an awkward blackout for a minute or two, Director Nick Bowling and Dramaturg Jennifer Shook had the idea to cover the changes with short films about historical events relevant to the scenes. Conveniently, the scenes lined up with significant events, often by Noël Coward’s design, and frequently they were documented by newsreels of the day.  Projections Designer Mike Tutaj assembled this footage into coherent and visually interesting films that were accompanied by music.  The score for “THIS HAPPY BREED” is the score for those films.

As you will hear, the score quotes some English hymn tunes which are noted in the guide below.  In addition I wrote a “departure and return” theme that goes up (departure) then settles back down (return).  This came from Nick’s desire to give focus to the story of the daughter who runs away midway through the play and returns again in the penultimate scene.  The theme is first heard as she leaves, again when she returns, and in a finale of sorts where I combined several ideas from earlier pieces into single cue.

Every now and then you work on a show that nearly everyone involved remains attached to for years to come.  This was one of those shows.