York New Musical Festival, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, July 21 to 31

York New Musical Festival is the first of its kind in York and indeed in Britain and is committed to presenting the best of unsigned new musicals.

“We’re aiming to showcase the new musicals to producers, directors, investors and audiences alike,” says festival director Jim Welsman, former chairman of York Musical Theatre Company.

“The festival has received huge interest from musical directors and composers and we’re hoping that it will become a regular annual addition to York City of Festivals.”

Jim is delighted by the response to the inaugural festival. “We received 70 initial applications by close of play on March 31 from composers from all over the world to perform here. Two or three came from the USA, the same number from Australia, and we even had one from Holland.”

From those expressions of interest, nine musicals have been confirmed for the July event with the possibility of two more being added. “Seven are full musicals that will be staged as a proper musical and two are works in progress,” says Jim.

“That epitomises what we wanted this festival to be because we didn’t necessarily want all the musicals to be finished.”

Each musical must clock in at a maximum of 90 minutes without an interval, in the tradition of the Edinburgh Fringe format.

One musical has been withdrawn since the list was compiled. “Unfortunately the concert version of Joanna Taylor’s Thirty, Flirty & Thrive – a musical based on the film 13 Going On 30 – will not now be performed. Joanna was having to apply for permission to use the storyline,” says Jim.

“I suppose these things happen when you’re planning something new. But we may now have an extra musical: Profumo The Musical, written well before Andrew Lloyd Webber thought of it! There’s an album but the show has never been performed. It’s an interesting possibility!”

Jim is particularly excited about a festival entry from New York: Elaine Pechacek and Katie Hammond’s Seasons.

“This is great news in our first year to have a musical straight from New York, and I’ve now got hold of my old friend Robert Readman, who has agreed to produce and direct this show under the banner of his Pick Me Up Theatre company, which again is exactly what we wanted the festival to involve,” he says.

Seasons spans the course of one year and delves into the lives of two couples: Helen and Peter, classmates who reconnect at a high school reunion and struggle with an unexpected pregnancy after a one-night stand, and Hope and Mrs Jones, a mother and daughter celebrating an engagement but also grappling with an unwelcome diagnosis of breast cancer.

The rest of the festival participants will bring their own shows. These include Confessions Of A Rabbi’s Daughter, a one-woman musical by Emily Rose Simons, in which Rachel Wiseman, Rabbi’s daughter and Sunday school teacher, was looking forward to becoming the perfect Jewish mother and wife until she realised her feelings for her best friend, Ruth.

The Happy Hypocrite, composed by Stephen Hodel with book and lyrics by David Benedictus, is based on a Max Beerbohm novella from 1897 that tells the story of Regency rake Lord George Hell, the wickedest man in 1820 London. Written seven years after The Picture of Dorian Grey, Beerbohm's story is a more cheerful counterpart to Wilde's gloomy tale.

Rob Winlow, one of the festival committee members alongside Readman, Boiling Frog writer Keith Humphrey and Mike Rogerson, has re-worked his musical Armada. First performed in York in 2011, its subject is the defeat of the Spanish Armada with the connivance of the Queen’s astrologer Dr John Dee and his beautiful assistant Sarah, and a new feature for 2013 will be the use of projection.

In a second York contribution, fellow committee member Mike Rogerson, from Dunnington, has written the family rock’n’roll musical Cindy Weller, a re-working of the Cinderella story with a golfing family.

In Judit Catan’s Girl With A Torch, Julie is all alone at home with only her teddy for comfort. After a quarrel, her mum and dad seem to have disappeared, so she sets out to search for something lost; a secret treasure, a long-lost desire; a thing she cannot remember.

John McDermott’s rock opera 33AD looks at the accounts of Jesus's resurrection as told in the Gospels through the eyes of the disciples. “You will see Paul’s journey from persecuting the Christians to becoming one himself,” says Jim.

The works-in-progress will be another Rob Winlow piece, Austen, a musical based on the life of Jane Austen, and Francesca’s Passenger by Becky Callaghan, the 1948 story of a quiet, shy woman trying to escape her past.

On Saturday, July 27, festival-goers can watch as many as five plays, including the two works in progress; likewise, they can watch four on July 28, and the festival will operate a VIP club for various combinations of watching shows.

In a first for the Rowntree Theatre, the Poppy Coffee Company will provide catering from a mini-van with a gazebo on July 27 and 28.

Festival highlights will be presented in St Sampson’s Square from July 24 to 28, with more details to follow on both this and news of a potential collaboration with the New York Musical Theatre Festival.

This year’s inaugural festival will operate from one venue, the Rowntree Theatre, but Jim says: “We hope the festival will become an annual event and expand to numerous venues around the city in the coming years.”

Meanwhile, to raise funds to cover costs of marketing the event, the festival is mounting a series of events, which began last Saturday with a concert by Mike Rogerson’s band, Northern Rock, at the Library Room, Dunnington. They will be in action again on May 17, playing songs of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s at New Earswick Folk Hall.

A venue and date is yet to be confirmed for a third fund-raiser, Musicals Old & New, featuring York singers in a showcase of their favourite songs from established musicals and new songs from musicals to be performed at the York New Musical Festival.

Festival tickets will be available from June 1 and can be purchased online at ynmf.org or before each performance.

Did you know?

The York New Musical Festival organisers have received a message of support from Blood Brothers playwright Willy Russell.

“I was delighted to learn of the York New Musical Festival and wish it every success in encouraging and developing new work for the musical stage,” he said. “By providing a showcase for new musicals and works-in-progress, the festival will be an invaluable stimulus and encouragement to all those who, against the odds, grapple with this most demanding, but highly rewarding form of theatre. I hope that the festival and all those who participate in it go from strength to strength.”