Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Musical love story to honour memory of playwright Oliver Emanuel

A History of Paper has been adapted from the writer’s radio play for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

When the musical love story A History of Paper is performed before its first audiences at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it will be the culmination of a labour of love that has lasted almost a decade.

But when the Traverse Theatre launches the show in August, the absence of one of its creators will ensure it has an added poignancy for many of those in the audience.

Playwright Oliver Emanuel was still working on A History of Paper with composer and songwriter Gareth Williams, a long-time musical collaborator, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer last year. Before he passed away in December, at the age of 43, Emanuel had regularly encouraged Williams to keep pursuing the project they had been developing for around five years.

A History of Paper by the late Oliver Emanuel and Gareth Williams will be premiered at the Traverse Theatre at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Now the show, an adaptation of a radio play Emanuel started working on in 2015, is set to honour the memory of the writer when it takes centre stage in the Traverse’s Fringe programme in August.

Born in Kent, Emanuel became one of the rising stars of the Scottish theatre scene after moving to Glasgow in 2006, writing more than 30 plays for both stage and radio.

A History of Paper, which was broadcast on Radio 4 in 2016, is partly set on the eve of the new millennium, and focuses on a couple whose lives are bound together by a piece of paper.

Emanuel and Williams started working on a musical version of the story after collaborating on The 306 Trilogy, which was commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland to mark the centenary of the First World War.

The late playwright Oliver Emanuel with composer and songwriter Gareth Williams.

Williams said: “We worked on the trilogy for four years and loved doing it, but it was so big, and sprawling, and kept growing arms and legs. We promised that we’d do something for ourselves afterwards that was a bit smaller and a bit more manageable.

“I had heard A History of Paper on the radio while we were still working on the trilogy. I said to him that it would make a great musical, so we decided to work together on an adaptation when we were finished.

"It starts as a rom-com. It has real warmth, and it’s very romantic and beautiful. But there is a moment in the second half of the story, which I don’t want to reveal too much about, which looks at grief and loss. If you were driving you’d have to pull over and if you were drinking a cup of tea, you’d have to put it down.

"I do have a sense of worry about taking this through to the end without Olly, but I’m so comforted by the fact that his story was already there and it is just so perfect as a radio drama."

Cmposer and songwriter Gareth Williams worked on the Traverse Theatre's Fringe show A History of Paper with playwright Oliver Emanuel before he passed away in December 2023.

Emanuel and Williams started developing A History of Paper with Dundee Rep’s artistic director Andrew Panton in 2019, but plans for a full-scale production were delayed by the pandemic.

Williams said: "We both had children and were working on different things, but we kept coming back to work on it every few months, and Andrew Panton kept coming back to ask us about it. Slowly, but surely, it was coming together.

“We actually had the happy songs written before last year and Olly had finished the script. The fun bit was about to happen.”

Emanuel was diagnosed with brain cancer after suffering a seizure in April of last year. He insisted Williams work on his own on the remaining songs that were needed for the show.

The playwright Oliver Emanuel, a leading figure in the Scottish theatre scene, passed away in December. Picture: Steve Beesley

Williams said: “He kept saying ‘you just need to go and have fun with it’. He knew the show inside out and had done his words. It was just a case of getting on with it. Lu Kemp, who came in as a dramaturg, and had worked with Olly even more than me, has really helped get it over the line.

"Olly had lost his mum, and always had this interest in talking about grief and loss. We had lots of long conversations last year.

“It was a very peculiar thing to be sitting with his words, trying to find the songs for the second half of the show, knowing he was so poorly. It was a tough time.

"I kept working on it. I don’t know whether that was healthy, but I felt I still had a little part of Olly’s story to tell. It was a really comforting thing. I clung on to it and couldn’t put it down.”

A pivotal point in the development of A History of Paper came with a week of rehearsals of the songs in the show at Dundee Rep earlier this year.

Williams said: “I was really curious to see how it would feel. It was really strange. There was some weeping, but a lot of joy and a sense of celebration that Olly would want us to do this.

The late Oliver Emanuel pictured at an awards ceremony in London in 2022. Picture: David Fisher/Shutterstock

"I spent the whole week arguing with him in my head and I still do. Mostly what I get from him is ‘just make sure it’s good’. He’s been very present in the process and we want to keep that. We’d be having so much fun this year at the Fringe if he was still around. I’m determined to cling onto some of that in his honour.”

Panton said: “I’m honoured to be directing this celebration of Olly’s work. He and Gareth created a beautiful piece of new musical theatre that tells a story of two people, two countries and how a moment of chance can change our lives forever. I’m thrilled that we’re bringing this new work to the Traverse, building on our ongoing festival collaboration.”

Other shows in the Traverse’s Fringe programme include a revival for Same Team, which will chart the exploits of a Scottish women’s team to win the Homeless World Cup.

American actress and comic Natalie Palamides will be launching Weer, a “romantic dramedy” focusing on two lovers who begin to argue at the stroke of midnight on Hogmanay 1999.

So Young, by Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell, will focus on a group of friends forced to “face the challenges of middle age, growing apart and losing those close to them”.