About the production
The intention of the writers was to create a work that explored the middle ground where the procedures and idiom of the traditional Musical merge with those of Opera. In order that the music remain flexible enough to move convincingly from one genre into another, current popular music styles are deliberately avoided, while taking care not to stray too far into the rather more rarified and specialist world of 'modern opera'.
We therefore envisage Albert's Bridge to be an attractive and practical vehicle for a wide range of performance organisations, including youth and student theatre groups, amateur operatic/musical theatre companies seeking a more adventurous repertoire (the 1999 first performance was by an amateur group, Shaftesbury Community Theatre), and small professional opera companies familiar with the works of Sondheim, Bernstein etc.
There are 18 named characters, some of them purely spoken roles, apart from the chorus that ends Act One. Quite a few of these can easily be doubled, and a few more (with suitable quick-changes and minor adjustments) are possible, reducing the cast to a minimum of 10 (6m, 4f). However, 12 (7m, 5f) might be considered a more practical limit.