Glasgow singer Melisa Kelly to debut My Kind of Musical at Room 2

My Kind of Musical is the first comedy written by Melisa Kelly, who has supported and worked with Jools Holland with her band Melisa Kelly and the Smokin’ Crows.

Described as a show "for people who both love and hate musicals in all their camp glory", the musical is a 'one-woman show' featuring original songs that will also be interactive, with the audience encouraged to heckle and sing along.

"Being in the music industry, it’s a hard sell when you’re a fat b****, that is the truth of the matter," Melisa said.

"My Kind of Musical came about when I was trying to write a new comedy show and thinking about the idea that the kind of people that really love musicals, especially things like Heathers and all the rest of it, tend to be people who feel super disenfranchised, tend to be people who are 'too gay, too black, too fat, too poor', all these things.

"And yet we all go along to these musicals where we see some of the most amazing performers in the world, but they do tend to be that small group of very privileged people, tend to be predominantly white, predominantly very thin, and it just felt like a really weird juxtaposition."

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My Kind of Musical was inspired by Melisa’s time hosting the inclusive and interactive Broadway Babies night at Riding Room on Virginia Street, where everyone was encouraged to get up and sing along to musical theatre songs.

She said: "Over the years I’ve done plenty of auditions for things and been part of the Fringe and musical theatre and comedy and all the rest of it and the one thing that I noticed about the conversation around the Riding Room night was we got a lot of people who came in and said things like ‘I would have loved to have done musical theatre but I was pushed out of my musical theatre course because I was fat or because I was really overtly theatrical and camp’ which you’re like 'that seems not right because surely that’s really helpful'.

"There are people who come in who are not singers and they’ll know all of the words to Hamilton, they’ll know all the words to Heathers, they’ll know all the words to Wicked, they’ll know all of it.

"And I see people coming up to me at the end like 'thank you so much, I’ve never got to sing in a microphone, I’ve always wanted to be part of that world but I’m too this, this and this so I never got to'.

"And it breaks my heart because I’m like ‘that’s crazy, it shouldn’t be the case'."

While Melisa says she is "terrified" to perform the show for the first time, she’s also looking forward to it.

She said: "I feel honour bound to make sure it’s as good as it can be so people are not turning up and going 'you shouldn’t be the spokesperson for anything, this is dreadful', so I am quite scared.

"But I am excited as well, I feel like people will find themselves in it."

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She continued: "I think the glorious thing about Glaswegians is if you tell Glaswegians there’s an interactive part of the show where they get to sing or shout something, they’re there at the drop of a hat like 'right, how can I be part of this show'.

"It feels like camaraderie because I don’t think I’ve ever played for a Glasgow audience where they’ve known it’s interactive and wanted it to not do well, it’s like they’re always behind you, they want to interact, they want to heckle, and they want you to win which is nice that they want you to do well."

My Kind of Musical will be at Room 2 on Nelson Mandela Place on Friday, July 29 at 7pm.

You can find out more HERE.