Simon Greiff began his career in musical theatre in 1997 taking part of the world premiere of Stephen Sondheim´s SATURDAY NIGHT. He has also starred in the West End productions of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1998), MONTY PYTHON´S SPAMALOT (2006-2007) and DIRTY DANCING (2007-2008). After that he became the resident director of the UK Tour of WE WILL ROCK YOU, which meant the beginning of a new path on his career in musical theatre.

We met Simon Greiff  before watching a new West End show. As kind and energetic as he is, he admits being extremely busy, with different new projects on his mind, and other ones on their way. But never loses a huge smile on his face.

In 2009 Simon created SimG Records, a label with which he has released albums such as ´Close Your Eyes´ by Annalene Beechey (MARGUERITE, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA) or ´All Things In Time´ by Stuart Matthew Price (SHREK, PARADE). How did it all begin? “It all happened by accident.” -says Simon- “My wife is Annalenne Beechey and for years people were asking her if she was going to do an album and she always said “I´d love to, but nobody asked me to do it” and I got people asking me “is your wife recording an album?”... And I got fed up of people asking me that question... So I thought “why we don´t just do it and see what happens?” So I got advice about how to produce, create and sell an album and that´s how the album was created, but to release the album I needed to create a record label. I quickly thought about my initials, SG, but SG Productions already existed, so I chose “SimG” cause SimG Records works, and SimG Productions, and SimG casting... and whatever... So I created SimG records. And on the album there were two Scott Alan´s songs. So during the album process, Scott Alan texted me “I´d like to do my first London concert, would you help me with that?” And I said “Absolutely!”. But to create that I needed a name... So I used SimG Productions! The reason why I say that SimG was created by accident is because I didn´t go to anyone to produce the album and to help me to produce Scott´s concert, I did it myself so that´s why I created the company.”

And after Scott Alan´s concert in London, SimG Productions presented the Broadway star Stephanie J. Block (9 TO 5 THE MUSICAL, WICKED, THE PIRATE QUEEN) for the first time in concert in London, as he tells us: “One of the guests at Scott´s concert was Stephanie J. Block who flew over specially to be in this concert and we got very well with her and she said “oh, wouldn´t it be nice to come back to do my own concert?” and we decided that if we do something else, we should ask Stephanie if she wants to do it, and of course we did, and that´s what we did next!”. By then, Simon was joined by Phil Sykes as a co-producer.

It seemed to be an obvious step for SimG Productions, and the second project of SimG Records also arrived by chance. “Caroline Sheen (who is currently performing Fantine in LES MISÉRABLES) told me “I´ve loved Annalene´s album, can you help me with mine?” and I said “Ok!”. And that was the next album, and since then the last two years, I´m getting lots requests and, with all the respects, I´m trying to choose what I´d like to do or what I think I can do well. We are growing, with six albums now. I can´t stop it, it´s a good thing.”

So SimG Records was born with Annalene Beechey´s debut album, ´Close Your Eyes´ in October 2009. In January 2010 they released ´Raise the Curtain´ by Caroline Sheen, and the next albums were ´All Things in Time´ by Stuart Matthew Price, ´One Voice´ by Stepen De Martin´, the cast album of the musical revue BEYOND THE GATE and the EP of the upcoming new musical STAND TALL.

The next album of SimG Records will be ´Acoustic Overtures – The Songs of Dougal Irvine´. “I´ve known Dougal for years actually, I knew him when he was a performer” -says Simon- “Over the last few years he has been writing. He mainly writes on his guitar, he´s a singer-guitarrist. He´s quite contemporary and he appeals to a big audience I think. He approached me to say “I´d love to do an album with my songs” and I jumped on the chance. His diversity as a writer is phenomenal.” The album will be out in October, and Dougal´s songs will be performed by different West End performers, and some of them by Dougal himself.

Through SimG Productions, Simon produced the first concert of the American composer Bobby Cronin in London, on February 2011. And now they are immersed in the seasonal cabarets, which began last Christmas. On Sunday 14th August the series ´Summer with...´ began with Annalene Beechey and Rebecca Lock. The second one was Sunday 21st August, focused in four British composers, and the last one will be on the 28th August, starring Jack Shalloo (HAMLET THE MUSICAL).

For Simon it is specially important the concert that was held yesterday with “four of the greatest writers we have”: Dougal Irvine (DEPARTURE LOUNGE), Grant Olding (SIMPLY CINDERELLA), Tim Sutton (THE SECRET GARDEN) and Laurence Mark Wythe (TOMORROW MORNING). “I presume that general public won´t know any of them, and the theatregoers may vaguely know one or two if you tell them the shows they have written. We need to support them and make sure that people know that we have some talents in writing. Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stiles & Drewe, Howard Goodall and Lionel Bart are not the only four British composers, there are many more. Of course they are young and contemporary, but it doesn´t mean that they are not good. I´m flying the flag for British writers.”, defends Simon.

Stephen Ashfield (JERSEY BOYS), Samantha Barks (LES MISÉRABLES), Annalene Beechey and George Ure (WICKED) and the same composers performed their own songs, and even swapped between them their songs, creating an unique evening of new musical theatre at the Battersea Barge.

Simon tells us that the response of the audience has been great so far: “The support has been fantastic. It´s not been easy, times are hard for everyone and people don´t have a lot of money to spend in lots of concerts. But the support has been overwhelming, specially people asking me when  the next one is. It´s quite amazing. A pleasant surprise.”

Apart from working in these projects with SimG Records and SimG Productions, Simon Greiff will be directing a new musical: “I have a rough passion for collaboration.” -tells Simon- “Part of the direction job is to collaborate with the writers and make sure the project is ready before it goes to the stage. There´s a brand new British Musical called STAND TALL, a rock pop contemporary version of David & Goliath. The last six-seven months I´ve been developing and directing it, doing workshops with actors I trust in a room, working the text, working the songs... I was asked to produced an EP demo, which is being sold... And the writers and producers had an opportunity to present it at the Landor Theatre and I´m thrilled that they have asked me to direct the project. I hope we have a further life!”. Created by Lee Wyatt-Buchan, Aldie Chalmers and Sandy Chalmers STAND TALL, will run at the Landor Theatre from the 12th October until the 12th November 2011.

And what will people find in STAND TALL? “It´s an anty-bullying story, so we can all find something we can relate to. It is supposed to be fun, appealing to anyone, and the score is music that represents what we might hear in the charts today, but of course is written in a musical theatre style. We also have a fantastic cast, but the most important thing is that it is an original British Musical. Of course it´s loosely based on a biblical fable, but it´s still an original show.”

And, as if all this was not enough, Simon is also working in another new show with the composer  Laurence Mark Wythe. “It´s called STORIES FROM THE LIGHTHOUSE and it has very beautiful songs. Laurence has some wonderful cut songs from other shows and he came to me to try to do a show with them. The first, the obvious thing was make a story and see if this songs could fit. But I didn´t want to do like a prefab musical and tried to do a piece of theatre where the songs do the journey themselves. I suppose it´s the old school revue really. Americans do it successfully. A good example is SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD by Jason Robert Brown, a collection of songs that happen to be very loosely placed together to give you an arc of emotions. And that´s what we are doing with Laurence.”

For Simon it is so important to support new British musical, it´s no doubt his main aim as a professional at this moment: “There are some fantastic companies I know involved with that: Perfect Pitch Musicals and Mercury Musical Developments, they are the two biggest, I presume, and I´ve been involved with them as a development director and associate producer. The reason why I got involved with them is because they are fighting for the case of British musical. I´m also trying to support new writing with SimG.”

In his opinion the West End has got a little bit stuck regarding new big musical theatre productions: “A lot of the transfers coming from Broadway, or even the original shows that happen in this country, are based on a movie. There´s nothing wrong with that. Most stories aren´t original. My point of view is that if you´re going to do the next movie musical, why not doing it with a new composer and with a new lyricist... not go to pop bands, or Elton John... why not go to the young writers? In America they seem to be doing that actually. The two writers that did the version of THE WEDDING SINGER, they were fantastic and the producers took a gamble on them. The same happened with HIGH FIDELITY. I would have loved if GHOST THE MUSICAL was written by young British musical theatre writers. Of course you can have Matthew Warchus, have amazing directors, creators around them to support them, but why can´t the score be created by young writers? Maybe producers should be a bit braver in their choices. But we´ll see.”

Obviously there´s a long way to go in order to change West End reality but, thanks to the work of young enthusiastic professionals that love musical theatre, it´s changing step by step. At least they offer audiences the chance of discovering this hidden young talent that will hopefully explode soon.

Stephen Ashfield, Annalene Beechey, George Ure and Samantha Barks in the concert ´Summer With... the composers´