Sex Pistol McLaren Makes Music with Servant???

Robin Maugham's The Servant could undergo a major musical makeover if Malcolm McLaren - the former music manager who discovered Adam Ant, Bow Wow Wow and, most famously, the Sex Pistols - gets his way. He's proposing to do just that for Universal Studios. McLaren told The Stage newspaper that his aim is to "create a very intriguing, sombre, quitessentially English pop musical" and that Robin Maugham's tale about "the disintegration of both classes" provides "an excellent foundation to talk about English culture". Originally a novella that Maugham himself adapted for the stage in 1958, The Servant is best remembered as Harold Pinter's 1963 film, starring Dirk Bogarde and James Fox. Last spring, Lyric Hammersmith artistic director Neil Bartlett adapted and restaged the play, bringing to the surface the original homoerotic undertones, in a production that starred Jack Davenport and Michael Feast. The Servant tells the sinister story of rich, indolent and handsome young Tony who employs Barrett, a wily older servant, to keep house for him when he returns from abroad. With a private income and an appetite for indulgence, how easily can a young man be destroyed? And how well can such a story be turned into musical magic?

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