The genre of musical theatre is plagued by many stereotypes – jazz hands, gaiety and predictable endings to name but a few. But that stereotype is about to be dismantled by a new spin on Jason Robert Brown’s  Songs for A New World (1995).

The show, which producer Ollie Thicknesse describes as something “entirely new and exciting”, is seeing new life as director Rosalind Peters has written a brand new script based on the original song cycle. Peters, who previously directed How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying at Magdalene College, must have a penchant for taking on creative challenges.

The musical is surprisingly minimal: the show is an hour long, with a four-person cast, a live band of five and the most prominent feature of the set is a costume rail. But don’t expect this simplicity to extend to the storyline. The script, built from the intrinsic narrative of the songs that Peters found, spans different eras, and weaves together the memories and experiences of the four actors relaxing in a dressing room after rehearsals.

Jason Robert Brown’s varied song cycle ranges from a song describing an ancient ship’s voyage to a modern-day woman on her balcony in Manhattan. Similarly, the song cycle spans from up-tempo light-heartedness to heartfelt melancholy, which Thicknesse describes as “bizarre and brilliant… it allows the show to flip very quickly from very sad and tragic, to fun and humorous. It’s incredibly hard to pin down.” The challenge of unifying these songs into a continuous narrative is aided by a costume rail, the focal point of the set which allows the characters to adopt personas as they try on costumes  Meanwhile, the characters reveal fragments of their personal lives in the dressing room, and the developing relationships among them. Thicknesse says, “It gives the opportunity for the characters to play, to try things on, and become other people.”

This self-referencing exploration of character adoption and the boundaries between being on stage and off stage, looks set to be wound through a fragmented and challenging narrative. Indeed, Thicknesse is very proud of its originality. “This is something really new and exciting in musical theatre, and happening in Cambridge.”

With experimentalism comes risk, though. Brown has emphatically stated that Songs for A New World was intended as a song cycle without an accompanying script and therefore not a musical, leading to it traditionally being performed in black t-shirts without a set. However, Thicknesse says that all those involved in the process of crafting the script, found an “interconnectedness in the songs – not just in the lyrics but also musically.”

The combination of a fresh script and a small cast has meant that working on Songs For A New World has been a malleable process, with the storyline evolving throughout the rehearsals. Even during the audition stage, the show was not set in stone, and Thicknesse and Peters decided to transfer the high tenor part  traditionally sung by a lead male to Lauren Hutchinson. Hutchinson, whose impressive list of past credits includes the titular role in Aida at the ADC last year, is described by Thicknesse as someone who has “unbelievable power in her voice”. Thicknesse strongly believes that it is the cast – also comprising seasoned performers Oli Macfarlane, Sarah Mercer and Evan Prenter – who make the challenging new production of Songs for A New World a worthy attraction.  “This cast are some of the best musical talent in Cambridge, we were incredibly lucky with the high standard that auditioned for us.”

Thicknesse tells me that despite the complicated and fragmented storyline, “the songs really build up, one person starts to sing and then the others join in, with it culminating in these big strong endings. The sound they make together has such power, and is just really beautiful”. Whether the show will deliver on its promises remains to be seen – the challenge of creating a narrative that incorporates a fragmented song cycle, yet still focuses on the music, must not be underestimated – but I have a feeling that the audience will not be disappointed.