The Ministry of Biscuits
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The Ministry of Biscuits is a musical comedy, written in 1997–98 by the playwright and composer Brian Mitchell and the author and illustrator Philip Reeve, with a filmed section directed by Ben Rivers. It mixes Ealing comedy and the light music of the 1940s with a dystopian setting inspired by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
According to Mitchell, in the mid 1990s, the two writers were working on a different project, when Reeve handed him a chocolate ginger nut, 'sparking a quip about the 'ministry of biscuit ideas' from which the entire musical was born.'.[1] From the first draft, Mitchell knew that the plot was so absurd that it could only be staged as a musical. He told Daily Brighton that, though he had studied music at University, he had a piano that he hadn't touched for seven years, but as soon as he began working on The Ministry of Biscuits, "music started to bubble out of me".[1] Mitchell's score was inspired by British Light Music and the Ealing comedy scores. The overall effect, Mitchell says, 'is as if Georges Auric, after writing the score for Passport to Pimlico, 'had not stopped and had written a load of songs'.[1]
Philip Reeve has written on his blog that 'The Ministry of Biscuits was the moment when I found my feet as a writer. I knew while we were working on it that it was better than anything I'd done before. I suppose I could say that I had finally "found my own voice".'[2]
Plot
The story is set in a parallel grim post-war Britain of the late 1940s, where The Ministry of Biscuits aims to 'control biscuits, and to control the idea of biscuits.' It prohibits decadent sweetmeats, such as the Gypsy Cream and the Jaffa Cake. The hero, Cedric Hobson, a meek junior biscuit designer working on the recipe for a thinner, drier Rich Tea Finger, falls in love with his new French secretary, Françoise Celestine Courvoisier. He resolves to win her heart by creating a biscuit 'to shake confectionery to its very foundations'.
