SHOPPERS could have been forgiven for thinking they had travelled back in time at the weekend as the great-great-great grandson of Andrew Carnegie gave a sneak preview of a show about the legendary Scot.
The musical stars 28-year-old singing teacher Joe Whiteman and is part of a series of events to mark the centenary of Carnegie’s death.
Whiteman was joined by co-stars Donna Hazelton, winner of Channel 4 talent search Musicality and West End star of Chicago, who plays Carnegie’s mother and Kim Shepherd who plays Carnegie’s wife, Louise. They performed songs from the show at the town’s Kingsgate Centre and on the High Street as part of the Dunfermline Food and Craft Weekend.
The musical has been developed over the last six years by Ian Hammond Brown, co-writer of Whisky Galore A Musical, and will be staged next weekend at the town’s Carnegie Hall after a successful run at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2016.
“I’m delighted to be revisiting the role of Andrew Carnegie and cannot wait to perform in the town where my ancestor was born in the theatre named after him,” said Whiteman.
Hammond Brown said he hoped the musical would raise awareness of the Carnegie story as well as the town of Dunfermline and help support New Musical Theatre Alliance Scotland, a not-for-profit organisation set up to help nurture new musical writing talent.
The aim is to raise enough to give donations also to Alzheimer Scotland and the Nicola Murray Foundation which funds research into ovarian cancer.
“I’m delighted we’re able to bring Carnegie – The Star Spangled Scotchman to Carnegie Hall to mark the centenary of Andrew ‘s death,” said Hammond Brown.
“It’s always been my dream to perform the show at the Carnegie Hall and it’s particularly poignant in 2019 as it’s the centenary year. Many thanks to Fife Cultural Trust for its support.”
The musical tells the story of Carnegie’s life from the viewpoint of a steelworker, killed in the controversial Homestead steel plant dispute of 1892, who has come back from the afterlife to decide on Carnegie’s eternal fate in the last two hours of his life.
Hammond Brown was inspired to write it after moving to Dunfermline in 2005. He said that once he started researching Carnegie he found a man “whose life was full of contradictions and the kinds of highs and lows that make great theatre”.
Born the son of a handloom weaver in Dunfermline in 1835, Carnegie and his family emigrated to the USA in 1848 to seek work after the Industrial Revolution created a slump in demand for traditional handmade damask.
There he rose from telegraph messenger in the Pittsburgh Office of the Ohio Telegraph Company to Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division by age 18 and on through investments to railroad company owner, steel magnate and richest man in the world after selling his steel company to JP Morgan for $480 million in 1901.
A philanthropist, he is famous for funding many libraries but he also tried to achieve world peace through the League of Nations and some say he died a broken man because of the carnage resulting from the First World War.
“I thought we knew who Andrew Carnegie was but the more I read the more I realised his life was a mass of contradictions – like making his wealth from the industrialisation which had forced him to emigrate,” said Hammond Brown. “His whole life is full of surprising turns, setbacks as well as successes so makes a gripping musical.”
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