Comic makes her musical debut in a show about the A-Z

Isy Suttie is to play the creator of the A-Z maps, Phyllis Pearsall, in a new stage musical about her eccentric life.

It is the first musical role for Shameless and Peep Show star Suttie, despite featuring music heavily in her stand-up.

Pearsall is said to have created the guide after getting lost on the way to a party in London in 1935, and spent the next five years walking the streets to map the city.

The musical opens at the capital’s Southwark Playhouse in February and is described as ‘a very British musical and an exploration of both the streets of London and the eccentric Bohemian artist Mrs P, on her incredible journey to build her iconic business, mapped against her own troubled family saga.’

Her father was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant and her mother was an Irish-Italian Catholic suffragette, whose parents disapproved of the marriage, which quickly fell apart.

Suttie told Chortle: ‘I'm very excited - as soon as I heard the title song it felt completely different from a typical musical, and I love the writing and the part - Phyllis is quite an eccentric and determined character.

‘Also I've got no sense of direction whatsoever so I'm hoping that by osmosis I'll get to the point where I can find my way home from the theatre without looking at my phone.’

However, there seems to be little evidence that the story of the genesis of the the A-Zs has any basis in fact. Peter Barber, the head of maps at the British Library, has said: ‘The Phyllis Pearsall story is complete rubbish. There is no evidence she did it and if she did do it, she didn’t need to.’

But he added: ‘It was marketing and it’s a very pervasive myth, she was a loveable character and people want to believe it.’

The A-Z Of Mrs P will also star Tony-award-winning Frances Ruffelle as Pearsall’s mother and Olivier award-winner Michael Matus as her father, who owned the map company Geographia.

The show was written by Diane Samuels with music by Gwyneth Herber. Samuels describes the musical as an ‘intimate, epic work of psycho-geography’ and said: ‘One of the joys in my life is walking around London as Phyllis did. The link seemed pretty straightforward. Then behind a simple series of very handy maps, I found out about her emotionally complex family story, particularly the relationship between Phyllis and her father Sandor Gross.’

The first performance is on February 20, and the show runs for just over a month.

Published: 8 Nov 2013