There’s not much hint of his indie rock background, and instead he hints more at influences such as Queen and Elton John. Burrows has a unique sound and it shines through on this album. From the outset it’s pretty clear this album isn’t going to dark, brooding and full of soft piano ballads. The book explores dark themes, as you can imagine, but it’s resounding message is one of optimism, and this album is a perfect reflection of that.Īlbum opener ‘A Different Game’ is a colourful and bold Queen-eque track that immediately sets you off on a high. Matt Haig, on the other hand, is the bestselling author of the album’s namesake ‘Reasons To Stay Alive’, an unflinchingly raw autobiographical account of a breakdown that left him on a literal cliff edge. He’s also certainly no stranger to collaborations, having released an album in 2011 with Editors frontman Tom Smith. Andy Burrows started his career as Razorlight’s drummer, and has since co-written songs for artists such as Tom Odell and Jamie Lawson.
Younger Matt finds these reasons in the people in his life, Mum (Connie Walker), Dad (Chris Donnelly) and girlfriend Andrea (Janet Etuk), who subsequently support him through his experiences.As far as collaborations go, this is an incredibly interesting one. He is interrupted by Older Matt (Phil Cheadle), reassuring him that “you will one day experience joy that matches this pain” and persuading him to find reasons to live. In the opening scenes, this becomes the cliff that the 24-year-old Younger Matt (Mike Noble, pictured, with Dilek Rose), suffering his first bout of depression and anxiety, scales with the intention of ending his life. Simon Daw’s versatile set initially suggests a sort of Salvador Dalí image of a disintegrating brain – a fragmented, oval shape supported on struts. Imagined conversations between Haig and his younger self became integral to the book and form the core of this well-intentioned new production from Sheffield Theatres and English Touring Theatre. T he novelist Matt Haig wrote his award-wining, bestselling 2015 memoir about depression and anxiety because, as he explains in the programme, he wanted “to sit down with an imagined reader – maybe my younger self – and try and give that hopeless person the hope they need”.
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