Booker Prize winner Doyle’s band of misfits poised to make soulful return

Roddy Doyle said he was initially approached about making the musical at the height of the film’s success but he was not interested at the time.

The movie, directed by Alan Parker and about a group of misfits who start an unlikely soul band in Dublin, was a huge success in 1991.

It was based on the 1987 book by Booker Prize-winning Irish writer Doyle, who has adapted the new musical from his novel.

“The Commitments was something of a monster, particularly in Ireland... it was an immediate, huge success and at the time I think it was the most successful film ever released in Ireland”, he said.

“There was immediate interest then in doing a musical. But I don’t think I had ever been to a musical and the ones I’d seen on television had never really grabbed my attention much.”

Doyle, 54, said that he found it “funny and very satisfying” that much of the young cast of the show would not have been born when he published his novel.

The Commitments: The Saviours Of Soul will be directed by Jamie Lloyd and opens at the Palace Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue on October 8.