Brewis, Peter

Peter Brewis is a composer and instrumentalist. Brewis studied composition at the Royal College of Music where he won the Cobbett Prize for composition. After graduation he took lessons in composition from Nadia Boulanger, studied electronic music with Lawrence Casserly and Javanese Gamelan with Alec Roth.

He composed several musicals. Some of these were for educational projects. However, his ‘Don Quixote’ was composed for the husband and wife team of Reg Bolton and Annie Stainer and the Traverse Theatre. Mel Smith and Bob Goody were working on a two-man show at the same venue. Brewis teamed up with them and together they created three black comedy musicals, including ‘Irony in Dorking’ which won a Fringe First Award and ‘The Gambler’ whose 1986 revival at the Hampstead Theatre was nominated for an Olivier Award.

Brewis has collaborated on several of Smith’s other projects. These include the television shows, ‘Smith and Goody’, ‘Not the Nine O’clock News’ (for which Brewis wrote Oh England My Leotard) and ‘Alas Smith and Jones’. Other television shows on which Brewis has worked include the comedy programmes ‘Three of a Kind’, ‘A Kick Up the Eighties’, ‘The Lenny Henry Show’, ‘Carrott’s Lib’, ‘Lenny Beige’ and ‘Spitting Image’. Although he provided lyrics for all of these shows, Brewis also composed music for other people’s lines, for example in the song ‘I’ve Never Met a Nice South African’ which was the B-side for the chart-topping ‘The Chicken Song’.

Film credits include ‘About a Boy’, for which Brewis wrote and composed ‘Santa’s Super Sleigh’, ‘Staggered’ and several films by Vera Neubauer, Phil Mulloy and Claire Barwell. Brewis has also composed music for several stage plays, including a production of ‘As You Like It’ which he himself directed at the Battersea Arts Centre.