‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’ was the final single to be released by The Smiths, the mercurial Manchester band who for a certain breed of sensitive young men helped define life in the 1980s. One of these men was Ben Harrison, who went on to become co-artistic director of Edinburgh-based Grid Iron Theatre Company. For Harrison, growing up in a small English town, The Smiths, and that song in particular, became a soundtrack to his life.

He was a hopelessly romantic middle-class teen who undertook a very quiet rebellion against his background by way of Cold War communist trappings and radical chic. He also fell for The Smiths just as he fell for girls at bus stops and older women at the local am-dram group who offered some kind of salvation in a humdrum town.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Harrison has co-opted the title of The Smiths’ swansong for his autobiographical look back at the decade in which he came of age. Taking a cue from Morrissey’s heart-on-sleeve lyrics and sense of emotional torment in a cruel world The Smiths occupied, Harrison’s Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me thrusts him into the spotlight to perform a series of autobiographical short stories that lay bare some of his teenage years’ key moments.

‘I suppose the theme of the show is escape,’ says Harrison. ‘There’s a theme of falling in love and possibly over-romanticising women, but then also falling very much in love with the music, which did the same thing. It kind of oscillates between hope and despair.’

This very Morrissey-sounding notion for the show came to Harrison while touring Undertow Overflow, a similarly styled compendium of autobiographically inclined songs and stories, presented in 2022 in collaboration with singer-songwriter Amy Duncan. This saw the pair do a proper rock‘n’roll style tour in a van. ‘We were driving around on the tour,’ Harrison remembers, ‘and we started listening to all this 80s music on Spotify.’

This prompted Harrison to recall a Valentine’s Day concert presented several years earlier by composer and long-time Grid Iron collaborator, David Paul Jones. Harrison and Jones had first worked together in 2003 on Those Eyes, That Mouth, a devised work drawn from classic European literature and film, and presented in an Edinburgh townhouse. Jones also worked on Barflies, an adaptation of Charles Bukowski short stories which took place in Edinburgh’s Barony Bar. It was also at the Barony that Jones performed his Valentine’s Day concert.

‘I think it was about a week before the concert,’ Harrison remembers, ‘and I said to DPJ, “oh, could you do a cover of ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’?” I thought it was a stupid idea proposing it and that he’d never do it. On the night, he played this mix of covers and his own songs, and then he started to play it, and it was incredible.’

Once the tour of Undertow Overflow was done, Harrison contacted Jones about his latest idea. Shortly afterwards, he received a seven-hour playlist of 1980s songs. With director Scott Johnston on board, these were gradually whittled down to a selection of songs from the era that left their mark on both Harrison and Jones. Songs which featured alongside original music by Jones include Bronski Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy’, ‘Like A Prayer’ by Madonna, and ‘The Power Of Love’ by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

This is no karaoke hour, however. As those well versed in the previous collaborations of what might be regarded as the Morrissey and Marr of the site-specific theatre scene will already know, Jones’ interpretations of classic songs are likely to be more in keeping with what This Mortal Coil (the 4AD record label’s 1980s rolling ‘supergroup’) did with covers of leftfield classics. Like them, Jones remakes and remodels existing material in his own more nuanced image.

‘With Ben,’ says Jones, ‘from the minute we started working together, he has always given me this kind of freedom of expression. Cover versions play a big part in our history together, and there’s not a single show we have done where a cover version hasn’t been this real seminal moment in a piece. The lovely thing about this show is we’re doing classic 80s songs, but we’re not trying to parody the sound world of the 80s.’

Jones will be accompanied on stage by internationally renowned Edinburgh-based cellist, Justyna Jablonska, whose work mixes classical sensibilities with electronics and improvisation. ‘The palette we’re using is a very mixed piano and ambient soundscape one,’ says Jones, ‘so the soundtrack is very cinematic. It’s about interpreting the words. We are faithful, more or less, to the original melodies of the songs, but the feel, the tempo and the orchestration are very different.’

As for the song that gave Harrison the show’s title, he intends paying it the ultimate homage. ‘“Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” is going to be played at my funeral,’ he says. ‘I’ve written it into my will. I’m still having the dream that last night somebody told me they loved me. I’m still looking for that.’

Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me, Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Thursday 19–Saturday 21 September; Summerhall, Edinburgh, Monday 23–Wednesday 25 September; James Milne Institute, Forres, Saturday 28 September.