How does writing an adaptation compare to writing an
original play?
Most writers like to do an adaptation once a year as you know what
happens next. The pain of doing original work is it's up to you to
decide where the plot goes. With an adaptation, you just have to
make the plot work in the context you've decided on, so in One
Man, Two Guvnorsit's set in 1963, Brighton. Then all I have
to worry about is making it funny. It's a great pleasure to do
adaptations; I'm not saying it's easier, but it's more pleasurable
because someone's already written the ending. Deciding how to end a
play is a writer's torture.
A Servant of Two Masters has a complex structure and is
very much of its period. What are the problems in adapting and
updating a work of this genre?
The main problem to solve is that the plot revolves around arranged
marriage and that doesn't exist in contemporary society, except
within certain cultures. But we wanted to set the play in the 1960s
so it would have been a very different play if I'd explored
immigrant marriages in that decade. The solution we came up with
was a marriage of convenience because one of the parties was gay
and wanted to hide that fact by marrying a woman. That was my first
big breakthrough. The second problem was the sword fighting that
features in the original. I remembered Baz Luhrmann's film,
Romeo + Juliet[1996], where he got around his updating of
Shakespeare's play by branding the automatic guns the characters
used as being made by a manufacturer called 'Sword' so he didn't
have to change the text's references to swords. This made me think
that in the 1960s East End gangsters would have carried around
flick knives and that introduced the gangster concept to the
adaptation.
You've relocated the play from 18th century Venice to 1960s
Brighton. How did that come about?
I remember having many early discussions with Nick [Hytner, the
production's director] about where to set it. Because food is such
a main motivating factor for the central character, my original
idea was to set it just after WWII because food was still being
rationed. I thought the kind of period music and clothes we could
incorporate would be very stylish. But Nick wasn't very keen on
that as he thought the colours [both literally in the set and
costumes, and stylistically in terms of the mood of the music]
would be too muted; browns and greys and military colours. Nick was
set on having more primary colours in the mix so we settled on
1963.
You've retained many elements of Commedia dell'arte. Was
this important to you?
I certainly wanted to keep most of the stock characters from the
genre. Nick and I sat around a lot and talked about how those
characters fitted into British comedy, music hall, Variety, even
Monty Python; you can imagine John Cleese playing a pretentious
middle-class gent spouting Latin [like the character of Harry
Dangle in One Man, Two Guvnors]. We wanted to put a bit of
a 1963 spin on the stock characters. So, for example, the birth of
feminism gave us the character of Dolly. The physical stuff was
quite a challenge and also it's not fashionable in contemporary
theatre to have asides to the audience. The physical gags and
business we're doing is a risk. I'm quite sure some of the more
pretentious broadsheet critics will find it a bit too close to
pantomime. But Nick and I wanted to make an accessible, popular
comedy that would find a new audience for the NT. The first draft
had quite a lot of swearing in it because that's how East End
gangsters speak, but Nick felt very strongly that we should take
all the swearing out so that family audiences could watch the show.
There's only one use of the 'F-word' in the play now, right at the
end.
You've been sitting in on rehearsals quite a lot. How do
you find handing over the play to a director and
actors?
I would normally only be in the room for the first week of
rehearsals, but with this there's been a lot more work, partly
because of how all the physical business that's being created
affects the script. Nick has wanted me around much more than I
usually am which I'm very happy to do, but usually I'm only too
happy to get out of the way and let the director and actors get on
with it. Nick and I have worked on three plays together now and my
involvement really depends on the project. With England People Very
Nice, our first collaboration, I was in the rehearsal room all the
time because we wrote it as we rehearsed. We did a lot of rewriting
on that and we've found a way of working together on rewrites
whilst I'm in the room and he's directing. I don't consider any of
my plays to be finished until the Friday of the first week of
performances. I know the play will get better once it's in front of
audiences and it's that performance draft I send to the publishers,
not the first rehearsal draft.
Interview by Adam Penford for the National Theatre education
department.
One Man, Two
Guvnors, Sydney Theatre, 30
March - 11 May, 2013.
Q&A: Richard Bean
Date posted: 22 Oct 2012Author: STC