Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Award-winning playwright and screenwriter of state-of-the-nation shows This House, Inc., Dear England, and TV drama Sherwood.
On the island
Eight records
I had to have pulp in my list. There's something about that band and that music in the late 90s, which kind of made sense for me. It sounded like what it was to grow up in a post-industrial town. ... I was going to pick Common People, one of my favourite songs, but my contemporary friend and writer Jack Thorne picked that. So I refuse because he's my nemesis. He's not. So instead, I've picked what I think is just one of the most joyful pop tracks of the late 1990s, which is Disco 2000.
Glenn Miller and His Orchestra
As an example of my father's sort of musical taste that was the soundtrack of my youth, I have picked Glenn Miller, which I guess it felt like the men in my family always sort of had this kind of wartime vibe, like my granddad and my dad and my brother, planes and big band music and history the history of war. So this featured a lot in our house. And I guess also Chattanooga Choo-Choo, which is the track I've picked, is also about trains.
I picked Foo Fighters, who I did actually really love growing up. And this is probably the least cool Foo Fighters track. It's the love song he felt like he had to write. But whenever this came on, I was very, very happy because it was something I could sing along to myself. And this is Up in Arms.
This connects actually with Hull in the sense that the soundtracks to movies has been a love of my life for a long time. And I actually write often to the Hans Zimmers and the Max Richters of this world just because they're so emotive and they capture the sweeping scale of stories. And this particular track is from the talented Mr. Ripley, which it was an Anthony Mingella film. And this is by Gabrielle Yarred, who's a Lebanese-born composer. He did most of Anthony Mingella's music for his films. And this is from the end of the film, I think, where the main character, Tom Ripley, who's someone who hides himself away from the world, believes that he's going to be hidden forever.
This is the Queen, that is Kylie Minogue, and she was one of my first ever albums I remember getting on Christmas Day. And I've had a love affair with Kylie ever since. And actually, this track I only discovered because Russell T. Davies put it in a television drama. And Russell is the perfect example for me of someone who manages to smash into big, serious social studies or political state of the nations just a huge amount of pop culture references and particularly British pop culture references. And this was one of the first times I heard this banger of a track, which is Your Disco Needs You.
Where Are We Now?Favourite
My love affair with David Bowie knows no bounds and it sounds like Britain when he talks about market squares and dance halls and workers going on strike and yet somehow there's a fantastical otherness to his galactic characters and the wonder and the fantasy and the magic he gave to mundane post-war British life and I guess also decades before sexual fluidity and everything else became cool. He spoke openly about his own ambiguity and as I've wandered through that journey myself, someone who constantly reinvents themselves and defies definition in such a humane and exciting and electric way is everything I want in an artist. ... I wanted to go more towards the end of his life and this song to me expresses the gift that I think he left us with. This was recorded just a couple of years before he died and this is Where Are We Now?.
Elton John (music), Jake Shears (lyrics)
I got to write a musical recently with Elton John, who you may have heard of. And Jake Shears, who did the lyrics, Alton did the music, and I wrote the script of the book. And this was called Tammy Faye, and we opened it at the Almeida Theatre in London, set in the world of televangelism in the 1980s, and this extraordinary woman, Tammy Faye Baker, who came from that world of the Christian evangelical right. And yet she was this huge empath who basically welcomed in at the time the gay community into her television shows. ... So even though this hasn't been released yet, because we're building up to our Broadway show later this year, this is sung by the extraordinary Katie Braben who played Tammy Faye. She won an Olivier for this role. And this is called If You Came to See Me Cry.
I spend a lot of time thinking about political songs and protest songs from Bob Dylan onwards and I guess this one in particular, this is by Rufus Wainwright. I really value it because even though it is politically charged, it was written about America during the time of the war on terror, it still somehow yet manages to be a popular, soaring, theatrical, arty, moving, melodically satisfying, soft song. ... this is Going to a Town.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:05How do you ensure you can achieve [empathy] in your work?
By just asking the question, why is this person behaving the way they are? And I've put some pretty controversial and difficult people on stage and screen, whether that's Rupert Murdoch or Dominic Cummings. And I think there's just no point in reconfirming to an audience what they already think and feel. And the black and whiteness of storytelling has just never interested me. I think both people, but also our public institutions, whether it's newspapers or the radio or the Houses of Parliament, there are so many paradoxes and contradictions. And that's what makes drama so alive. And it's uniquely drama, I think, that has the space and the time to enjoy those contradictions and those paradoxes.
Presenter asks
3:56Tell me about your own experiences of theatre. How does it feel? Talk me through a typical [opening] day.
My favourite moment is the hour before the first preview when a new play, a new story that no one has ever seen before is about to be put in front of an audience. And I always try to protect that time with my team, like the director and the designers. You go and have a quick bite to eat around the corner and you just take a moment. I normally have a little whiskey next to me and you try to be present in that moment because you only share something for the first time once, which is an obvious thing to say. But from that moment on, in a couple of hours' time, it will always have existed and it will always be that thing. And that pre-going over the top moment with your team is really special.
The keepsakes
The book
Stephen Hawking
I've really wrestled, but actually I've just gone with A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Never read it, and this would be a good opportunity to bank that in my brain. ... time on the island essentially is not a waste of time.
The luxury
a keg of single malt Scottish whisky
a keg of whiskey is actually a living, breathing thing. It ages and evolves every year and it's alive. It's like basically having a pet that I can drink.
Presenter asks
7:53Your parents divorced when you and your twin sister were six. Can you remember how you felt about it at the time?
Well actually when my parents divorced they did this incredibly generous thing at the time which was they bought houses on the same street. So there were only two houses between us so I could go and see my dad whenever me and my twin sister wanted to and my brother could come and see my my mum. So there was an attempt to keep us all sort of together as a family unit. But I loved my own company more than I loved hanging out with my brother or sister or my friends. I really liked being on my own in my room and I began writing short stories from a really early age. My mum got me an electric typewriter, which I just adored.
Presenter asks
17:55Why [did history catch your imagination]?
I guess the storytelling of it, like it's the purest example of week by week turning up to class and being told a story that you don't know how it's going to end. Like I really didn't. So we'd be doing the French Revolution and you'd get to the point where the guillotine's about to come down on Marie Antoinette and the bell would go and I literally wouldn't know, does she make it? And I think by default my love of that, my love of returning to far away or recent history to make sense of the now has accidentally made me quite political, but it all came really from a love of storytelling.
Presenter asks
26:49I want to ask about one of your later plays actually, Tory Boys. That was about Ted Heath's hidden sexuality. And I know that you wrote it during a time when you were exploring your own relationships, your identity. Did you learn anything about yourself while you were writing that play?
Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, my certainly my relationship history has been varied and flexible and a bit like my growing up in North Nottinghamshire, which never sort of went down on one side or the other. I was basically I've always, up until recently, struggled a lot with sort of relationships and the level of, I guess, commitment and vulnerability and intimacy that a healthy one requires. And I don't think that's completely divorced from my professional life and my writing life and where I sit there. You know, I've had relationships with women and men and I found a great comfort and peace in that and not needing to define for anyone at any particular or given point where I am or what I'm doing or how I'm … Being in a theatre community where it's less binary and you can not pin your colours to any particular mast and it's that's progressive and tolerant, that's been a real value to me. And I've tried to yeah, Tory Boy certainly was a way of putting on stage all the bizarre contradictions and nuances of the young experience, I think, when you're trying to when you're emerging politically and sexually and emotionally.
Presenter asks
37:03I think you've had an actual diagnosis [of workaholism], haven't you? What happened?
I would go into periods where I would be far too isolated from friends or self-sabotage relationships as soon as they became intimate and important, and was just working like around the clock continually, but without really looking after myself. So I went to just start to speak to people about it. But I actually went to see a particular woman who probably saved me. And the first thing she said to me was she was listening to me wanging on about feelings. And she eventually just said, Why aren't you wearing a coat? … I think the moment I realized I had a problem was I'd started to lie to my family and my friends about stupid things that didn't even need lying about. Like they would go, You look tired, what time did you get up today to work? and I would say, Oh, you know, eight and I'd say to myself, But I know I got up at five, that's really weird. Why did I why did I say that? Or I wouldn't have eaten for a whole day. And I think that's when I knew it was a natural problem. And then I was singing out from that, realizing that that also fed into my issues around relationships and intimacy, because I was all of my self-esteem, all of my validation, all of my happiness and joy was coming from work. And I didn't allow myself to believe that there was space for anything else.
“I think both people, but also our public institutions, whether it's newspapers or the radio or the Houses of Parliament, there are so many paradoxes and contradictions. And that's what makes drama so alive.”
“I really liked being on my own in my room and I began writing short stories from a really early age. My mum got me an electric typewriter, which I just adored.”
“I think the moment I realized I had a problem was I'd started to lie to my family and my friends about stupid things that didn't even need lying about.”
“I can't let go of that for my own characters, even in sort of difficult and troubled times.”
“The act of gathering around it and telling it gives me hope because if we can do that, then maybe we can find solutions.”
“I'm definitely going to need David Bowie with me on the island and there is something about that particular track. I love the lyrics at the end. Essentially he sings as long as there's sun, as long as there's rain, as long as there's fire, as long as there's me, as long as there's you. And I just love that about him and I think his parting gift to all of us as Bowie fans was that sense of hope and optimism about the human spirit.”