RSC returns with a play of Significance
ROY Williams’s lauded and blisteringly topical play Days Of Significance heralds the first return of The Royal Shakespeare Company to The Lowry on November 24 since its acclaimed Romeo and Juliet in 2008.
Two young soldiers – one of them, Jamie, is played by George Rainsford, who studied drama here in Manchester – join their friends to binge-drink the night before they leave for active service in Iraq.
Their complex love lives and mortal fears directly impact on their tour of duty in a play which examines the aftermath of a war whose conflicts rage far beyond the Iraqi battleground.
After an initial run at the Swan Theatre in Stratford, Roy significantly re-worked the text for its 2008 transfer to London’s Tricycle Theatre in order to dramatise and acknowledge the shifting mood of a country now looking at troop withdrawal from Iraq. “In a nutshell, it’s about the war in Iraq and how it impacts on a group of young working class Londoners,” says Roy, whose recent work includes the stage adaptation of Absolute Beginners at London’s Lyric Hammersmith and Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads, which played at the National Theatre before touring nationally.
He was awarded the OBE in 2008.
He says: “Whether they like it or not, the war forces them all, in ways they never thought possible, to re examine themselves away from the stereotype they are associated with, as young, thuggish, sexually frustrated binge-drinking white trash!”
He was initially approached by the RSC in 2007, he says.
'Giving voices to people'
“At the time they were launching their complete works festival, everything written by Shakespeare in one year.
“They decided it would be fun to commission a new play inspired by a Shakespeare piece. I chose Much Ado About Nothing, and completely rewrote it, set in modern day!”
The RSC’s Jeanie O’Hare observes that “Roy’s play is very funny and captures the other side of the news. It is a captivating portrait of young people pitting their wits against a political war they find baffling. Roy captures the subtle moods and atmospheres of disillusion and desperation of small town life.
“He looks at how we make our young soldiers into extreme versions of themselves and then we dump them back into the life they left.
“His characters have an inventive wit, which when mixed with cigarettes, sex and alcohol becomes lethal. It drives them tumbling into an uncertain future.”
“I was bored seeing plays that dealt with the ‘war on terror’ from the point of view of the people in power, the politicians,” Roy explains. “I wanted to write a piece that dealt with how it affects people who are further down the food chain. I was against the war, but refused to go on the march. I had no interest in listening to a bunch of pop stars with a speakerphone preaching to the converted. I wanted to be challenged, if only for a minute, that maybe invading Iraq was the right thing.
“Most of my work does deal with young people’s lives. I suppose I like giving voices to people whose stories are not told enough in drama.”
Days Of Significance is at The Lowry from Tuesday, November 24, 2009.
Published: Fri, 20 November, 2009
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