CityLife

Library Theatre presents I Ought To Be In Pictures

Stuart Fox and Elizabeth Carling

This is an important season for the Library Theatre Company – their last in their current home – so it’s only fitting that it should open with a rarely-performed comedy by American Neil Simon, a playwright whose work has long been associated with the Library.

Opening this weekend is Simon’s 1979 play I Ought To Be In Pictures, directed by Paul Jepson, who is making his Library Theatre debut.

Libby Tucker, played by Kirsty Osmon – also making her debut with her first professional stage role – is a bright-eyed 19-year-old from New York, who dreams of making it big in Hollywood as an actress.

She travels across the country and turns up unannounced on the doorstep of her father, Herb, played by Stuart Fox – who has recently been seen at the Bolton Octagon in Mark Babych’s The Crucible and previously in Blue/Orange.

Herb is a three-times married, down-on-his-luck screenwriter living in Los Angeles, who last saw his daughter when she was a little baby.

His scripts are being rejected by one Hollywood studio after another, while his long-suffering girlfriend Steffy (played by Elizabeth Carling from the film The Damned United and more than 100 episodes of Casualty, as Selena Donovan) bears the brunt of his repeated rejections.

However, Libby’s unexpected re-appearance forces Herb to reappraise his life.

'Extreme'

Director Paul Jepson’s extensive credits include plays at the National Theatre in London as well as at leading regional theatres such as the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds and the Nottingham Playhouse.

He also directed Telstar – both in the West End and on tour – however I Ought To Be In Pictures is his first production at the Library Theatre.

“Chris Honer and I had talked about a series of titles I might be involved with, as well as some of the projects I might be doing with them after they leave this building,” Paul said.

“He had always wanted to do this and, although I obviously knew Neil Simon’s work, I had never directed one.

“When I read this I found it to be a perfectly constructed play about a father-daughter relationship – funny, wonderfully observed, and excellently characterised.

“Ultimately though, what makes it so interesting and funny is that it’s a very uncompromising play, with subject matter that’s so extreme for a comedy.”

Paul adds: “This is, after all, a man who has walked out on his wife and three-year-old baby, which might be why it wasn’t very successful as a film with Walter Matthau.

“It isn’t performed very often on the stage, either, which is quite unusual, if you think about it, given the dearth of good three-handers, let alone one written by such a commercially successful writer as Neil Simon.”

Stuart – who remembers that Telstar was the first single he ever bought – has seen a stage version of I Ought To Be In Pictures, as it happens, at Scarborough a few years ago.

'Unusual'

“It’s a great piece, so energetic, with some high-octane characters colliding,” Stuart enthused.

He added: “This is a very autobiographical piece, from a period in Neil Simon’s life where he had a lot of issues he was writing through.

“In a way, my character Herb is like a hermit crab, who has crept into his hole and is festering away.

“He’s got his girlfriend just where he thinks he wants her and she’s pulling him one way.

“Then his daughter arrives and starts pulling him another way. So he could be ripped to pieces.”

Paul added: “It’s a very unusual comedy in that you keep being reminded that this is a man who has walked out on his three-year -old daughter, which is not funny.

“But the thing you like about this guy – which Stuart is so good at – is that although he’s dishonest about almost everything else, he’s very, very honest about what he’s done and what he feels about it.

“He certainly regrets it every day of his life and he may well have been wrong but he did do it, and he doesn’t avoid that, which is kind of amazing,” he said.

I Ought To Be In Pictures is at the Library Theatre until February 27, 2010 with a pre-show director’s talk by Paul Jepson on Tuesday February 23.