James Haddrell speaks on Mike Bartlett’s play An Intervention at the Greenwich theatre

As I write this we are just beginning the technical rehearsals for An Intervention, our production of Mike Bartlett’s play about what happens when we discover we don’t really know our friends.

Bartlett is known equally to stage and TV audiences, having dominated London theatre this year with productions of The 47th at the Old Vic, Scandaltown at the Lyric Hammersmith and C*ck in the West End, and become a household name with TV thriller Doctor Foster.

However, as well known as Bartlett’s work may be, this is unlike any technical rehearsal I’ve run before.

Apart from the fact that we’re likely to be working when temperatures are nudging 40C (which I certainly haven’t done before) this is a play which is designed to appear effortlessly simple.

It evokes the glory days of the comedy double act – think Morecambe and Wise live on stage – with the action all taking place in front of the front cloth.

We are lucky at Greenwich to have a great size stage for the scale of the venue, but for this show, that won’t be seen.

Just the two performers picked out in light at the front.

Make no mistake though, looking simple can be deceptive, and rehearsing this show has given me a whole new level of respect for those old duos.

With nothing to hide behind, no technical tricks to distract an audience, everything is focused on those two performers.

Where they stand, when they move, how they move, together or apart, all has to be incredibly precise.

The words are essential, telling the story or delivering the joke, but those old routines live or die on precision and timing.

When one half of the duo causes chaos by undermining the other or getting things wrong, that chaos has to be minutely constructed or the scene, or the joke, won’t work.

Those routines have also informed our approach to the script.

Mike has written an incredibly clever play which is somehow about two characters and two actors at the same time, so we are allowing our actors to step in and out of character, or maybe in and out of two versions of a character, interspersing the scenes with unconnected moments of entertainment.

Or are they connected? As the show progresses all should become clear.

I spend a lot of my time watching shows and reading scripts, looking for work to bring to Greenwich, and it is always exciting to come across something new.

I remember the experience of watching The Tiger Lilies in Shockheaded Peter at the Lyric Hammersmith, Puddles’ Pity Party and an early outing for Johnny Vegas at the Edinburgh Fringe, Improbable Theatre’s Sticky outdoors in Croydon – all offering something I’d never seen before.

We’re not conjuring a world out of sticky tape or performing stand-up comedy at a potter’s wheel but I hope, over the coming weeks, An Intervention will bring the same level of surprise to many of our audience members that those unique shows did to me.

 

Pictured: Left, Helen Ramsay playing A, and Lauren Drennan playing B, in rehearsal for An Intervention. Picture: Warren King