The Royal Court Theatre gets ready to crack up through this new comedy dealing with the trials and tribulations of a crazy rich family. Guillermo Nazara chats with its company, to learn the most fun facts about a show which surely looks like a million bucks.
Wealthy, vindictive mothers, martial dramas and oligarch villains. It does sound like an Oscar Wilde-inspired kind of play.
Indeed! We think that the playwright, Rory Mullarkey, actually read The Importance of Being Earnest every day for a month, in order to get familiar with the structure of that particular kind of English comedy (even though Oscar was Irish!).
We’re talking a brand new piece of original material. What’s been the process of constructing the characters? Have you used any sources as inspiration?
Our director, Sam Pritchard, has been quite good at bringing new stuff into the room. We’ve done a lot of group work all together. We’ve tried to look into tabloids as styles that have to do with classic comedy. There’s lots of references that we’ve used, and we’ve attempted to find different people that can also serve as a modern-day influence as well. For example, when we started rehearsals, we were told to watch the TV show Mades In Chelsea (seasons 1, 2 and 3!) and personalities like Jamie Laing (whom some of us didn’t even know who he was until then, but we became addicted to it!). That way we’ve been able to dive into a reality that we fairly didn’t know anything about, and many other people don’t either – especially if you’re not from London..
As you’ve mentioned, the characters of this play are extremely privileged. How do you manage to make them both appealing and relatable to a general audience?
When you’re playing a character, it’s very important that you, as an actor, you don’t walk up to the stage hating them. You’ve got to really love your character, which sometimes can be challenging – particularly if, as you say, they’re very privileged or behave in immoral ways. Some other roles belong to another world – as, for instance, there’s also a maid that works at their house. She sees everything from a different point of view and tends to comment on their universe quite a lot, which will help audiences bond. But all in all, it’s always very important to remember their humanity: the way that humans find themselves situated in certain societies (whatever that may be), the may grow or shrink depending on their conditions. In this case, those are very strong, so the human that dwells within them is constrained by those. That may be help you see that they might have been different if they had been born into a different world. And also, they’re very funny, which contributes too!
Would you say this work offers a critical view on privilege or class?
It’s closer to a comment or an observation. People are definitely going to have a good time when they come see this. It’s not entirely didactic as a play, which we know that many are. But of course it’s situated within the political spectrum, without doing any spoilers!
Apart from the fact of working on new material, have you found any particular challenges?
Doing a comedy is always challenging. It’s very structured in the room. They always say that, when you rehearse a comedy, everyone’s stressed and down. And when you rehearse a tragedy, everyone is laughing hysterically! It’s the opposite of what you think it’s gonna be. It’s really hard to make things funny sometimes, particularly with timing. At the end of the day, there’s a missing cast member, and that’s the audience. When you’re rehearsing a comedy, it really needs that extra member – it’s a relation, a rapport that you need. It takes it to a whole other level: how can we play with it a little bit more and bring the viewers more into it? We’ll need to wait until previews to see how that goes and see people react. Finally, it’s a very verbose play too (in a good way!). But Rory is a brilliant writer, and he’s chosen the words very specifically. I think that has its own challenge, and we’ll demand something extra from our public as we go in a journey.
If you had to give me one single reason to come see this show, which one would it be?
That’s a tough one, but the simple answer to that is that you’re gonna have a laugh and we all love to laugh! It’s fun and probably there will be lots of chat about it on the tube back home. And also, it’s so important to support new writing nowadays – though it won’t be a defiance to us, because it’s hysterical!
Mates in Chelsea will play at London’s Royal Court Theatre 3 November to 16 December. Tickets are available on the following link.