Ollie Norton-Smith is co-artistic director of Spies Like Us Theatre company, and the director of Speed Dial, which will play at The Pleasance Dome this Edinburgh Fringe.
Spies Like Us is an ensemble physical theatre company, who started as a group of friends who had met making youth theatre with Young Pleasance.
“I can’t believe the company is five years old already,” says Ollie, “Hamish Lloyd Barnes and I, the two artistic directors, we wanted to put on a show called Our Man In Havana, and there was a scheme available at the Pleasance called XYP, it gave us, as former Young Pleasance members, the support to take our first show to the Fringe.”
Spies Like Us have gone on to return to the Fringe each year, following Our Man in Havana with Woyzeck and Murder on the Dancefloor, which was the company’s first original show.
“We’ve built and extended the team over the years, from the original group of seven friends on stage and off, to a far wider team now,” explains Ollie, “and so we’re delighted to be welcoming new company members this year, and for some of them this will be their first time at Edinburgh Fringe.”
Spies Like Us have established themselves with a very particular style of physical theatre, “it was the only thing we ever wanted to do, is the honest truth, we didn’t spend time thinking about what kind of company we wanted to be, we just always knew.”
“Perhaps because of our interests or our personalities, we often tend to steer towards comedy and physical comedy, and that playfulness is something that really helps that physical storytelling.”
Despite none of the company being professionally trained in dance, they’re self-taught approach seems to be paying off, “I think it does give us a different quality as a physical theatre company,” explains Ollie, “because we often come from quite a literal perspective, and we’re interested in what we’re conveying through movement.”
Speed Dial maintains that physical theatre quality, “Speed Dial is a comedy thriller, set on the grounds of a 1970s university,” says Ollie “it follows a lonely professor who is obsessed with a series of ringing phones. When he finally answers one he finds out his daughter has been taken and he’ll need to solve a series of puzzles to get her back.”
Ollie says that seeing the show work through the puzzles will be a fun experience for the audience, and gives the company something juicy to get their teeth in to, but the show also has more meaning, “it’s also about exploring the relationship that the professor has with his family, it’s also about education, and to a lesser extent, class in this country, and about the things that we value.”
Spies Like Us have been working on Speed Dial since before the pandemic, squeezing in a work in progress run at VAULT Festival just before theatres were forced to close, “but it’s also interesting that a lot of the themes of the play, particularly things about isolation and connecting with others resonate so specifically with what we’ve all just been through,” says Ollie, “but ultimately it’s a very joyous piece, it’s a lot of fun, it’s got a cracking 70s soundtrack, and it’s a quite beautiful story of reconnection, and of finding something that maybe you didn’t know you’d lost.”
Inspired by a chapter of a book, Speed Dial has been written by Ollie and Hamish, who have co-written all of the company’s shows, but for this production they have also worked with a third writer, Joe Large. “he’s an excellent writer from Tyneside who lives in Manchester, we usually start with a structure and then devise in R&D’s, I think it’s one of the things that makes our shows uniquely ours, because of that collective responsibility, and the shared ensemble dynamic across everything we do.”
For Spies Like Us, this will be their biggest project to date, “a big part of what we’re trying to do now is to create stuff at a slightly bigger scale. So we’re working with a wonderful designer, Ellie Roser, and we’ve been working with Joe Large, to upscale what we’re doing, and bring to it elements that we didn’t feel we have in our locker.”
“The pandemic has given us a lot of time to work on it, because this is our most ambitious show in terms of the scale and the size, and just the sheer number of people involved.”
Spies Like Us have already seen extraordinary success in the few short years they’ve been producing work, “it’s often a hard thing to check in on those things,” laughs Ollie, “it’s been wonderful and the honest truth is that we’re hungry for more, we feel like we’re just getting started.”
“We try to make theatre as exciting as it possibly can be, telling new stories, or reinventing existing stories to tell them in exciting and dynamic ways, and I hope everyone will come to see Speed Dial, because it is the most joyous comedy thriller, with the most amazing 70’s soundtrack.”
Speed Dial, co-written by Ollie Norton Smith, is at Pleasance Dome Wednesday 3rd – Monday 29th August 2022 (not 16th) at 14:20..
