Critically acclaimed writer Victoria Willing’s (The Stage Debut Awards, nominated Best New Writer 2017) new play SAD, will open at Omnibus Theatre.
Performed from 5 – 30 April, this new play reunites Omnibus Theatre’s Artistic Director Marie McCarthy and Willing, the duo behind the five-star, award-nominated hit Spring Offensive in 2017. SAD’s four strong cast includes Debra Baker in the lead role alongside Kevin N Golding, Lucas Hare and Izabella Urbanowicz.
In Willing’s latest play, she returns to dark comedy and explores themes of isolation, connection, grief and love. Tickets are on sale here.
You’re play SAD is coming to Omnibus Theatre, what can you tell us about it?
Set in a first floor flat of a Victorian London house live Graham and Gloria. They’ve been together for eight years, having met when they were both already in their 50s. Without giving too much detail away the play looks at a relationship in older life as it really is for many people – exciting, annoying, changeable, insecure, sexual, mundane, disappointing, satisfying.
Just as at any age. It looks at four people living in a small area of London whose outlooks on the world vary from jaded despair to faith in humanity. It looks at how we handle grief and guilt, at a longing for the past, the joy of music, friendships across generations, hypocrisy and the abuse of power. And it’s funny.
What inspired you to write the play?
I re-read Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett and was drawn to the sense of isolation, of withdrawing into your own head and going over the past instead of facing the world ‘out there’, as it really is. It’s a comfort and it’s a tyranny. I thought I’d like to write about someone who runs away, but not too far. She just goes up as high as she can into the building and hides in the eaves. How will a relationship survive that? And will she ever leave?
I was also inspired by the work of my mother (the artist Paula Rego), whose pictures tell stories of power and subservience, secrets and betrayals. She demonstrated outwardly how one (and especially a woman) might feel inside. The way Gloria behaves in the play, at times, reminds me of the visceral way some of her characters are portrayed. Gloria actually wants to live like an animal. Her grief and self-loathing have led her there.
Mostly I was inspired by hearing the stories of the real relationships people have amongst my contemporaries, that is, people in late middle age, the younger ‘boomers’, if you like. I so wanted to let younger people know we’re not that different really. Cross generational suspicion takes our focus off the powerful; those who make the decisions that actually affect us.
What do you enjoy most about writing dark comedies?
Well it’s dawned on me that everything I’ve written is a ‘dark comedy’ and I didn’t know it. I’ve always tried to write something truthful to an audience, something in which people often say the opposite of what they mean and by doing so reveal themselves.
I also love playing with language and rhythms of speech. I grew up bilingual with Portuguese and am a bit obsessed with the music of language. And with the use of (mostly pop) music itself in my writing. Out of a certain rhythm things just become funny, I don’t really know how but I do make myself laugh. I grew up watching a lot of TV comedies and I think comedy is such a powerful way of making a point. And there’s nothing better than hearing people laugh. I’m an actor and my work has tended to be in sitcoms and improvised comedy.
I guess comedies are seen as dark when they deal with how people really feel, the absurdity and violence of everyday life. But there’s no point making plays that don’t push a bit.
SAD challenges the perceptions of women of a certain age, and touches on the unpreparedness of ageing, why was it important to you to cover these themes?
There’s been a lot said lately about the dearth of interesting parts for ‘older’ women, i.e. anyone who’s not automatic eye candy for men, frankly. Beautiful, dynamic, vibrant women resigning themselves to play ‘aunty Dotty’, ‘Granny with a twinkle in her eye’, that kind of thing.
The few plays I’ve written have all so far featured middle aged women who don’t follow the stereotype. I started writing late in life – I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an autobiographical element here. The women (and that goes for Gloria in SAD too) are an exaggeration of reality, of course. They personify a feeling. They show the feelings we cannot show in our ordinary lives. In that, again, I have my mother’s influence.
It has felt a little as if one day you suddenly wake up and you’re that bit older. It takes you by surprise. Not just ‘old enough to be your mother’ but ‘being offered a seat on the tube’. If it took me by surprise then there must be so many of us out there. How do we handle this? How do we avoid self pity and remain confident and not try to disappear? I read recently about the idea that women (of any age) feel they need to be small. Thin, small, quiet voiced… just disappear already! So I explore the schism of being a woman who has always felt she should disappear but who with age is thinking she’s bloody well had enough of it. So with the death of her mother as a catalyst she is finding out how to not disappear – by disappearing.
Tell us a little about the cast of SAD?
We’ve cast four amazingly talented actors in this production. Debra Baker and Kevin N Golding play husband and wife Gloria and Graham, and Isabella Urbanowicz plays Magda, Gloria’s friend and confidante and Lucas Hare, Daniel, well I won’t tell you too much about him suffice to say he’s a dab hand at climbing through Velux windows.
Rehearsals are about to start very soon and I can’t wait to hear their voices together for the first time. As a playwright that is the magical moment when reality hits and these characters that you’ve got to know and visualise in your head for so many years come alive. Debra Baker, who struck me as such a nuanced actor in ‘It’s a Sin’ plays the lead Gloria. Gloria is a tricky and at times unpleasant character, and she needed to be played by someone who you’re instantly drawn to as likeable, down to earth, and brave.
What would you say to anyone thinking about booking to see SAD?
I got very excited writing this play. I kept discovering things to say that I have often wanted to hear and see in theatre, but rarely have. It feels a bit different to me. I might have got that wrong, but I made myself laugh and cry, so there must be something in it. I hope people come.
SAD will be staged from 5 – 30 April at Omnibus Theatre. To book please go to https://www.omnibus-clapham.org/sad/
