London's Royal Court Theatre, from its foundation in 1956, has a longer and stronger record than any other theatre in that city for discovering new playwrights. Its first artistic director, George Devine, wanted to make it a writers' theatre and, having had its first notable success with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger in its opening year, it has scarcely looked back since.
Its newly refurbished headquarters in Sloane Square opened earlier this year with Conor McPherson's Dublin Carol (a production which someone should bring to Dublin as soon as possible) and currently the main 400-seat Jerwood theatre is showing a thoroughly enjoyable new work by Jim Cartwright, while the 60-seat little Jerwood in the attic has Gary Mitchell's powerful exploration of the relationships between the Royal Ulster Constabulary and loyalist paramilitaries: The Force of Change.
Both of these new plays are almost at the end of their inaugural runs (although Conor McPherson's earlier play, The Weir, is still doing good business at the Duke of York's theatre in the West End, having started out in the old Upstairs theatre in Sloane Square a couple of years ago). It remains to be seen where the future lies for either Jim Cartwright's Hard Fruit or The Force of Change but both will surely be staged elsewhere and the Mitchell work should be seen in Ireland, its voice having the ringing tones of authenticity in a divided community.
The divisions in Gary Mitchell's play are those between the loyalist thugs and the traditional loyalties of the RUC. The first act spends a tediously long time trying to set up the terrible conflicts which are to explode in the riveting second act.
The setting is two interrogation rooms in a Belfast police station, and a corridor between them. In one room the ambitious Detective Sergeant Caroline Paterson and her Detective Constable Bill Byrne (30 years misspent in the force) are trying in vain to win evidence to charge Stanley Brown with UDA terrorist offences. In the other, Detective Sergeant Mark Simpson and Detective Constable David Davis are interrogating the thick young car thief Robert "Rabbit" Montgomery whom they believe was commissioned by Brown to steal a specific car.
Caroline is resented by many of her colleagues because of her gender and her ambition. In turn, she objects strenuously to what she perceives as unprofessional activities by her colleagues, not least the burned-out Bill. But for the author, it is the apparently effective young Constable Davis who is the real villain in the piece and Stuart Graham plays the part for every ounce of menace in it, delivering to the psychopathic Stanley as he discharges him from custody one of the most chilling curtain lines ever delivered in a play about the Northern Ireland conflict.
Caroline may represent the RUC's best chance for the future in a society bent on reconciliation between republican and unionist ambitions. In this role, Cathy White gives a rather stilted and declamatory performance, but she doesn't have any of the best lines in the piece, and the author's character is not well drawn while Robert Delamere's direction is sometimes clumsily unhelpful to her. Sergeant Simpson (a subtle and persuasive characterisation by Jason Isaacs) may also have a future as an honest pragmatist, but Bill (Sean Caffrey) has not, and the two suspects (excellently played with evident thickness by Stephen Kennedy as Stanley and Gerard Jordan as Rabbit) never had. The play is frighteningly well worth seeing.
Jim Cartwright's Hard Fruit is much more light-hearted and heart-warming as it explores the lonely violent life of Choke, a closet homosexual who has become a recluse in his own back yard, and whose only physical contact with people is expressed in local martial arts (which may be why he remains a virgin) undertaken with his friend Sump on a daily basis, egged on by Mrs Kooee, his friendly next-door neighbour from across the back-yard wall. His camply gay acquaintance Yack brings a young man, Silver, to learn self-protection from Choke. Then there is Friar Jiggle, who keeps trying to make a portrait of Choke to go into a stained glass window down at the club to commemorate his exploits. And when Choke is not fighting, he is inventing crazy machines which wrestle and throw punches and karate chops to hone his fighting skills.
This is all unlikely stuff for the stage, and Cartwright's construction of the play keeps letting him down, but it is invested with great humour and affectionate humanity and some almost poetic writing which can be deeply touching as we watch and enjoy a kind of Coronation Street with gay pink spectacles.
Directed with unobtrusive skill and empathy by Janes Macdonald, gleefully set (including the "machines") by Rob Howell, and with fighting choreographed expertly by Geoff Thompson, Hard Fruit said says a spokesperson for the company. Specifically, she is referring to the current Exposure: Young Writers 2000 programme which is sponsored by the Royal Court's main sponsor, the Jerwood Trust, and by BSkyB television. The organisers want new and original stage plays from writers under 26 years old, and they want the completed texts submitted before July 1st this year. Two of the four best plays will be given fully staged productions in the Royal Court in November, and the other two will get small-scale productions "without decor".
The details can be found on the Royal Court's website (www.royalcourttheatre.com) and in the panel to the right. If you are under 26 and have a play nearing completion, you could become another Gary Mitchell, Jim Cartwright, John Osborne (who knows?), N.F. Simpson, Ann Jellicoe, Conor McPherson, Sebastian Barry or Martin McDonagh, or just yourself in a long list of playwrights whose work has been sought out and staged by a lively and inventive company in search of new international writing for the stage.
