Today we interview Brian Mitchell, the award-winning play write of “The Ornate Johnsons”, “Spy”, “The Ministry of Biscuits” and now, “The October Revolutions”. Showing at The Nightingale Theatre, this bitter-sweet comedy of love is on for one night only on the 23rd May, with two showings, one at 7.00 pm with a later showing at 9.30 pm.
Brian is also appearing in UP YOURS To the Festival! with fellow mirth maker, Jerry Rulf at the Latest Music Bar on the 6th, 13th and 20th May at 9.30 pm each evening. So let’s chat with Brian…
1. What inspired you to become a play writer, performer and entertainer?
It was watching the wonderful Anthony Asquith/Michael Redgrave film of Rattigan’s, The Browning Version when I was about eight years old. On Saturdays I would stay with my Grandma and we would watch the matinee double bill on BBC 2 together. They always played old classic movies. I developed a preference for anything black and white, as they seemed higher quality, but this film in particular got to me. I found it deeply moving and it made me want to become a writer.
2. What’s your show about and what should the public expect from your show at the 2009 Brighton Festival Fringe?
It’s about a love affair that doesn’t go anywhere – just round and round in circles. It takes place over three meeting in three parks over three Octobers – including the Blue Peter Italian Sunken garden. The best thing I can do is quote some of the comments the play has received:
“The October Revolutions is a beautifully felt yet painfully real play, made with all the ingredients that go into a good piece of theatre: humour, believability, passion and grace. It’s a love story that any of us who have banged our heads against the wall of incompatibility, with bloody, forehead flattening results, will recognize and yet this production, with strong performances from it’s two young actors, far from perpetuating a head ache, is funny, poignant, skillfully crafted and well worth a watch.”
Maggie Neville (writer “The Grizzled Skipper”)
“The play feels full of this sense of the characters being out of time with each other. Their frustrations and longings reflect our own as they yearn for, but never manage to achieve the connection they desire.
Somehow we know from the start they are not destined for each other, but it doesn’t stop us from wondering if somehow it might still all work out. We are as foolish and hopeful in love as the characters.
October Revolutions is funny, tender and moving, yet doesn’t shy away from the little cruelties and lies that undermine trust in a relationship, or the violence of feeling that sits beneath our language sometimes. It seems to reveal the anatomy of so many present moments free of the fog of nostalgia, yet still in celebration of the tremendous pain and joy of LOVE!”
Rachel Blackman (writer/performer of The Art of Catastrophe and The Maydays)
“The script remains a delight. The relationship at the play’s centre is enormously frustrating and that is what provides the fun; there are some very keen observations with laugh out loud moments. Yet it also has a bite that puts bitter ahead of sweet.”
Lisa Wolfe (producer – News form Nowhere)
3. What was the last Fringe or Festival you performed at and what was it like?
The Edinburgh Festival last year. I was directing Joanna Neary at The Assembly Rooms. I must be honest: I do not enjoy the Edinburgh Festival – it just seems like a manic trade fair – so, after setting the show on its feet, I got out as soon as I could. But the show went very well, and it is always a pleasure working with Joanna.
4. What are your funniest and worst experiences performing in front of an audience?
They’re one and the same. It was performing in the Udderbelly Cowpat last year with “The Ornate Johnsons”. It must be the worst venue ever built – a triumph of branding over practicability. Half way through the show, the tent, essentially an upside-down bouncy castle, began to deflate, the roof sinking like a cake onto the audience. The place was evacuated immediately. Given the constant and atrocious noise made by the pumps, it was quite a relief.
5. What’s the best and worst advice you have ever been given? And did you follow it?
One is constantly given advice against ones instincts. Sometimes it can work out, but more often it proves disastrous. I think it would be unfair to list all the bad advice I have had to single out one piece for special mention.
The best advice I ever had was from my composition tutor, Martin Butler, who really understood what makes a work of art; from Jerry Sodwotiz, who taught me a great deal about the importance of energy and just keeping things going; and from my girlfriend, who persuaded me to focus again on playwriting.
6. What are you most proud of and what dreams or goals would you like to fulfill?
My plays. I am proud of the comedy shows – I think the Ornate Johnsons’ residency at The Soho Theatre in 2006 was something special (we are still performing it and it gets a great reception wherever it goes) and the BBC4 show was very well received – but I know the plays are better.
The Ministry of Biscuits (the musical I co-wrote with best-selling novelist Philip Reeve) is touring next year and will be playing the Greenwich Theatre, but I would love it to play the West End.
7. Which three famous people would you invite to dinner and why [dead celebrities included]? And what culinary dish would you prepare?
Max Beerbohm, because I love his writing and he was famously entertaining; Haydn, for much the same reasons Simon Rattle cited when he said he was the composer he’d most like to have dinner with; and the young Joan Greenwood, because I fancy her something rotten. Egg and chips!
8. What is the best book or books you have read and why?
Vanity Fair, The Day of The Locust, Tono Bungay, Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet (Balzac is criminally underrated in this country), Zuleika Dobson, Seven Men, A Dance To the Music of Time, The Alexandria Quartet, Clayhanger, Diary of A Madman, Candide, Essays of Elia…I dunno. There are loads of great books.
9. Tell us 5 interesting and unknown facts about yourself?
a) I co-wrote Jo Neary’s “Pans People” dances to “Without You”, “Moonshadow” and “She”.
b) I used to write for Basil Brush and Live and Kicking.
c) I studied Music under the leading contemporary composer Jonathan Harvey. And what a lovely chap he is!
d) My father was a miner and I grew up in a colliery village.
e) There are not five interesting and unknown facts about myself.
10. If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?
To make the world a fairer place. There are a hundred things I want more, but they would make me seem awfully shallow, so that’s the answer I’m sticking with.
