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Authors: Deirdre Madden
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twentieth play was such a struggle and it was this: my nineteenth had been an unprecedented disaster.
Looking back on it now â something I still try to avoid â it appears to me as an accursed inversion, as a reflection in a dark mirror, of having my first play produced. Then I had found in Molly, the leading actor, a friend for life. Inthe director of my most recent work, I had made a mortal enemy who I felt was probably still poisoning my reputation about the place, even as I sat there, gazing down at the fake cow. I had written Summer with Lucy in a headlong rush of confidence, certain of what I was about. Nothing before or since had come so easily to me; at times it had been like taking dictation. My only problem had been to keep up with the flood of dialogue and incident that rushed through my mind, day after day.
Halfway through writing The Yellow Roses I fell ill. It was quite serious and lasted several months, leaving me drained and devitalised. When I was finally well enough to start work again, I found I had lost all interest in the play; but because of the time and effort I had already invested in it, and for want of another immediate project, I felt I had to at least try to crank up some enthusiasm and keep going. Although I was heartily sick of it by the time I finished it, it was, I still believe, a fine play, as good as anything Iâve written, or I would never have delivered it for production. Indeed at that stage the signs were all positive, and I thought that my luck had turned. The text was well received by those who read it, and I was surprised and delighted when Stuart Ferguson said he wanted to direct it.
Stuart was the latest theatrical marvel. When barely out of college he directed a stunning Medea â I had seen it myself â that had made his name. He followed this with outstanding productions of The Cherry Orchard and Measure for Measure and then a successful film; and all this was accomplished well before his thirtieth birthday. My play was to be the first contemporary work he had tackled for the stage. Our initial meeting, over coffee in acentral London hotel, was perfectly cordial, with much mutual admiration expressed. What I had seen of his work had greatly impressed me. He was clearly keen to direct the play, and what he said to me about it made me believe that he had grasped its central idea, that he understood it. But after we had shaken hands and I walked off through the wet grey streets of a London dusk, under all my relief at having found a gifted director for my new play there was, I knew, something unwanted and unpleasant, hard and dry as a pip: dislike. I didnât like Stuart and I suspected that he didnât much like me.
I have asked myself many times since that day why, so late in my professional life, did I make such a basic mistake as to go against my instincts, to ignore Dislike (ignoring, too, Dislikeâs sinister little brother, Distrust). My illness and the subsequent struggle to complete The Yellow Roses had unnerved me. I was rattled, worn out. I needed the energy and confidence, the charmed magic of success that I didnât feel in myself but that I believed Stuart could bring to the production. In this I was forgetting about my own considerable reputation which was, I suppose, why Stuart swallowed his own dislike of me and wanted to direct the play.
I found him false. His origins were not dissimilar to my own. We both came from modest farming backgrounds, in a remote boggy part of Tyrone, mountainous and wild, in my case; a croft in the Scottish highlands in his. Stuart held the world that had produced him in contempt. Apart from the accent, which heâd decided to keep, heâd made himself over completely. In itself, I wouldnât have had a problem with this. Andrew had done the same thing and Iâd found it admirable. The difference was that withAndrew I always felt that he had become something he needed to be, something that
Looking back on it now â something I still try to avoid â it appears to me as an accursed inversion, as a reflection in a dark mirror, of having my first play produced. Then I had found in Molly, the leading actor, a friend for life. Inthe director of my most recent work, I had made a mortal enemy who I felt was probably still poisoning my reputation about the place, even as I sat there, gazing down at the fake cow. I had written Summer with Lucy in a headlong rush of confidence, certain of what I was about. Nothing before or since had come so easily to me; at times it had been like taking dictation. My only problem had been to keep up with the flood of dialogue and incident that rushed through my mind, day after day.
Halfway through writing The Yellow Roses I fell ill. It was quite serious and lasted several months, leaving me drained and devitalised. When I was finally well enough to start work again, I found I had lost all interest in the play; but because of the time and effort I had already invested in it, and for want of another immediate project, I felt I had to at least try to crank up some enthusiasm and keep going. Although I was heartily sick of it by the time I finished it, it was, I still believe, a fine play, as good as anything Iâve written, or I would never have delivered it for production. Indeed at that stage the signs were all positive, and I thought that my luck had turned. The text was well received by those who read it, and I was surprised and delighted when Stuart Ferguson said he wanted to direct it.
Stuart was the latest theatrical marvel. When barely out of college he directed a stunning Medea â I had seen it myself â that had made his name. He followed this with outstanding productions of The Cherry Orchard and Measure for Measure and then a successful film; and all this was accomplished well before his thirtieth birthday. My play was to be the first contemporary work he had tackled for the stage. Our initial meeting, over coffee in acentral London hotel, was perfectly cordial, with much mutual admiration expressed. What I had seen of his work had greatly impressed me. He was clearly keen to direct the play, and what he said to me about it made me believe that he had grasped its central idea, that he understood it. But after we had shaken hands and I walked off through the wet grey streets of a London dusk, under all my relief at having found a gifted director for my new play there was, I knew, something unwanted and unpleasant, hard and dry as a pip: dislike. I didnât like Stuart and I suspected that he didnât much like me.
I have asked myself many times since that day why, so late in my professional life, did I make such a basic mistake as to go against my instincts, to ignore Dislike (ignoring, too, Dislikeâs sinister little brother, Distrust). My illness and the subsequent struggle to complete The Yellow Roses had unnerved me. I was rattled, worn out. I needed the energy and confidence, the charmed magic of success that I didnât feel in myself but that I believed Stuart could bring to the production. In this I was forgetting about my own considerable reputation which was, I suppose, why Stuart swallowed his own dislike of me and wanted to direct the play.
I found him false. His origins were not dissimilar to my own. We both came from modest farming backgrounds, in a remote boggy part of Tyrone, mountainous and wild, in my case; a croft in the Scottish highlands in his. Stuart held the world that had produced him in contempt. Apart from the accent, which heâd decided to keep, heâd made himself over completely. In itself, I wouldnât have had a problem with this. Andrew had done the same thing and Iâd found it admirable. The difference was that withAndrew I always felt that he had become something he needed to be, something that
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