Birkenhead-born playwright Michael Wynne spoke to Catherine Jones about his new Everyman production Cuckoo.

Where did the inspiration for Cuckoo come from?
It originally started with being interested in things you’re allowed to say and what you’re allowed to talk about, about having opinions and people disagreeing with each other.
I also wanted to write something set in Birkenhead again, because it’s a world I know so well and just keep coming back to and feel really inspired by.
It’s about a family of women, and I do write for women a lot and really love that. But initially I didn’t intend to write a female-only play.
The characters just started speaking to me, and the path the plot took, the argument with (teenager) Megyn and her then going upstairs, just happened - it wasn’t my intention. But I followed it, and it ended up becoming central to the whole piece.

Can you explain a bit more about the ideas you explore in the play, and also the title Cuckoo?
We’re living in a time which can feel quite strange and uncertain, with the pandemic, and Brexit, and weird weather.
The characters are working class people who don’t have massive security.
And when tenets of society, like education and health, perhaps aren’t working in the way they did before, things become even more uncertain. Especially with mental health and how people don’t quite know how to deal with those issues.
There’s also this idea about the way we use technology, and especially phones, how these mini computers in our hand have taken over our lives. Maybe some things are crazier than they were. Or maybe it’s the fact we get newsflashes in the middle of a conversation about something we wouldn’t have known about in the past.
So, it’s about all that. But it’s also the idea of a cuckoo in the nest, and there are two in the play - the phone is one, and Megyn is another.
But I should say, a huge caveat is that it is a comedy! It’s the absurdity of how we live, and ultimately, it’s three generations of a family just trying to get on.

Cuckoo has an all-Liverpudlian cast. Was that important for you?
When we were casting, we saw lots of actors and every time we had people come in (who were native Liverpudlians) it was the musicality and the rhythm, and just the fact that they know these people and go ‘oh God, this is like my nan’ ‘this is like my mum’. It means you feel you can go in so many different directions, and it just comes alive.

Family is at the heart of Cuckoo and there is often a family dynamic in your work. How central is that to your creative practice?
My own family is huge for me, it’s such an inspiration even when I’m not aware of it.
But I think we’re all part of families in very different ways and it’s a thing we all recognise.
It’s great for having characters who care about each other, and who are invested in each other.

You said you wanted to write about Birkenhead again. Is that sense of place important to you and why?
I write other things set in different places, but I think I do keep on returning to Birkenhead and Merseyside. 
And I feel that these characters are just alive. You know what it’s like on Merseyside! You know just being out in Liverpool or Birkenhead, that everyone has got a story. And a character. And that’s what is so joyous.

It seems the Liverpool Everyman has played an important role in your life and career.
The Everyman is where I discovered theatre and was so inspired as a teenager. I saw all those brilliant Glen Walford seasons, and amazing pantos and brilliant bits of Shakespeare and Brecht.
And at no point at that time did I feel as a working-class kid from Birkenhead that theatre wasn’t for me. Whereas I think a lot of people don’t feel that theatre is for them, and they feel it’s pretentious and they’re excluded.
I was seeing the world that I knew on stage – and realising that it could be on stage.
It really was an ‘everyman’. I went to see everything, I got 50p preview tickets, sitting on the benches. I just loved that it was really entertaining and in that really populist Liverpool tradition.
Often the shows had a band. They would play in the bar beforehand, and it felt like a big night out.
Some of the work would be difficult. There was a Macbeth which was really bloody; they made all these little wax skulls with blood coming out.
I also remember seeing Willy Russell play Shirley Valentine. Recently I saw the production (in London) with Sheridan Smith, who I know – I’ve worked with her three times including my play The People Here Are Friendly with Michelle Butterly and Sue Jenkins, who are both in Cuckoo.
Afterwards I went round to say hello to Sheridan, and Willy Russell was there as well. I said, ‘oh I’m sure you don’t remember me, I met you years ago at the Everyman and I wrote The Knocky’. And he was like, ‘oh, Michael!’. He said ‘The Knocky was a wonderful play’.
He says he’s going to see Cuckoo when it comes to the Everyman.

How did it feel to stage your first play The Knocky at the Everyman?
It was just such a joy and one of those occasions where you don’t quite believe it.
We had all these audiences turning up who were all just loving it - to the point of opening drinks and really going along with it, really being in the spirit!
And then to have written Hope Place for the new Everyman, which I feel has really kept the spirit of the old theatre even though it’s not, was fantastic.

When you wrote Hope Place for the new Everyman in 2014 you admitted there is usually a little bit of you in the characters you write. Is that true of Cuckoo and if so, which character do you particularly identify with?
There’s a bit of me in all of them. Some people who know me might go ‘oh God, I see Carmel’. But then I think there’s a bit of me in Sarah - being a bit bossy and controlling, trying to make things better but often failing. And there’s probably quite a lot of my mum in Doreen, as well as me. There’s also a bit of me in Megyn, thinking I’m not addicted to my phone. And just getting more anxious about things, which happened during the pandemic, and finding life a bit tougher.

So does that mean you’re not addicted to your phone as your characters are?
Well, I think I’m not. But then it’s quite hard not to be – they design them to become addictive.
We sit down on a train or a bus or the Tube and we just pick up our phone. We also have our whole lives on them. They do everything; we’re so reliant on them.
You see other people on their phones and think ‘look at them’, but I think we’re all just as bad.

What do you hope Liverpool audiences will take away from Cuckoo?
Life is complex, and for the different characters there are different struggles they’re going through.
But it’s hard to know what I want people to ultimately take away. Maybe if we all binned our phone, we might be a bit happier? Although I know that’s not going to happen.
With a lot of my plays, things are funny at the beginning but then get quite dark later. Hopefully we’ve got you by then and you want to stay!
There’s a lot of theatre out there at the moment which can feel like you’re taking medicine or doing your homework.
I think we need a bit of a laugh and also, yes, to have the world reflected back at us. But to let go a bit and just have a good night out.
I’m really excited to get to the Everyman. It’s such a beautiful space and to see the local people seeing themselves, that for me is unlike anything else, and that’s going to be such a treat.

What’s next for you?
Well, looking ahead to next summer I’ve got a show happening at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
It’s called Disco Show and it’s a site-specific immersive piece where you’re transported to a disco in 1970s New York, and you dance all the way through it while it happens all around you. It’s going to be bonkers.

Cuckoo is at the Everyman from Wed 6 Sep to Sat 23 Sep 2023, click here for more information.