"It's the darkest of comedies really."

A new piece of writing coming to the Everyman is always exciting. When that piece of writing was created by Jonathan Harvey and directed by Nick Bagnall, it's difficult to contain our jubilance.

Jonathan Harvey started his writing career with his award-winning play The Cherry Blossom Tree. The Liverpool playwright's lauded Playhouse production fired him on an upward trajectory which has featured play-turned-film Beautiful Thing, BBC sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme, Pet Shop Boys musical Closer to Heaven and a host of other successful projects.

Well known to Everyman audiences for last year's critically acclaimed Sweeney Todd as well as Ev Company shows A Clockwork Orange, The Big I Am, and many, many more memorable and much-loved productions, director Nick Bagnall is reunited with Harvey for a piece which has Merseyside in it's bones. 

As we look forward to Our Lady of Blundellsands  opening at the Everyman on Friday 5 March, Damon Fairclough sat down with Jonathan and Nick to talk about the inspiration behind the play, who it's for and why on earth Blundellsands!

What’s Our Lady of Blundellsands about?

JONATHAN HARVEY: It's a sort of family saga about the ultimate dysfunctional family!

It’s about two sisters – Sylvie and Garnet – who live cossetted from the world in a house in Blundellsands, and about their family. Most of the play takes place at Garnet’s birthday party – she’s the older sister and she’s got some momentous news to pass on to the rest of them. Sylvie, the younger sister, is lost in a bit of a fantasy world.

There's a big dinner party at the heart of the play. The lies that Sylvie’s sons have been told during their lives are challenged and all the family’s secrets come out.

Where did the idea come from and what prompted you to write it?

JH: Before I moved back to Liverpool about four years ago, I talked to Gemma Bodinetz here at the Everyman about an idea I’d had about two sisters. My nan and her sister used to live together – not cut off from the outside world, but one of them had had kids and the other had been a maiden aunt all her life. That relationship fascinated me.

My nan would time my Auntie Betty every time she went to the shops to go and get the Echo. Bear in mind she was about 80 and they lived on the tenth floor of a block of flats, and she never used the lift – she used to leg it down ten flights of stairs. But if she dared to speak to anyone on the way, my nan would know.

The play isn’t specifically about them, but that sort of relationship's always fascinated me – the idea of the maiden aunt and that kind of codependency.

Did you always have the Everyman in mind?

JH: Yes, it was written for the Everyman – I wanted to do a play here. The Everyman commissioned it, but then they did the two rep company seasons and it never felt right for the rep company, so we’ve had to wait.

So it’s been around for a little while?

JH: I can't remember when I first wrote it but I know David Cameron was mentioned quite a bit in the original draft.

We did a workshop with it about three years ago. We worked on it for three or four days then then did a rehearsed reading for an audience, and that was invaluable. It's a play about people living in a fantasy world and the lies people tell each other, and it was really useful to try and work out what was real and what wasn't.

As the title suggests, the play’s set in Blundellsands in north Liverpool, near Crosby. Why did you choose that location?

JH: Apart from the fact that I just thought it sounded like a nice title, I suppose it’s because Blundellsands isn’t what people from outside Liverpool would expect of the city. It's quite genteel, it's very beautiful, there are big houses, and it looks out onto the sea. I wanted somewhere that was quite posh, so it made sense to go there.

How did the key characters originate? You've already suggested they may be based on people you've known.

JH: Oh, they're absolutely nothing like my nan and my great aunt!

I loved the idea of writing about a former child star who never grew up. Sylvie is kind of frozen in time, and the play is an unravelling of why she's been behaving that way for so long, why she's stuck in this house in Blundellsands, and why her sister has fanned the flames of her fantasies.

There’s lots of comedy in this play, but it’s also very poignant. How do you see the balance between the two?

JH: I never write anything specifically as a comedy – unless it's a sitcom – but I do think people are just generally funny.

There's something quite funny about Sylvie thinking her drug dealing son is a movie star doing a ‘picture’ in America. She’s a bit like Bette Davies living in Blundellsands – she talks about wanting her maid to get her furs down from the loft. That's inherently camp and funny, but actually it's quite dark because she doesn't live in a house like that, she hasn't got a maid, and she's incredibly demanding of her sister.

So as well as being really funny, the laughter often comes from a place of discomfort, and a feeling of ‘we shouldn’t really be laughing at her’. It's also very dark and twisted because Sylvie is quite manipulative. It's the darkest of comedies really.

Nick, you’re directing the show. How do you see the challenge of balancing the comedy and darkness?

NICK BAGNALL: I think it’s a very funny play, but it isn’t anything without its tragic circumstances. I think that’s what Jonathan does so beautifully.

As Joe Orton said, "Laughter is a serious business", and that couldn't be more true than in this play. It's poisonous! The relationships are complex and damaged, and that's what excites me about it.

It's dark and filthy but I love these characters, every single one of them. I especially love Sylvie, because as Jonathan says, she’s someone who’s stuck in time and can’t move on, and what's brilliant about this play is how that tragedy gets unravelled.

But let’s not forget it’s also funny as hell. It’s laugh-out-loud funny – and not just nervous laughter, but genuine wit.

What attracted you to the script?

NB: I was drawn to it because we all come from dysfunctional families, or at least I think we do, and it's been really revealing to me to think about my family, and also fathers and sons and people who aren't around.

I've just had a daughter, and there are lots of things in the play that feel really poignant to me at the moment – about how we have to look after one another, and about the lies we've told and the secrets we keep. It's a brilliant time for me to ask those questions of myself and my family. That’s what intrigues me about it.

JH: A good thing about the play is that it might make people feel their own families are quite nice, quite functional. Because this is the ultimate toxic family!

Have you both worked together before?

NB: We have, I’ve known Jonathan a long time. I was in a play of his called Hushabye Mountain in 1999, so we've had a relationship for that long, in and out of each other's lives. So that's exciting, knowing each other.

What else excites you about the script and the production?

NB: The casting process has been really thrilling, because we're learning more and more about the play, but we're also meeting some exceptional people who are being drawn to the script.

And doing it in the Everyman in its thrust stage setup, that excites me. And working with the creative team, with the designer Janet Bird who's just brilliant. I've wanted to work with her for a long time.

Your last few Everyman shows have been big and rowdy – The Big I Am, A Clockwork Orange. This is a more focused drama.

NB: It is, yes. It's the first time in a while that we can get into the whites of the actors' eyes. When you're doing big musicals and massive Shakespeare shows you're often more concerned about the backstage choreography. I love that kind of work, but I've also been dying to do something like this for a while – something more relationship based, where I'm dealing with one location and a smaller cast. The detail of that excites me.

What are the key themes at the heart of the play?

JH: Is honesty always the best policy? Who's going to look after us when we're old? And what does family mean? Because these two women have brought those sons up, but really the mum – Sylvie – has been useless. So it's about family dynamics, sibling rivalries and jealousies, and kids feeling their parents haven't loved them enough.

NB: Betrayal and survival. The lies we tell, how we bury those secrets but they will eventually rise.

If you had to describe the production in a handful of words, which would you choose?

NB: It’ll be hilarious! Also incredibly moving, fantastical, honest, painful.

JH: Heartbreaking. And serious. And funny.

Who will love to see this play and what will they enjoy?

JH: It’s about a family so it should appeal across the board, to young and old. The journey into the play starts with the arrival of a young woman – the girlfriend of one of the sons. She sees everything with fresh eyes and tries to make sense of it, whereas everyone else is stuck in their ways. So the young people in the play are definitely important.

NB: Fans of Jonathan Harvey will love it, of course! And I think it’ll appeal to the city because it’s a Liverpool play, by a Liverpool writer. That’s a massive thing. And there’ll be cracking actors.

I think it should appeal to all of us actually, I really do. It's for everybody and it's fun as well as being dark. It's sharp.

JH: And people who like a laugh!

Our Lady of Blundellsands was originally at the Everyman theatre in March 2020, until it was paused as theatres across the country closed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. 

Our Lady of Blundellsands is BACK at the Everyman theatre, Fri 17 Sep to Sat 9 Oct 2021.