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[0:01] Peter Quilter: My name is Peter Quilter and you're listening to Eleven, the official theatre podcast.

[0:17] William J Connolly: Hello and welcome to Eleven, the official theatre podcast that brings the biggest stars and creatives together in one place to discuss life in the arts. He's the Tony and Olivier-recognised writer that's penned some of the most impactful pieces of work of the last 20 plus years. From Glorious to End of the Rainbow and now Allegra, alongside many, many more, his work has brought some soaring female stories to the forefront of our industry, often with an added live musical element too. So to mark the final performances of his new hit Allegra, led of course by Dame Maureen Lipman, we dive back into life in the West End and why there's a power in writing for comedic joy. What it's like being reunited with Maureen after their legendary work on Glorious and how personal loss in his life was the unexpected real-world inspiration for his new show.

We also talk all things End of the Rainbow, having leading stars like Tracie Bennett and most recently Jinkx Monsoon playing the leading role and why the show is more of a comedy than people expect. And he reveals how in one rather peak period in his life he actually wrote both Glorious and End of the Rainbow within the same six-month period. Plus, he lets us inside his mind on everything from inspiration and ideas to story and construction on the page, how he continues to write two or three plays each and every year, and why sometimes not having a plan when writing is a very good start to a journey. It is the brilliant Peter Quilter. Hear now on this the next episode of Eleven, the official theatre podcast.

[1:55] William J Connolly: Please help me welcome to this the next episode of Eleven. He is the Olivier-nominated playwright and genius of writing that's brought some of the most powerful stories to the stage and also Scream. So impactful upon his Broadway debut of his first play in New York, it bagged a casual three nominations and now he's back in the West End with a new offering that's oh so casually has a dame in its leading role and I'm thrilled to say that he's here to tell me all about it. So I say hello Peter Quilter. I hear there is nothing like a dame. Does going to work with one ever get old?

[2:21] Peter Quilter: I'm trying to work it out. It's been about 20 years since I first worked with Maureen in her pre-dame period and weirdly I mean we've been in touch for 20 years and I've been sending her plays but once every two years I'll write something which I think has a really good part for her and she'll turn it down flat and that's been going on for a couple of decades and it got to the point where I thought I don't think I'm going to bother her anymore because you know it's not fair on her you know to keep sending her these plays that she doesn't like and it's not fair on me because it's bad for my ego and then I wrote Allegra and I thought well I'll I don't know maybe I won't maybe I will and anyway I decided to send it to her and she was on board in 24 hours.

I mean she read it, she said yes, she was in touch with the producer before she even spoke to me. I mean it all I mean we were on stage at Brighton within a year of me finishing writing it and that never happens. Things always take a couple of years so it happened really quick and we have a very good relationship. I think she thinks of me as a kind of a son or something. I mean she's very motherly towards me.

[3:40] I like to write parts for women and you know very few people are doing that still and I like I you know my career really took off when I made the decision one day after seeing Sunset Boulevard and thinking to myself this is the first time in years that I've seen a really good female role, leading role. Why aren't there more of these? Why you know and all these sort of actresses were fighting to do it you know actresses we haven't seen in years and so I went away and started looking for opportunities to write good female leading roles and I actually wrote Glorious which is about Florence Foster Jenkins and End of the Rainbow about Judy Garland. I wrote them in the same six months. I wrote them back to back and it was a very deliberate thing to let's write some good parts for women and they both took off immediately which kind of proved my point.

It proved that people weren't writing them and so when somebody did suddenly everybody was all over it so I think everyone was missing a trick really and yeah and that was the Glorious was the first thing I did with Maureen all those years ago and not look back. I mean it really was a career maker.

[4:44] William J Connolly: What were you eating in those six months and could you please share with everybody? That was a good six months for you well done.

[4:49] Peter Quilter: Yeah I mean it's I mean I write or I have written quite a lot. I don't really stop. The only time I stopped was when Glorious and Rainbow both they both premiered within a month of each other and that following two years was so busy that there wasn't time to write anything because you have to oversee all these foreign productions that start happening and London productions and Australian productions and it keeps you very busy but apart from that I will write two or three plays a year generally and normally it turns out one's good, one's okay and one's terrible so I tend to bury the other two and focus on the one that turned out well.

[5:33] William J Connolly: You got her, you got her again we should say and you got to do this which is incredibly exciting. It must have been a very big net that you had outside of a house in order to get the dame to do it this time round and it's an extraordinary extraordinary piece of theatre that I have had the pleasure of seeing and it struck me on so many different levels and I don't know if this was intentional so forgive if this was perhaps just my interpretation of it but I found myself spiralling afterwards thinking of so many things outside of the space and I wondered was this an intentional thing with the writing because it felt in a world that to be frank is pretty shitty, pretty dark and nothing seems to be on the plus at the minute to see a show that puts joy out there without apology and actually as is such when one of the messages in this great piece is that actually joy is something we shouldn't be running away from.

[6:21] Peter Quilter: Yeah, no, I mean it's completely deliberate. I was looking for an idea that would let me write a kind of a nostalgic old-fashioned like comedy because people don't write them anymore and it's almost as though they're not allowed, that you're not allowed to write something that is pure comedy. I mean in the sense that in the sort of the 50s and the 40s, you know, the period of Kaufman and Hart and things like Charlie's Art, Ulster Cold Lace, even go back to kind of late Victorian, people were writing pure comedy which was designed as a light entertainment to make the audience laugh, to make them happy, to bring joy and just to sort of, you know, just give a happy evening to people and it feels to me that in the last 20 years the powers that be, whoever they are, have started saying well you're not allowed to do that anymore and so we won't be doing any more Neil Simon, we won't be doing any more Alan Ayckbourn, we won't be doing any of, you know, anything joyful.

If it's a classic, well then that's allowed occasionally, but you're certainly not allowed to write that if it's something new. And I'm, you know, I mean, I don't like following those rules and so I thought, no, I'm gonna just write a comedy comedy. I mean, that's what Glorious was about. Florence Foster Jenkins, it was a comedy comedy. I mean, people did find messages in it, but its intention was to make people happy for two hours and I wanted to write another one of those and I didn't have the idea, just that I just knew that that's what I wanted to do and I've had a miserable couple of years because I've lost my parents and my husband has lost his parents as well in this two-year period and so the whole period has been about visiting care homes and those kind of situations, you know, difficult situations and so it was an unlikely avenue to find an idea for joyful comedy but one day I went to a residency in Spain to visit my husband's mother and there was a woman who'd become a resident there who didn't stop singing and she just sang all the time she was suddenly burst out singing during lunch in the middle of the night you know during social care meetings she would just sing in Spanish and she wouldn't stop and so I was fascinated by her and I also on the second or third time I was sort of following her around I noticed that half the people were saying oh thank you Maria sing us another song you know give us another one sing us more and the other half of people were saying will you shut the fuck up will you for fuck's sake we're trying to wrap I'm trying to sleep you know and so that became really I thought oh so that's interesting how half the world loves the joy that she's spreading and half the world wants to shut her down and that's what the play became.

It became a fictional story about a woman who can't stop singing, who wants to spread joy through singing to everybody, and half the people love it and half the people really hate it and that's what the play is about and and of course it becomes a play about spreading joy and so you therefore you spill into themes of how society is really kind of basically miserable these days and how we find joy really annoying when confronted with it and we really struggle with it and um and so that kind of the themes just came naturally out of it. I don't sit down and decide I want to convey this particular message or I have something particularly to say but sometimes the story you're writing it that those themes just come out of it and sometimes they're writing deliberately and sometimes they come out accidentally you know I mean I had when I wrote Glorious I had no idea that I was writing a play that people would take as, um, a message that you must live your dreams, which is what everybody takes away from it.

Well, I don't have any conscious memory of thinking, oh, I must must make sure that this play is about getting people to live their dreams. I just told the story and that sort of came out of it. But I think Allegra is probably not that. I think I was kind of, um, tub thumping much more. I really wanted to, I really had something to say about how fucking unhappy everybody is and we've really got to start doing something about it and it's not, it's not acceptable that we go through life miserable and everyone talks about miserable things and we just say oh well that's the way it is and that's what life is, let's just carry on with it. I think at some point somebody has to throw a bucket of water over all of us and say well no actually, uh, there is joy out there and we do have to embrace it, and we do have to start finding, um, happiness in life, um, which is not easy at the moment. Then it doesn't mean we shouldn't fight for it. It's one of the working titles you considered, apart from Allegra. Was it Cheer the Fuck Up? Is that—was—is that correct?

[10:57] Peter Quilter: Yeah yeah that's right it's it's in brackets after the uh after the title yeah pull your fucking finger out smile for fuck's sake yeah.

[11:11] William J Connolly: But it's interesting and and what's so funny and again this is incredibly true of the work that you do and you say that it's not intentional which makes your writing even more genius is that it manages to find a pulse in a in a world where it is a feeling that we all have that we don't talk about that we never really acknowledge which is this fear of joy this fear of happiness despair of even saying to ourselves we're allowed to be good I think that's one of the things that you get through but also what you do do so brilliantly in this piece is you do also tackle some of the more challenging subjects of life and aging and about being a mature woman and success and and as you say people telling us shut the fuck up quite literally when actually she just wants to be herself and it's through comedy that you do that which I always think is very clever because it feels like comedy is the silent killer where you can get to people without them even noticing do you think that's true?

[12:03] Peter Quilter: Yeah, the thing is, you know, I'm at the age now where I'm, I'm very self-aware, and so I'm, you know, I'm aware that the reason that I'm using comedy is because that's the thing that comes naturally to me. You know, I was the, the joker in school, you know, so that's the thing that comes naturally, so I always will always use that. It's not like, um, it's something that's in my canon and I think, oh, I'm going to use comedy for this. Comedy is the thing that is, is natural to me. To write funny dialogue is the natural thing for me and the the challenging stuff for me is the more dramatic material that I have to work really really hard at and I really have focus on, but when when I'm in the right mood I can write comedy quite easily so I therefore always tend to come at a show, um, from a comedic entertainment point of view because that's just it just feels more natural to me to start from that viewpoint and sometimes I'll do that and I'll end up writing quite a heavy drama, but I will have begun on day one with a kind of a comic entertainment sensibility, and that's true of End of the Rainbow as well.

You know, I was um, you know, it was about I decided to play about Judy Garland in the final drug addicted years, and um, obviously there isn't, that's not something you're going to come in in from a comedy angle, but in my research I found out how funny she was. I thought, well, I can really use that because I can tell this dramatic story, but I can really use the comedy opportunity as well, so I mean actually End of the Rainbow is a comedy drama. I mean, Tracie Bennett used to say about it, it's it's a comedy really, we're just telling a very serious story. Um, and so you know, that's it's I just use it a lot. I just, I think comedy is just again, it's there's not much comedy written if you take a look if you make a list of the plays written in the last 10 years, a very small percentage will be comedies.

The Royal Court receives about 300 plays a week that are dropped off at the stage door or emailed, and three of them are comedies. You know, I mean, it's just people just aren't doing and people are frightened of them now because they think it's what nobody wants. Um, but I, you know, I always come the other way and if you if you've got something that you do want to say, comedy is the great way of saying it. Um, because you're entertaining people when you're saying oh by the way have you thought about this, you know, and I think that's that's the best way to do it and also you can't write a play about joy and it not be a comedy. I mean that would be a bit weird, you know. Um, so it's it is this it is the way it's written is dictated by the story if the story I want to write it seems a farcical story then I write a farce if it seems dramatic story I write a drama.

If it seems very musical then I will write a musical. I mean it's the story that dictates what you do and obviously a play that's about a woman who spreads joy I think needs to be a comedy but you know, um, Tom Stoppard would probably written it in a different way, you know, so you know it just depends but yeah I like, I mean, I enjoy writing comedy. I find it much more natural to me.

[15:00] William J Connolly: What about when you add the musical element that you do into shows when they're not musicals they are plays with music where they have this live performance element of it how do you find the gap between what you as a playwright know that you must write in word form versus when you start to bring live music into even if it's in a fun and joyful way in which it is in this piece in End of the Rainbow where it's actual legendary songs you know people are going to know that Judy may not have done in that situation but she may actually have it could work in there it doesn't feel abstract or too forced how do you find the line between?

[15:36] Peter Quilter: It depends again on the play. Now, with something like End of the Rainbow, you know that there's certain songs that you're going to have to include or the audience is going to be disappointed, so you're going to have to have The Man That Got Away, you're going to have to have Somewhere Over the Rainbow, um, you're probably, you know, going to have to have Get Happy or one of those, and so you kind of have those at the side of you, you know, and as you're writing you're thinking, I do, I must find a way of including that somewhere, so I must must forget that as I'm writing, and so the structure is almost dictated by the songs that you have to include, um, because you've got to take it in certain directions where those songs can be incorporated.

Allegra is different because I knew she needed to sing and I needed to slowly build that. This is why in the first scene she just sings a bit to herself and then like 10 minutes later on, she sings a little song with her acapella with her brother, and then she sings a song to the carer, you know, and then so it's all slowly built to the point at which she suddenly does a full out number. But that doesn't happen for about half an hour because we need to just establish this whole thing of what's going on in her mind and why she's doing it, and of course at that point you just think okay, this is now all set up, we now need a song. And I mean actually the the song choices in Allegra, most of them were I've made a list of songs that have gone out of copyright, so I thought I don't want a situation when I do go to all this trouble to build up to a song to then be told we can't have it or to then be told they're going to take half my income from this song, so I made a list of songs that are out of copyright.

Singing in the rain had just gone out of copyright like a month before I start writing the play, Tiptoe Through the Tulips had gone out the year before, and so, you know, those were chosen because they had the right feel and there were no royalty complications. That's why I used them. Having said that, I then get to the end of the show and it's a song that I desperately want, which is just perfect for where we are in the structure of the play, and it's not out of copyright, so at that point I have to say, producer, I'm very sorry, you're gonna have to pay for this one. Um, you know, I did my best, you know, and I think there's, I think there's probably three that we pay for out of the seven, but you know, you have, you know, this is a business.

If you're a playwright and it's your job, you have to remember all this stuff. There is no point writing a play with five Beatles songs in it because it's going to cost so much to have them that nobody's going to do the show so you do have to be very aware of all this stuff and so that you're not wasting your time and so yeah, so it's different. It depends on the show, um, and it is, it does have to be very carefully structured, that the show has to reach a point where it can't say anything more unless it's said in a bigger way, and that's what the song does. That they do say about musicals that, um, when you're writing them, people should burst into the song at the point at which mere words aren't enough, you know, and that's, that's the point at which the song should begin, and whether it be in Rodgers and Hammerstein or whatever, and then the people that are brilliant at it, you can see, oh, she had to sing that because she's saying that she loves him, you know, and so, you know, you have to earn it, you have to earn a song, the point at which it comes, it can't, you can't just slip it in randomly when you want.

[18:51] William J Connolly: You've also got this the actress as the actress said to the bishop.

[18:56] Peter Quilter: But it's so interesting because what you do so fantastically is as you just described fine when words are no longer spoken and they move into the song but also where the pain starts to begin and again this could be in the world of comedy this could be at the end of a load of punchlines but you do find a way to incorporate music into that moment which you then start to think and this is probably the moment that the audience will start to cry or start to feel something more than just the spoken word are are those moments what you feel or what you want the audience to feel?

[19:20] Peter Quilter: Oh it's both I think I think you're always writing it depends what kind of right you are actually um William Goldman said in his book about Broadway that he wrote which people should read look it up was William Goldman did it when he was a journalist Ryan Goldman who wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Misery rather spent a year as a journalist on Broadway interviewing everybody it's a fantastic book and his conclusion about writers what that was that there are two kinds there is the writer as artist and the writer as entertainer now the writer's artist is not thinking about the audience when they write they're thinking about what they want to say what they want to do um you know what's in you know what they want to get out of them get out of their guts if you were um whereas the writer's entertainer is always thinking about the audience you know am I entertaining them am I keeping them interested, you know, um, is this what they want at that point?

So I'm always doing that. So anything that I write, I'm always thinking, what is the audience feeling at this point? You know, is the audience laughing, are they sad, what do I want them to do? So I'm very, very conscious of the audience with with every line that I write, um, because I want to make sure they're entertained. So if if the play becomes heartbreaking, you know, or sad at one point, that is very, that is me being well aware that I'm writing to achieve that, um, and I think if you're a different kind of writer, then maybe you're not so concerned about that, you just want to get your heart down on paper. But I'm very aware of the audience at all the times and, um, and I think, you know, you have to introduce an element of drama, an element of pathos or emotion, otherwise these plays, they become a bit too sketchy, you know, you can write something that's just pure comedy all the way through, but I think you have to touch people's hearts at some point, um, otherwise that the evening's funny but empty.

And so I do think you have to bring that stuff in, so so as I'm very aware, um, when she sings Keep the Home Fires Burning and her voice cracks and she can't quite manage it, that that's slightly painful for the audience. It's very deliberate, a very deliberate choice, and Maureen found it very difficult to do that actually. We had an awful lot of to and fro on that because, um, I wanted her to devastate the audience with it and for it to be really awful and unbearable, and she didn't, she just wanted to kind of skim across it and just make it slightly poignant. And we've found a nice kind of halfway where people are just sort of saddened by it, that the wind has gone out the character at that point, but you know you have to do that you have to bring the audience down in order to bring them back up again at the end which is typical me I mean you know um this is the other thing about the like I said at the beginning about writing comedy comedy I'd I'd been to see prior to writing Glorious and writing all these comedies I've written like 15 now um I'd been to see a play that was built as a comedy in the Western I won't mention the title because the writer will be upset it was very funny in act one in act two everybody died like everybody died they all died of horrible diseases or they committed suicide they all died and there were no laughs in act two and I thought this isn't a comedy what why are they selling this as a comedy and I I just felt that people just weren't writing proper comedies anymore and the thing about proper full-on 100% comedy is you can bring drama into them and you can bring pathos into them and you can touch people.

It's just that you're doing it always with an eye on keeping everybody entertained. That's always your main motivation, and then you can just bring these other elements in, and that's that's what I'm always aiming for, and that's and that's why I'm regarded as being populist. It's sometimes thrown at me as an insult, you know, you know, he writes plays that people like, how dare he, you know, um, I mean, some of the London critics don't like that at all. They hate that I write things that are popular, they can't stand it and um, you know, and make sure that I know occasionally, um, but then again, you know, um, you know, we the reason End of the Rainbow got to New York is because um the New York Times came to see it in London and gave it a review while it was in London.

It just sort of, you know, washed straight to Broadway and um, you know, and I've got plays now in I'm not I need to add them up actually but I think somebody added that so I've got 50 plays in 50 countries now and it's it's because I'm writing plays that people want to see because they want to be entertained and I think in a going back the conversation at the beginning in a cynical world in an angry world in an unhappy world that we're in you have to go the opposite way that doesn't mean you have to write angry unhappy cynical plays because actually what the audience really want and what they really need is the opposite of that they need to be taken out of themselves entertained and giving something different in their lives to be reminded that um we're here to have fun and um and so that's what I do and they can slap me down for it if they want but um we've had a great time with Allegra the audience first preview in Brighton we got standing ovation which was a real shock for everyone because we thought we were a mess in Brighton.

We said we're not ready, you know, nobody should be seeing this show. I remember the director, Steven May, had turned to me and said this could be a career ender for us because the dress rehearsal was so bad. Um, you know, everything went wrong and then they got on stage on the first preview and the actors were just fantastic. It's like suddenly everything came together at last minute and the audience loved it. All around the country we had a standing ovation every performance, eight shows a week around the country for eight weeks, a standing ovation. And I know that in the West End of a musical that is standard, but I promise you, you know, out on the road it with a play that is not standard at all.

That's a very unusual thing. Um, and I think that's due to the fact that we have a play about joy and we have Maureen Lipman, who's uh brilliant at uh what she does and uh and it's been a great convergence of those two things and that's why we're in the West End and that's why, um, we're so happy about it. That's why, you know, um, it's why Allegra is there and we couldn't be happier.

[25:24] William J Connolly: It is quite a time to be you. I know that we've mentioned some of the varying different projects that you've been involved in, but we have just seen, we obviously see now with this production, the West End of very, very recently, with End of the Rainbow being back here in London as well to a standing ovation. That, I mean, I saw the play on two separate occasions and the audience, apart from the fact that they were absolutely heartbroken, and I know you know that's the response at the end, but leapt to their feet for that performance, particularly your leading lady, your leading star. I mean, it felt very special not only to be in that space, you know, 20 years since you first brought this play to the West End, but also to have an audience collectively say we still genuinely really care about a woman who has actually not been with us for a significant amount of time.

Now we talk about the populist element of your work, you must have felt it a lot most recently with these two pieces at the same time. To be honest with you, I was I was quite doubtful about End of the Rainbow. I and they all have, the producers have, a great laugh about this because I sat in Manchester in a meeting with uh the the producer, Rainbow, saying that's not gonna work, you can't, we can't go to Walthamstow with Jinkx Monsoon, nobody's gonna go, you know, I mean, you know, and they laugh at me now because you know we got there and they sold 10,000 tickets in the first hour. I mean, and the whole thing, I mean, like we did huge business across the run. Um, it was, you know, it was if it wasn't full, it was almost full every single performance and it would, the reaction was like a rock concert.

I mean, from the first performance people were just screaming and and cheering and roaring and we would get standing ovations during the show on occasion and um and also we come out afterwards and the queue for the merchandise would go up the stairs and round through the bar and I mean it was just and then there'd be a crowd at stage door for Jinkx I mean it was a proper event End of the Rainbow I was absolutely astonished in a good way and uh yeah that that you can come back to London after 20 years and for it to get an even bigger reaction was just great and there's more stuff happening with it which I'm not allowed to tell anyone about it I mentioned it casually to one person the producers immediately emailed me say will you shut up you know um because you know there there is something what can I what am I allowed to say there's something big brewing friend of the rainbow that's it I haven't said anything else yeah it's um Jinkx was um completely fantastic I mean again it's we're flipping back again it's writing great female leading roles, if you write those roles, suddenly you've got the opportunity that really great stars will get involved and do it and it's happened all over the world.

It's happened with the Glorious, I go to see uh Glorious or End of the Rainbow in different countries where I don't know uh the the female actors or actresses that are doing it and um so who is this person, you know, tell me about them and they turn out to be the Judy Dench of Brazil or, you know, the the you know the Meryl Streep of another country, you know, and I go okay, I didn't realize and so you know but you have to write the parts for them. Yeah, it's it's the line from the Kevin Costner film, you know, if if you build it they will come, you know, if you write a great role, you know, then you get great performance and and in the same way that Maureen is brilliant and perfect and Allegra Jinkx Monsoon was a brilliant and took I don't know she took everyone by surprise.

I think everyone knew she was going to be good, but I don't think anyone was prepared for how good she was going to me. I mean, she was mind-blowing. I've never seen such a an ovation, a curtain call when she stepped out. It's absolutely extraordinary. I mean, they stood before the song ended. You know, ends on End of the Rainbow, they're already on their feet before she hit the last note, you know, so it's quite incredible. Um, and you know, like I say, there'll be there'll be more to come with that. I've written various plays and they're not all female leads, they're all kinds of things, but the biggies have always been the female leading roles and and if you write them and you can attract those, um, those stars, then then you're on to a winner really because there's stars for a reason.

It, you know, particularly, you know, Maureen's 80, I think she might be 81 by now or coming up to it. I mean, you know, there's a reason she's still acting at that age. It's it's not it's not luck, you know. I mean, to keep a career going, No Coward used to say, uh, there are a lot of people with talent. The real question is, have you got staying power? And that's very true. There's a lot of actors disappear in their 40s and 50s and 60s and especially 70s, you know, but um, Maureen is an example of those, you know, and there are several of them in in England that they just keep going and they keep working and it's it's television or it's movies or it's theater, um, and it's because they know what they're doing and they have a natural charm and a natural ability with comedy or drama, whatever it is, and she has it in spades.

She has it in buckets. She just, you know, it's just all there from the minute she steps on the stage and um, we all admire her enormously and and I tell you, you go and see her production, I sweat it on a Wednesday matinee at Richmond where I was the youngest person there by about 70 years, and uh, the the reaction to the the older women, they, because because they've got a whole different level for them, it's not just seeing a play, they're seeing somebody of their age doing eight shows a week, singing, dancing, making them laugh, and it was such a cathartic experience for them. They were so joyful as they left the building, and I got I got so many hugs after the show because Nikki Chapman happened to be there, the the TV radio presenter, and I know her, and so they all saw her, went oh Nikki Chapman's here, and they all come over to see Nick, and I'm standing next to her, and Nick being Nick, she says oh this piece called to the right, and they all just started hugging me because you know they had been given something that was for them and this is the the thing I'm saying you have to you, I'm writing for the people, I'm writing for all these.

It's not just play for old ladies, but if you are an old lady, you're going to really get something extra out of it because how many parts are there? How many parts are there once you've done Lady Bracknell? What's left? What is left for you? That's my job, I think. That's, you know, that's my job to do that, and if you know, and I shall write some more if I can think of good ideas. Play for older ladies and a play for the gays. I think this is like play national service, isn't it?

[31:47] Peter Quilter: Yeah, it is. Yeah, I don't know. I think I think I'm I'm an inner old lady, possibly because I write an awful lot of um shows that the older audience likes, um, and I think when when you're gay you you are attracted to gay stuff. I mean, I I just, you know, I was brought up with um Judy Garland and, you know, Madonna and all that. You just you just become an Oscar Wilde, it just becomes you just become surrounded with it. The amazing thing about End of the Rainbow was I couldn't believe no one had written play about Judy Garland. I could right could not believe it, and I so much couldn't believe it, and when I first wrote it I didn't write it about Judy Garland, I just wrote a fictional play that was kind of that kind of story, and it was only after people sort of read it and saw the early production sort of said well this is very Judy Garland why don't you just write Judy Garland.

I remember saying I don't think I'm allowed to do that and surely someone has already done that, you know, and they hadn't. It was just extraordinary and, um, so that was just lucky. Francis Foster Jenkins, the same, it was amazing that nobody had done that, just that's the thing. I don't think, I actually don't think you can go out and find brilliant stories. I do think you have to trip over them. I do think it just suddenly has to whack you in the head one day. Um, I think you could spend years trying to find a really great biography subject and you won't. I think you have to trip over it. I mean, Francis Jenkins, I just heard on a tape, somebody was playing a tape, I said what's that, they said oh it's, um, my my partner had been given a, uh, he was in, uh, Me and My Girl, original cast of Me and My Girl in the West End, and was having a conversation with one of the old actors about singing, types of singing and styles of singing and this was back in the old, back in the pre-war days, they'd be given a cassette tape.

You could, people could google it, your listeners can google it, cassette tape and uh, cassette tape of um, great singers, um, all singing Queen of the Night aria. And so that my partner could listen to them and see the difference in the way they use the tones and the way they phrase things and all of that. And then it's a joke at the end to put Francis Foster Jenkins sing Queen Night now, and if Foster Jenkins couldn't sing a note and she'll see, you know, it's a terrible version of that. And I, and I just said, what, who's this woman, what's the story behind this? And so I just went, went into town. This is pre-internet, so you know, well, not pre-internet, before you could get loads of stuff on the internet, before, before stuff was readily available to you, so I had to go in and just really research and find the story and that's how it happens.

You just hear a tape, you trip over something, you read something, the newspaper, somebody mentioned something to you, you go into a care home and a woman is singing and you suddenly think, why is she singing, what's what's what's that all about? There are ideas everywhere and occasionally, and people say, oh, where'd you get your ideas from? Well, I mean, the ideas are everywhere, every day, everywhere. That's not the issue. The issue is finding idea that no one has done before, that is original, that can build into a two-hour story that people will watch for two hours, that they'll give up their evening to watch two hours, and in the West End we'll pay 85 quid to come and see, or on Broadway 200 to come and see, and you know, that's the idea you're trying to find, you're trying to write.

And I could write an idea, I could write an idea about this podcast, you know, throw enough money at me and I'll write you, in the next week, a two-hour play about a guy being interviewed for a podcast and one of us ends up dying at the end, obviously, um, but you know, I, you can work yourself, work out yourself, but you know, but that's not the thing, is the thing is finding that idea where you know you can make that work on the level that it needs to work, and that's what's really hard, and that's why writers aren't writing a play a month, because it takes a year or six months just to find something that you think you might be able to sustain as an evening's entertainment.

[35:48] William J Connolly: It's fascinating it's so fascinating and it's it's so interesting we talk about like reactions and connections and the way that people connect certain things I wondered because you do write in that way that you know there is that deeply personal element if people are aware of it or subconsciously or purposefully during seeing the shows with the End of the Rainbow example was there anything that you knew because of all of that that you couldn't do with that play for example you can't bastardize Judy Garland you can't do her in a way that the gay the girls the gays in the days would come for you in a way that they would seem crude was there anything that was just too much for the woman who is the pinnacle of?

[36:23] Peter Quilter: Well, I think, yeah, I think, well, first of all, you have to be aware that it's a real person. You can't be libelous, so you have to be true. Um, you know, you can't have her do or anything that that may not have happened, that wouldn't be within the realm of who she actually was and how she lived her life. But the thing is, the the drug stuff, the alcohol stuff, is very well documented, so you're on quite safe ground. Although if I'm ever in a room with lies of an alien law on the left, they will probably attack me. Um, but you know, but it's not, it's not because I've written something that isn't true, that the reason that they they don't come and see the play and they don't talk about the play is because they don't control it, and they feel as as Judy's family that they should have control over that material, and my argument is yeah, but Judy doesn't belong to the the Garland and Ali Luft family, Judy Garland belongs to the world and we should all be able to talk about and write about her and all that.

So you know, so you know, um, I see their point of view but you know, um, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't be libelous about it. I wouldn't write anything that was completely untrue, um, and I wouldn't write anything I don't know. I don't know that I I necessarily think about that. I I don't think when you're writing you think like I can't have that line that might upset the gaze, you know. I think you just you, because now this is we're going to get into really pretentious territory here now, but what I mean is it's like in the same way that an actor might improvise what you're actually doing, you're just thinking okay we're in this room and she's there and the pianist is there or you know Allegra is there and her brother's there okay and this is situation this is what they're talking about talk just talk and you write it down and when you're writing really well, you're not actually aware of what you're writing.

That's when it's really good, that's when your subconscious is just letting them talk and you're just putting it down on paper and the the best things, you know, the best scenes that I write, when I go back the next day and I and I'm not aware of any of it, I'm just oh yeah, I do remember vaguely writing something about that and that's when the writing's really good and feels really natural. So in that sense, you're not you're not eliciting that kind of control over it, in that that control that would say well I can't say that because they won't like that or I won't say that because that takes a play into a different area, you're just letting the characters talk to each other and then you go with them and the next scene might be completely unexpected but it's because something came up in that subconscious scene that you wrote before and you said, oh, that's that was an interesting thing, that comment that Judy made or that Allegra made.

Well, I need to use that in the next scene now, so the next scene actually springs naturally from that. So, I mean, I think other writers probably structure very, very carefully, um, exactly what they're going to do with each play, and I don't do that. I mean, I there are many, many plays where I've literally sat down and opened the computer screen and thought, right, first line, think of a character name, okay, John, what's John going to say, and I literally go word by word and write the plan. I've done several plays like that where I've had no idea, no plan, just literally forced myself to start a page of dialogue between two people and see where it goes, um, and and I've ended up with entire plays doing it that way, and I had to do that in the pandemic because here I am in the pandemic I'm locked down for a few months with nothing to do apart from walk the dogs which was the only I live in Spain and the only thing you're allowed to do is walk your dogs within 100 meters of your house so the dog's got about 57 walks a day and I thought I have to do something I'm going to go mad so I literally because I have to write a play I don't have an idea for play I have to write a play and so I literally just started a conversation between two people and um and then the the play just built and built and built and ended up ended up with play which ended up doing really well um so you know um it's a I think not having a plan is good and uh if you know if you have writers that listen to your podcast you know I do say to them don't don't not write because you don't have an idea you should be just writing just write because it doesn't matter if it's good it doesn't matter if it's bad, you just write because you don't know what you're going to come up with.

You should just be writing every day. Actors should be acting every day, whether it's a training or a workshop or a friend show or learning a new speech, you know. Same with poets, same with painters, you should be doing it every day. Um, and writing, you should just write, just do it, and um, and I think the original question was something about being aware of not offending anyone, so I think I think I got there in the end, but it's basically but you know it's what I'm basically saying is that shouldn't be the process. The process should be a very organic thing of letting your characters talk to each other, and if you're conscious on the level where you're saying well I can't say that or I can't do that or that's not where I wanted the play to go then then you're coming at it from the wrong angle, that's not right it should be just it should be the characters that decide where the play goes.

[41:58] William J Connolly: Isn't also interesting that the if you were to follow those rules, which was to not offend, not to face reality, not to tell the truth, not to mirror perhaps what's well documented, take the Judy Garland for example, for like you wouldn't have had the success I think when it then became a film because it was the silence, the devastation, the understatedness of Renee that got her that Academy Award because it was to a Hollywood lens, into a lens that perhaps never go to the theater, never experienced devastation in a way that plays can, that actually pierce them like a knife, and actually it became one of the greatest selling points. So sometimes I feel like the medium dictates the output, and actually the output in itself won with Renee.

It's it changes and that's lovely for me as a as a viewer, for you as a creative a lot, it's you can't come at it cynically, you can't. I think Sam Mendes who said um if you decide to write a hit show, you ain't gonna have a hit. Um, and it's it's very true, you can't you can't do that, you just have to write what you feel is is the right thing, and it has to feel pure and it has to feel right, it has to feel correct. And I mean, uh, you mentioned the movie, I mean the movie, you know, I had so little to do with the movie, it's unbelievable how how uninvolved I was in the film. Um, because they they buy it, you know, they they buy it from you, and so we're going off to make a movie now, it's nice to meet you, we'll see you know, we'll see you at the premiere and excuse me I what hang on a minute you know um and so you know the the film was quite an interesting experience, but it filmed it really well and um you know everyone made a profit and they went into a big profit for everybody, which is lovely, which means everybody all down the line, everybody got paid, you know, everybody got their second level salaries or whatever, um, and to win, you know, to have one movie made and it for it to win an Oscar is, you know, is incredible. Um, and Renee is lovely, really lovely, and um, I think you've had Andy Nyman on your podcast, right?

[44:01] William J Connolly: Yes.

[44:01] Peter Quilter: Well, because Andy Nyman was in it, yes, yes, and although he didn't mention it on your part, I'm going to mention it on my one. Andy Nyman and I did our first panto together when we both left, uh, drama school, and we were in panto together at Westcliff, so me and Andy Nyman go back like 300 years, um, so yeah, and then he ended up in, uh, in the film and, bless him, rang me immediately the day he got cast to tell me, um, so you know, it's, um, yeah, it's an interesting thing how how the film worked and how it touched people and I, you know, um, I do get, I do get, um, messages about it quite often. Russell T Davies came to, um, End of the Rainbow and sent me a very sweet note. He really, really loved it, um, and loved Jinkx in it, as everybody does, and then sent me a note to say how much he enjoyed playing, also how much he enjoyed the film.

It's really, film really touches people, even people at that level who, you know, the top writers, you know, television writer in the country, probably Russell. Um, so yeah, so it's it's lovely, but I can't make any great claims to the movie because I had so little to do with it, you know. Um, they just ran with it, but I think I think they kept the the heart of the the play. I think that was the thing, they just, although they did their thing, they recognized what the heart and guts of the play was. Um, and uh yeah, good good stuff, all good stuff.

[45:27] William J Connolly: I wondered if we could think back to the very beginning of when you first began professionally in this industry would is your Western debut and if this is wrong I'll be very embarrassed would that be 99 is that Boy Band is that correct?

[45:38] Peter Quilter: It is so yeah that's obviously not that long ago because you're incredibly young but if you think back to then and just some and the list is incredibly long and incredibly deserving of the accolades and the work that you've put together if you think back to the the Peter that was back in in 99 when that first happened and all of the incredible things that we've touched upon some of them with the Oscar relevance the Tony thing I mentioned in the introduction the fact that 20 years later your play has the reaction that it does the fact that there are women in the world that feel seen because of the work that you put together what do you think the Peter back then would think of the gentleman that's been sat on this zoom call with me for the last 45 minutes could he ever have imagined that these gifts would come to you?

[46:24] Peter Quilter: Well the thing is and I think a lot of people relate to this I think when you're a young writer um you haven't been battered down at that point so when you write your first place you think they're brilliant and so nothing surprises you from the success that you have I do think I you know I was in my 20s when I wrote Boy Band and so it wasn't you know I was at that age where I thought I was gonna I was a genius anyway and everything I wrote was brilliant it's only as the years went by then I realized I wasn't as clever anywhere near as clever as I thought I was and I then had to kind of build from nothing and learn how to do it I mean Boy Band was a complete surprise Boy Band was done at the Palace Theater Westcliff where I'd done panto with Andy Nyman and I did like a little bit of writing on the side and you know and Chris Dunham who ran the theater said what were you writing Pete and I said I've written this play about Boy Band well let me have a look maybe we can do it here you know and it was just done you know Westcliff is near South End in this little rap theater um nobody came and you know and we just did this little show and Western producers started turning up and you know within two years it's on at the Gilgud and so I was just astonished to have that to have happened so quickly um but the truth is that after it um I then realized that I wasn't as good as I thought I was um and I actually had to learn to write properly and that this was just a fluke and I'd written a fluke and the play went on to do very well it's still on now in different countries I mean it has been you know it's even it's about to have its third production in Japan for example so the play has done really well but I mean it's you know it's not hammer you know let's be honest um but you know I I realized that I actually that wasn't, you know, writing is harder than that and you have to actually work a lot harder than that.

So actually the the me then, um, thought I was fantastic and then the me a year after that realized that writing is very hard and it takes a long time to learn how to do it and I didn't write anything for a couple of years after Boy Band because I had sat in that audience and seen that my writing wasn't as good as I thought it was and so actually I then went back to square one, took a break, went back to square one, said okay let's now learn how to write plays and it took a couple years and then I wrote End of the Rainbow and Glorious back to back, um, sort of after after hard work. I mean I sort of went away and studied on my own, it was like an open open university course, like I need to learn how to fucking do this and so that's what it was so it's it's unusual but I have to say at the age that I was to be standing outside the Gilgud Theater and you know with a play on it was unbelievable because I was basically an unemployed actor that's you know that's basically what I was.

I wanted to be a TV presenter and I did. I worked for the BBC for a couple years. I did Play Bus, um, so the the next generation after me will remember Play Bus. It was the preschool program on the BBC in the mornings Monday to Friday and I did that and I worked at Elstree, BBC at Elstree Studios, and I wanted to be a TV presenter, um, and uh it didn't work. Uh, I tried really hard and um then I got asked to do little bits of acting on TV. I was in London's Burning, I was in Touch and Frost and little things like that thinking that that was going to be my career doing cameos in TV and that didn't quite work either and so I just started writing. I thought well I'll just write stuff during these periods of not having work, I'll just write things I enjoyed writing, and one of those things that I wrote was Boy Band.

And I wrote it because one day I was at a petrol station and saw on the front newspapers that Robbie Williams had walked out to Take That. I thought that'd be a good play, you know, like I say, you have to trip over it, you know, and so I tripped over it and I wrote it. And Nikki, who I mentioned earlier, who was their um, uh, PR, you know, she worked with them, and so I said, Nikki, tell me about, tell me, tell me about the arguments, you know, and um, and that's where the show came from. But you know, but you know, it's it, Boy Band is referenced, um, when with young writers, when they have a musical or something that doesn't go very well in in London, I've been told that directors all say to them, okay, so we're closing after three weeks and I know it's devastating but remember Boy Band, you know that didn't do great either I mean we did 12 weeks we didn't do terribly because it then went on and it went on tour in Holland and it went to Germany it went to Denmark and it went to Japan and it went to Slovakia and it went to all these other places and end up being a very joyful experience in my life and my first international show so you know um the that's the other thing that I say to writers is don't give up on a play if it's a flop in England because you have to remember England is one country and there are about 70 countries that produce theater okay so you haven't written a successful English play maybe they will love it in Germany maybe they will love it in Finland maybe they'll think it's hilarious in Australia maybe the Slovakians will go bananas for it we are one market England and you know people talk about England America how you know people will find a play funny in England and then it goes to America and they think it's rubbish and give it terrible reviews.

That happens quite a lot and it happens with American plays coming here as well. Well, it's maybe the play isn't for that country. Um, you know, I've I've had plays that have flopped in one country and been huge hits in the other. I had, you know, I mean there's I've got endless examples of that. Um, and sometimes you think well okay I haven't written English play I've written a Germanic play, you know, I've written a very East European play, you know, I've written there, you know, so it's a big it's a big world out there and um, you know, again this is the thing of being a populist whether that's a good thing or a bad thing but being a populist is is an awareness that um there's a whole world that goes to the theater.

Yeah, there's certain countries that don't, pretty much the whole world goes to theater and when I write something I'm writing with that in mind. Will they like this in Slovenia? Will they go to this in Prague? Will this work in Sydney? You know, I'm very conscious of that all the time, um, and so, you know, and I think Allegra has that universal feeling about it and also a timeless feel because I've written it in a nostalgic mode because I wanted to write something that felt like it was written in the 50s, um, and so it should and hopefully it will, you know, be everywhere in the coming years and hopefully that would do well. I mean, we're doing very well in London and lots of people, lots of people are coming in to see it from different countries, they're flying in.

Got a big celeb coming this week to see, which I'm not allowed to talk about, you know, who wants to do it somewhere else, you know, it's um, that's the thing about London, it's a great showcase for the world but it's as I said it's just because it's a showcase for the world. It's not the only market in the world, the market is huge and, you know, right for everybody and hopefully everybody will come and everybody will enjoy it. And just for the record, it's Tony nominated populist, just so people know, two-time Olivier as well. To be fair though, I never win them. I am, I'm always the bridesmaid, you know, I mean, I never win any of them I've had, you know, and this is the problem working with, um, Steven Mere directing Allegra, who of course has three Olivier awards, and I just attack him relentlessly about it.

You know, how dare you, why are they giving them to you and not giving them to me, what the hell's that all about? Again, I think that's the populist thing though. I think if you're a populist playwright, they want to acknowledge what you've done but they don't want to give you an award for it because you should be far darker and more cynical if you want an award you shouldn't you shouldn't be um so focused on entertaining people and so that's what that's all about and I have to live with that and um I I embrace it in the same way that Neil Simon did and uh no coward and all the others I'm not comparing myself I'm just saying examples they're in exactly the same situation everyone moaned at them for being populist and actually uh I think it's a really nice thing to be and I'm not embarrassed about it of course all famously had work at the Walthamstow theatre so basically the same yeah Western to Walthamstow that's me Peter this has been such a pleasure thank you so much for giving me such a huge amount of your time we spoke way over a lot of time and I really appreciate the fact that you stuck with me so thank you so much and congratulations and good luck for the remaining time with Allegra in the West End and it's exciting to hear that there are things to come, which we won't talk about, but things to come for both that and End of the Rainbow. It's incredibly exciting, so thank you so much. And what will it be, Monday or Tuesday, the draft of this podcast play that you're writing? When can I expect it?

[55:17] Peter Quilter: Uh yeah I'll get I'll do the first draft and you'll have it in the morning it's not it's not going to be a good one so I don't expect too much time on it.

[55:27] William J Connolly: You've been listening to Eleven, the official theatre podcast. Find out more about Eleven at elevenpodcast.com or via the Broadway Podcast Network.