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| Stuart Roche |
As a starting point, I brought up my review of Variance, where Chicago 'soccer Mom' Jennifer is frustrated with her dull life and over the course of one night all of that changes. In that review I mentioned there was a 'comic noir feel that would make Frank Miller smile', Miller being the the writer of graphic novels Batman:Year One, The Dark Knight Returns, and Sin City. The comment itself gained a reaction from Roche at the time, and I asked why did it resonate so much with him? "I guess you were the first person to mention comic book sensibilities, some people might take it as an insult, I took that as a great compliment. I suppose, because when I was young a big part of my week was defined by Friday going to the newsagents on the way back from school and picking up 2000AD, so that was me, Strontium Dog, and Slaine and Judge Dredd, and these guys."
The two books that influenced him most "as a teenager, sort of late teens, one of them would be Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis. The other one would be Killing Joke..." which was written by Alan Moore who also wrote for 2000AD, "and I think that's always been there, and obviously there is the visuals of graphic novels and comics and stuff like that, but I like the sparseness of the dialogue. I got a present of a deluxe, grand, twenty five year edition of Arkham Asylum and they have the actual text in the back and it's really quite small, and I like the pared down nature of it. Comic books have definitely been a big influence on me. How much that comes across in theatre I would wonder but it's there, it's in you." In Variance there are moments when those comic book sensibilities do show. Roche wanted it to be "a crazy trip... if you're trying to tell a story of one night it had to be punchy, it had to be tight."
The two books that influenced him most "as a teenager, sort of late teens, one of them would be Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis. The other one would be Killing Joke..." which was written by Alan Moore who also wrote for 2000AD, "and I think that's always been there, and obviously there is the visuals of graphic novels and comics and stuff like that, but I like the sparseness of the dialogue. I got a present of a deluxe, grand, twenty five year edition of Arkham Asylum and they have the actual text in the back and it's really quite small, and I like the pared down nature of it. Comic books have definitely been a big influence on me. How much that comes across in theatre I would wonder but it's there, it's in you." In Variance there are moments when those comic book sensibilities do show. Roche wanted it to be "a crazy trip... if you're trying to tell a story of one night it had to be punchy, it had to be tight."
It was in secondary school were Roche came into contact with acting. "I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do and then read for a part in the school play, thought it was a small part, as we were only given 3 or 4 pages in the auditions, but it was the lead. I fell in love with it, I suppose, the whole process of what went into making the show, really. I knew I wanted to be involved in the theatre in some way." He remembers the play fondly. "It was a wonderful farce called Plunder by Ben Travers, written in the 20s. Massive cast, enormous fun." Comedy is a large part of Roche's work, no matter what the theme, and I wondered why? The origins, like his discovery of acting, are back in his school days. "I think again its stuff I used to grew up watching. I love Blackadder, I love Curb Your Enthusiasm, stuff like that. I went to boarding school so my poor Mum, we used to get out on a Sunday and I would have a list of programs that I would have to get taped during the week because we weren't allowed watch television until we got to sixth year. My friend was from Wexford and he had a very similar sensibility to me, so on a Sunday he'd nowhere to go, he couldn't travel to Wexford, so he would come to my house, we'd have some grub, or whatever, but we'd watch these programs, you know, two hours would go, we'd have The Young Ones, we'd have Blackadder, we got all these, and then during the week we would act out these scenes to amuse ourselves at nighttime when the lights were out. There's some really interesting playwrights that, you look at someone like Neil Simon who might be very old fashioned but the craft is brilliant, it's superb." Neil Simon's plays include The Odd Couple, Lost In Yonkers and Plaza Suite, that are rich in comedy as well as character. "These are great pieces. I wouldn't pass myself as the funniest guy in the world but I think I know a good gag when I see it."
Roche's humour is of the dark variety but it doesn't stop the flow of laugh out loud lines, such as in Tracer, while also using humour, and satire, to point out the strangeness of the wider world. "We got a character like Ken who inadvertently lets slip this crazy plot. But the funny thing with Tracer is, as insane as I made the plot devices I have, it's still nothing in comparison to what's happening in the world."
After secondary school Roche undertook the Gaiety School of Acting course. "I wanted to get involved in the theatre and I thought going into acting school was the most immediate way of doing it." At the time it was a one year course, whereas today it is two years, part of which encourages students to write some material themselves, something Roche feels is a great change. It was later on that he became interested in all aspects of theatre rather than just acting, which prompted to some degree his next move. In 1999 Roche helped set up PurpleHeart Theatre Company with the idea of "just doing Irish premieres of international plays." This was before he started writing. "As kind of the dramaturg I read pretty much every play that we did, I've read literally hundreds of new plays over the years." Some of those plays included Bug by Tracy Letts and Red Light Winter by Adam Rapp. Being an avid reader and researcher is something that comes across while talking to Roche, although with research he is aware of the dangers of becoming a 'slave to it' and ending up writing the book on the topic rather than a story.
In 2008 Roche directed The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris, with Patrick O'Donnell playing the role in the one person show. It was suggested by an English agent as they were looking for a slightly different type of Christmas play. "It was fantastic. It did really, really well. I think it was the only time I literally saw people falling out of their chairs laughing. And Paddy, he was just so funny. He was so funny. It was great. It was like a dream. He's a really good friend of mine. It just went brilliantly. But you're never sure. It was my first ever directing gig. Even though I'd acted in stuff, and I'd produced stuff, I was always listening to directors, there always comes a moment when you go 'Jesus, what was I thinking, my God'. It was such good fun."
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| Promotional picture for The Judge's House |
"I'll never forget the very first moment I did this, I did a sprawling fifteen character play that was really influenced by Mark Gatiss and The League of Gentlemen, and they're influenced by writers I like as well. I needed to see if it worked, and a lot of it did. And a lot of it was terrible but there was enough in it that worked for me to go 'Okay you do have a chance' but the first moment where - and it was only a stage reading, and it was mainly an audience made up of my friends, and the cast was also entirely made up of my friends, so there was a lot of positivity in the room - the first three or four minutes before you get that first laugh I think I took one breath and I probably nearly passed out, it was just like terrible, I'll never forget that, and everything's been easier since.
"When you're doing something that's never been seen before you're throwing it out there, your going 'I hope this sticks' or 'I hope this resonates with somebody' or 'I hope somebody gets it'. They have, I suppose...I think they've done well, I think they've been received well, the audiences have really enjoyed them, critics enjoyed them I think in the main, and certainly the actors have enjoyed being in them, and I've been well served by all of the productions of them which is what you really hope for."
"They're just so much more accessible. Now you go home, you throw Netflix on. And certainly when I was young, when I was growing up, I would have seen far more movies than plays, as pretty much any kid. I don't think any kid has seen more plays than movies. I was lucky in that my Dad and my Uncles had a pretty interesting taste in films, considering they were from Kildare originally and it was the 70s and 80s in Dublin. They would have liked a lot of Martin Scorsese stuff, The Deer Hunter, and my Uncle liked Hammer and Vincent Price, you know, stuff like that so movies were always there... I think it might be similar to that kind of staccato cut thing as well with Revenant and also it was set on a film set. But again I think it was one of those things were one of the other reviewers said in one line, or one lick, we managed to recreate an entire film crew. A lot of that was to do with Simon [Toal], I mean that was the only play I've ever written very specifically for one actor was Revenant, Simon, it was always going to be him. The part Paddy O'Donnell played in Tracer, I very much had him in mind, but specifically that was for Simon, so that was always there."
The idea of having someone in mind while writing, was something I wanted to tease out a little more, or is writing something that happens before any of that. "Sometimes it happens. I guess with the new one, there hasn't really been anyone. There's people that you think, 'yeah, I think they would be very good'. Even with Variance, I just kind of wrote Variance. I knew Ranae [von Meding], I had an idea of what she was like, so that would have been there in the background to see where it went. It was interesting because I was away, I was down in Annaghmakerrig for the first week of the show. I think it was like being stationed in a foreign country and your wife or your girlfriend is having a child, you're kind of hopping around, you're hearing from people in social media. I was supposed to see the run through before I went, but the dates got mixed up. I saw the read through and that was it. I was in Monaghan texting people 'hows it going?'. But it was really interesting that it was the first time I had no directing influence on the production."
"I was interested in the idea of a guy who was intelligent and had almost been like a career soldier, who came back into a normal town in America and found it difficult to settle back in" but he wanted it to be different than what we might expect, while also looking at the relationship between the father and his son.
The returning Marine is Hillis, following a tour in Afghanistan that left most of his platoon dead, as he tries to settle back into a town he barely recognises, and not being able to communicate with his family or friends. Back home he meets Ashley, who sets him on a path of some recovery, but she, like him, has her own baggage.
"I'm really happy at where it is now, it's the one that I'm most excited by at this stage. Caroline Fitzgerald is directing it and she's brilliant. She worked on a play I did called Overtime a few years ago in The New Theatre, Jane McCarthy wrote it and it's really good, really good script. Caroline directed that too and she's a lot of experience with new writing in the Peacock. So I saw the way she worked on Jane's script and I always wanted her to do this so she's on board too. She's great. A really good director."
Already Roche is thinking about what his next piece will be with a few ideas kicking around, perhaps even a period piece, but it is all early days, he reminds me. What it does show is that Roche doesn't like to sit still, he is always searching for new themes and different takes on what we think we know. What comes across from talking to him, is that whatever the theme and idea, no matter how many pop-culture references are there, at the heart of it is a writer who wants to tell an interesting story from a slightly different angle, with some satire and humour thrown in for good measure.
Snake Eaters opens Dec 1st - 19th in The New Theatre, Dublin