It’s a special type of person that loves English comedian, writer, actor, and blogger Stephen Fry. They’re the kind of person that gets slightly cream-bun-sticky at the thought of puns and double entendres, the kind of person that titters at the mention of bottoms and salivates at the thought of rugger blues. Luckily for Everyman Theatre, who are performing Fry’s Latin! Or Tobacco and Boys at the Courtyard Studio this fortnight, you don’t need to be this kind of person to enjoy Stephen Fry’s divinely razorish wit. I sat down with director Jarrad West, actor Duncan Driver, and producer Duncan Ley to talk about Fry, theatre, and Chelsea buns.
Latin! is (oddly, for a man who seems so quintessentially theatrical) Fry’s only true play. “He’s done scripts and books for musicals,” says West, “but he hasn’t really written that many plays. I think this is his only ‘play’ play.”
“He did a version of Cinderella for the Old Vic years ago,” says Driver.
“But haven’t we all?” quips Ley.
It seems an appropriate play for the Everyman men; men who relish wit and wordplay and slightly dirty jokes. The play centres on two prep school masters (prep school, for the embryo Fry fan, is the “school where you go before you go to public school,” explains West): a young prep Latin teacher played by Driver, and a senior master played by veteran Canberra thesp Oliver Baudert, who are both trying to wrest control of the school from the dying headmaster. The younger teacher is engaged to the headmaster’s daughter and will inherit the school, but the senior master uncovers a dirty little secret. “The senior master has discovered that the younger teacher is having ‘extra Latin lessons’ with one of his thirteen year old students… and so decides to blackmail him.”
In order to give the audience the essential claustrophobic public school experience, West hopes to stage the play as if it were located in a classroom, with the audience sitting in desks. “I’m interested in different concepts of staging,” says West, “not the usual thing of having the stage in a box.” Including the audience in this way carries its own dangers, of course. “[I have] to talk directly to the audience, pick people in the audience, and that can be quite confronting,” says Driver. Ley agrees. “There is that tension of alienating the audience; by attempting to include them you can almost do the opposite.”
“At least as headmaster I don’t have to be nice to them,” jokes Driver.
The other tension is, of course, the material itself. West explains that when it was staged at the Edinburgh Fringe there were “protests and letters” complaining about the performance of material that “glorifies and endorses paedophilia”. “Well of course, it doesn’t,” says West. But the fine line that Fry treads, between humour and offence, is precisely what makes his writing so enjoyable. “There is a delightful element of risk,” says Ley. “You read the script and you go, this is extraordinarily funny, but we could get hounded out of town at the same time – and that’s rather wonderful.”
Everyman Theatre presents Stephen Fry’s Latin! or Tobacco and Boys at the Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, from June 18 – 27 @ 8pm. Tix $20/$15. Book through Canberra Ticketing on 6275 2700 or on the CTC website at www.canberratheatre.org.au.
