When Johnny McKnight
was a teenager, he would regularly attend the local spiritualist
church with his aunties. By that time McKnight had already seen David
Lean's big-screen version of Noel Coward's play, Blithe Spirit, in
which Margaret Rutherford’s eccentric medium Madame Arcati
inadvertently conjures up the ghost of Rex Harrison's novelist
Charles Condomine's dead first wife, Elvira.
“My first live
experience was going to watch psychics with my aunties at the
spiritualist church,” McKnight says. “I think that's what got me
into theatre. There were times when you just thought the psychic was
a fraud. But there were others who were so on the money that you
wonder how it could possibly be faked. There were times it was
heartbreaking. Every week there'd be the same two rows of people,
who'd clearly had a bad loss. It was two rows of desperate sadness
looking for peace.”
McKnight's formative
experiences at the spiritualist church nevertheless filtered into his
own work with Random Accomplice, the company he co-founded and still
runs with Julie Brown. Assorted psychics and fortune tellers have
made appearances in Little Johnny's Big Gay Wedding, Something Wicked
and Marymassacre.
It's only fitting then,
that for his first foray into working on classic drama rather than
new work that McKnight should direct his own production of Blithe
Spirit. For a director weaned on pantomime and all things camp,
however, McKnight's Blithe Spirit promises to take a very different
approach than the cut-glass quick-fire reverence with which Coward's
work is usually treated.
“I find it slightly
weird when you go to see Coward,” McKnight says, “and everyone
talks in these posh English accents. You find yourself concentrating
on all these posh people being witty rather than concentrating on the
story.”
With this in mind,
McKnight has relocated the play from its original Kent setting to the
theatre's Perth doorstep.
“The first week of
rehearsal was all about trying to unpick an intonation sand a rhythm
that you know so well,” McKnight explains. It was written for a
middle class voice, so you need to find another rhythm and freshen
things up. That's helped the cast from the start, I think, because
it's freed them up to not play it like the movie. There's lines it,
like when Elvira says to Charles that he was beastly to her, when you
look at it, there's something quite fiery going on there. That goes
with the look of it too. Let's not have the ghosts floating about
flatly in grey fibre. Let's put them in scarlet, because they're the
most alive people in the room.”
One challenge for
McKnight has been reconciling himself with the play's ending, which
was changed for the film.
“I know the movie so
well,” he says, “so I forget how misogynistic the end of the play
is. In the film Charles gets his just desserts, and it's a total
Hollywood ending, with them all ending up dead together. In the play
Charles wins the day, which is all about Noel Coward being so against
the institution of marriage. It's been funny reading up on it,
because there was one thing I read that suggested that the ghost was
an expression of homosexuality coming out of the closet, but I don't
see that at all. Basically Coward just hated marriage, and it's no
coincidence that the happiest people in the play are all single.”
McKnight's production
of Blithe Spirit comes at an interesting time for Perth Theatre, and
for Horsecross, the organisation in charge of it. As the theatre
prepares to go dark for two years while it undergoes a multi-million
pound refurbishment, the announcement of the departure of Horsecross'
director of theatre, Rachel O'Riordan to become artistic director of
the Sherman Cymru company in Cardiff has come as a surprise. Since
her appointment three years ago, O'Riordan's bold programming and
directorial verve has made Perth Theatre a serious player in
Scotland's theatre scene, with her production of Conor McPherson's
play, The Seafarer, picking up several awards. It was O'Riordan too,
who drafted McKnight into the building.
“She's a dynamic
force,” McKnight says of O'Riordan. “The work she's put on during
her time here has been accessible, but has never played to audience
expectations. Her new job in Cardiff is brilliant for Rachel, but
it's a great loss to Perth, and to the whole of Scottish theatre.
She's going to be a tough act to follow, and I just hope the board
manage to find someone just as dynamic.”
It was O'Riordan too
who persuaded McKnight that tackling a classic play rather than the
new work he is best known for was a good idea.
“I'm used to having
writers in the room with me, who I can ask questions about the
script, but I can't do that with this,” he says. “You have to
bear in mind that Coward wrote Blithe Spirit in five days, and when
you look at it closely and break it down, you realise that a lot of
it doesn't make sense, but that it has a kind of panto logic to it.
It goes so fast when you play it that you don't notice the plot
holes, and there are lots.”
McKnight's radical
approach to Blithe Spirit may cause Coward purists to raise an arch
eyebrow or two, but this doesn't mean that McKnight isn't taking the
play seriously. Far from it, in fact.
“The play's still
funny,”he says, “but hopefully it will feel not quite as flimsy
as it sometimes does. Hopefully there'll be flesh and blood and bones
there as well. I don't want it to be knockabout. I want there to be
some kind of truth of the moment there as well. Madame Arcati is
still funny, but there's something deeper going on than her just
being a mad old boot.”
Blithe Spirit, Perth
Theatre, October 30th-November 16th
ends
Johnny McKnight – A
Life in Theatre
Johnny McKnight grew up
in Ardrossan, and originally trained as a lawyer before attending the
Contemporary Theatre Practice course at what is now the Royal
Conservatoire Scotland in Glasgow. It was here McKnight met Julie
Brown, with whom he formed Random Accomplice in 2002.
Since then, McKnight
has worked as a writer, director and actor, both with random
Accomplice and many of Scotland's major theatre companies. For Random
Accomplice, McKnight has written sand directed the Little Johnny
trilogy, Love Hurts, Smalltown – Ardrossan, Marymassacre, Something
Wicked and others. McKnight has written and directed several
pantomimes, including Jackie and the Beanstalk and Aganeeza Scrooge
at venues including the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, and the MacRobert Arts
Centre, Stirling. As an actor, McKnight has worked with the National
Theatre of Scotland, The Arches, 7:84 Scotland and many others.
McKnight has also written for radio, and worked with Scottish Opera
on the site-specific piece, Last One Out, which was performed in
Fraserburgh lighthouse. In 2014, McKnight will be working on a new
work with Birds of Paradise.
The Herald, October 29th 2013
ends
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