All That Repetion and Massed Humanity…

There is nothing more scary than the moment you realise 90 people have auditioned for a play you have written. Well, not quite, but a play I have adapted from a not-quite-as-famous-as-it-should-be 1930s novel. Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies is a novel released in 1930, influenced by dadaism, TS Eliot, the advent of popular cinema and, most crucially, the Bright Young Things, London’s fashionable aristocratic set of hedonistic and foolish youths. Imagine Made In Chelsea with RP. That’s what Vile Bodies does, but with the charm and wit of Evelyn Waugh writing in some of his finest prose.

It is a novel that captures a silly and excessive group on the cusp of the world about to change. Published in 1930, it predicted a world war that would engulf everything that was known before that point. Little did Evelyn Waugh know that the quiet whispers of fascism and political subterfuge were about to do just what he always thought. Two years later, the novel was adapted for the stage, but the performance was described by both Waugh and critics as dire and poorly done. It was with little knowledge of all this I ventured to write my own version of the book for the stage, also unaware that a Birmingham creative writing student was doing the exact same thing at the same time. However, it was I who got the rights from the Evelyn Waugh Estate, and it was I who went through the submissions process and earned us a spot in the Arts Centre Studio.

Auditions were a grueling process, recalls possibly even more so. Finally, with a cast of 17 and a team of 18 talented designers and administrators, the show was ready to begin. It has been a fraught process so far, full of vomiting movement directors, fajita nights, tears, fears, and looking at pictures of Paul from S Club 7 (did you know he had got fat? Me neither.) But, as we reach the end of February, the show is near completion. Slowly the entire piece has formed into a cohesive whole from a script I splurted onto the page over a few hours. A world of vivacious yankee evangelists, aloof heiresses, car races, camera flashes and champagne has emerged from Waugh’s novel and my deep love of the text.

Since then, rehearsals have been nothing short of electric. In about eight weeks in which we still had degrees, jobs, other commitments and our own crises, a play has been formed. A perfectly honed little gem of a show that is winging its way to the arts centre at the genesis of March, and before then has been lucky enough to be performing at the Victoria & Albert Museum on the 24th February as part of a celebration of the work of Cecil Beaton.

Vile Bodies has been a stressful process, but also incredibly fun. Every rehearsal we do something new, something exciting, and everybody in that room gains something in some way shape or form. Nine weeks is a long (for students) rehearsal process, but this show has never stopped being anything short of hilarious and exciting. For weeks we have poured over jazz a cappella groups, the choreography of Bob Fosse and essays on Evelyn Waugh, and for just as long we have explored everything from metronomes to the charleston in our creation of our theatrical world. Hopefully, when we perform at the Arts Centre in about a week, our baby will be worth the wait.