Warwick Playwright Premieres in London Theatre with “Fairytales & Fire”

Second Year Theatre & Performance student Craig Henry (Nannestead) will have his first full-length play, Fairytales & Fire premiere in London on 30^th July. This truthful tale of love, hope, lust and relationships will run for four nights at The Old Red Lion Theatre. Sophie Dudhill caught up with the cast and crew in their last few days of rehearsal.

I made my way through the concrete labyrinth that is North London to The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone where Henry and the cast were rehearsing ahead of their opening night next week. Immediately I could feel the excitement among the cast, the rehearsal felt organic, playful and collaborative. Actress Victoria Fox, who plays Elizabeth Hope, commented on her experience of rehearsals. “I feel very relaxed and very able to go places, to peel back the layers of the character in a safe environment.”

She went on to speak of how passionate and supportive Henry was in his directorial approach, in turn making the actors more passionate in a collaborative process.

Henry founded his own theatre company BackHere! Theatre along with Helena Doughty, friend and producer of Fairytales & Fire, in October 2012. It started as a group of unemployed actors in a pub basement, presenting seven new short plays. This sold out both nights, enabling BackHere! to take things further and put on a selection of plays under the title Seasonal at The Red Lion Theatre in December 2012. Following further success, Henry and Backhere! once again return to the Red Lion with an honest and comic story of people falling in love.

Fairytales & Fire was originally presented at Seasonal as a short scene at a bus stop and has now grown through cast collaboration into something much more. I spoke to Henry about the development of the piece.

“The play has lengthened considerably. It is very hard changing from the short play format. I don’t want to write a skit or a scene, a short play is a story in itself. My writing has become a lot more honed in on that, which is why the maximum length of any scene is five minutes. I am incapable of writing a scene longer than five minutes at the moment.”

The piece seems to be continually developing in an exciting process. Henry is hopeful for future opportunities with the play. “I’d love to take it further with this team of people, if that opportunity was offered I would jump at it.”

The story follows the tangled relationships of young people. Henry highlighted how important it is to write about what you know and past experiences. However his nerves were kicking in at the idea of displaying something so personal to a public audience, saying “It’ll be scary, definitely.”

With the script, Henry has also grown as a director. Actress Laura Frances-Morgan, who is playing Clara, has worked with Henry since his first project with BackHere! She explained how “He’s toughened up, he’s gotten a lot stricter because he’s more passionate about this new piece… Seasonal was more comedy based text, this is more character based.”

It seems that Henry and the cast have a lot to work on with only a two week rehearsal process, but Assistant Director Sarah Milton felt that two weeks was a luxury in comparison to the quick turnaround BackHere! have had with pervious productions. Henry described the rehearsal process of previous projects to me; “It was literally learn your lines, learn where to stand, right we’re going up! Whereas here we can actually develop and get in to the actors’ skins.”

All the actors spoke fondly of the collaborative and lengthier rehearsals. Charlie G. Hawkins, whose previous work has included EastEnders and Ali G, is playing James. “It’s been great to take on board everyone’s ideas, be a sponge and just go from there really.” He spoke of the clarity of Henry’s vision for the piece, being both the writer and the director, but also how open he is to new ideas. Actor Hamish Colville, playing the turbulent character of Lester, agreed with Hawkin’s comments “We’ve tried loads of different ways of doing scenes which I think is good, it’s helping with different emotions and things rather than just one man’s vision, it’s a collaborative process.”

Henry’s vision comes to life just under a week from now, tickets can be purchased from The Old Red Lion box office, or online at www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk. Finally Henry shared some pearls of wisdom for other budding young creatives at Warwick, “Just do it…Just get up and do it. If work doesn’t come your way get up and do something, it’s proactive. Write something, sing, do something else because it’s one of those things where you’ve got to work and work and then you’ll get your big break.”

Depending on the success of Fairytales & Fire, which looks to be a great piece, Henry hopes to write another full length comedy following the lives of young interns. Watch this space.