Ld

were certain r adaptation ere would be d be racially lking racism today, I think have diverse d that there monitors on

elements of the story. Their metal mounts echo the village’s brass metal factory as well as the four television sets in the Belleguele household.

Hearing them talk about their theatrical process, I’m aware that they’re actively looking for inventive ways to do things, investigating non-naturalistic forms of theatre which shine a spotlight on what theatre is. When I ask Carter about the decision to use the TV monitors, she says simply:“itwouldjustbeboringotherwise! Also, it prevents that naturalism, that very default mode where we fall into naturalistic modes of performance and the audience falls into naturalistic modes of watching performance.”

Even when they hit on an inventive idea, they make sure they’re using it in ways we don’t expect. Take the two Eddys. Carter says: “It’s not that we have rules that say there is one person playing one kind of Eddy and the other playing a different kind of Eddy. They are both Eddy all the time. If it feels as if it’s slipping too much towards one form, we try to do it differently in the next bit.

Laing says: “I think we wanted do something that was a conversation between two people about one person. If you have two completely different human beings on stage telling us the story of the same person, that is very exciting, that we are deliberately putting opposites together on that stage to tell the same story with the same voice.”

He adds: “I think Pamela and I both like a challenge, I think we’re not the kind of people who say, ‘Oh Pamela, I loved doing that, shall we do that again?’ We want to do something deliberately different. That is genuinely what excites us and makes us want to get in a room and make work with each other.”