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Former Young Ones Nigel Planer and Adrian Edmondson team up for Vulcan 7

nigel Planer and adrian edmondson have co-written a new play together: Vulcan 7 sees two actors who were at RADA together reunited on a film featuring the Roman god of fire.

“Adrian is Gary Savage, who’s playing a ‘Thermidon’ – Vulcan has a bunch of them in attendance,” Planer tells Red Alert. “Gary was the young star who went off and starred in Scorsese movies. Now he’s back in England, washed-up and alcoholic. I’m Hugh Delavois, who plays Vulcan’s butler. He’s been in all the Vulcan films, and is more of a boring actor. They’re both pretty sad characters, and still bickering 40 years later. It’s about what happens to actors when you get a bit older.”

The play’s set entirely inside a Winnebago on the side of an Icelandic volcano, as the shoot slowly slides into disaster.

“They lose the director up on this glacier,” Planer explains. “The volcano’s burbling and might be active… it gets more and more dangerous to be there, which is a metaphor for the impending doom of their lives!”

This is the first time the two have written together since a live tour of The Young Ones in 1983. “Even if you don’t see each other for years you pick it up,” Planer observes. “Learning my lines, I come to a bit and think, ‘Oh that’s good – did I make that up or did he?’”

One thing definitely is Planer’s doing, though: the fact that it’s Edmondson who’ll look like he’s suffered four hours of make-up.

“I made sure of that,” Planer laughs. “It does come off – you can’t do a whole play without seeing your face. But yes, he’s hopefully going to look like a complete twat! That’s why I chose the butler!” IB

Vulcan 7 opens in Guildford on 19 September, then visits Cambridge, Newcastle, Bath, Richmond, Malvern and Edinburgh.