Future Blog

On Monday, I am going to be posting an interview I did with Stephen Brown, the hot (in every sense, ladies) young (well, youngish - sorry Stephen) playwright whose brilliant play Future Me is about to embark on a UK tour. You should totally read that interview, not least because it took me forever to transcribe and edit down - seriously - about six hours, because I had to cut out exchanges like this one:

MP: I think, from the perspective of, obviously I’ve seen it, and I’ve read bits of it since it was on.
SB: In preparation.
MP: In my in-depth research.
SB: You can edit this.
MP: That’s just what I was thinking. Because I’ve done a lot of these for radio, so I forgot, OK, this isn’t going out on the radio. I just have to listen to it over and over, hideously. I’m very self-conscious, as if someone -
SB: You’re not going to use very much are you?
MP: Well, I’ll edit it down. I haven’t quite decided how to do it. I haven’t decided whether to do it QA QA or to write a piece with some answers in it.
SB: Will it be like: he was wearing a teal jumper…
MP: The fascinating but enigmatic Stephen Brown…
SB: Overweight.
MP: [laughs]

I mean, I could have left them in, which might have made for a very entertaining interview, except it would have been over 4,000 words long. Plus the play is about sex offenders. So it was important to, shall we say, calibrate the tone.

Anyway, the interview is still pretty long so I thought I'd give you a bit more info about the play today, in advance, a trailer if you will, and also so Monday's post doesn't collapse under its own weight.

Here's the official blurb:

Peter often works late. A promising young barrister, he's about to move in with his girlfriend. Then one day his computer sends out an email to everyone he knows, with an attachment that no one can bear to look at.

From the strange alliances of a prison segregation unit, to the trials of life on the outside, Future Me tells an epic story of ordinary monsters.

It's OK blurb. I don't think it's enough to get me to go see the play. So I am going to add, what this play is really about is: what would it be like if one of your perfectly normal-seeming mates - or your brother, or your boyfriend - turned out to be a paedophile? More to the point, what if you were the one who was trying to be perfectly normal when deep down you knew that you were a paedophile?

You totally want to see this play now, right? And you should. It's shocking and exciting and clever and thought-provoking and a lot funnier than you might expect. But why listen to me when you could listen to The Guardian or The Stage or Metro, or Time Out, who gave it four stars and made it Critic's Choice, only I can't find the review online.

Anyway, on Monday I will be posting my interview with Stephen Brown and giving details of when the play is on, how you can buy tickets or, if you are really lucky, win some.