Donna Lesley Price. Photograph by Ian D. Hall
Originally published by L.S. Media. March 27th 2012.
Donna Lesley Price is a busy woman. Not content with an abundance of writing material that is ready to be showcased and gearing up to take her fantastic show, If The Shoe Fits, across to the Floral Pavilion for three dates in August she also has taken on the mantle of directing Our Country’s Goodat the Lantern Theatre this week for Kick Theatre.
I have to admit that as much as I wanted to interview Donna, I was conscious of eating into her precious time, it’s not easy to be juggling so many balls in the air but Donna’s easy engaging style puts me at ease quickly and instead of the planned ten minutes in her company, we seem to chat for hours. The business of the day is Our Country’s Good and surrounded by families enjoying the sudden burst of warm weather and heavy traffic going along Wapping and making their way to the south of the city, we chat about Timberlake Wertenbaker’s provocative play and more.
The new play that you’re doing up at the Lantern Theatre this week, how come you’ve chosen to do Our Country’s Good?
“It’s always been a play I’ve wanted to do but because of work I’ve never got round to doing it. I’ve been doing stuff that I’ve done and I wanted to give myself a break from writing and so it’s time now to do Our Country’s Good! It’s got great characters, great stories, nice bits and juicy bits, something for the cast to get their teeth into, a challenge for me and hopefully I’ll do a good job of it.”
It’s certainly a challenge for the cast.
The majority of them are doubling up apart from two and then there are two cast members who are playing three parts! There’s such a diverse range of characters that are challenging so it’s certainly challenging for them.
Did you see it when it was up at The Playhouse? (Our Country’s Good was at the Playhouse theatre in 2007)
I did! It’s a lot to live up to!
Do you think Liverpool’s ready to see this play again within the space of a few years?
Yeah! I think so, there are probably a lot of people who didn’t see it and the way I’m doing it is completely differently from them. With the character of Brewer – I haven’t seen every production of it – but I don’t feel that he’s humanised his need or love for Duckling, he actually does love her and Duckling loves him back because all they have is each other, that’s it. So I’ve wanted not to make him too much of a control freak. That he’s insecure, more than anything but he needs Duckling and it’s the same for her. I wanted to humanise him by playing that scene at the end as a funeral.
That’s an interesting shift in pace!
It’s basically at that funeral scene that all the convicts go to and it shows how they stand united and how much more feelings and emotions they have than the prison officers.
It’s interesting that you’re doing it up at the Lantern Theatre, is there a specific reason?
I like the Lantern Theatre. It’s going to be a fresh experience for everyone and for the cast. They haven’t done a lot of other people’s work. They are used to my writing and they are used to doing stuff that’s dark. Our Little Secret was a play that I wrote and directed and it won a lot of awards as it was based on the ill treatment of children. It’s very dark. So now we’re doing something completely different but it’s got dark overtones but it’s not as pretty as that.
You seem to go from one extreme to another, a play you’ve done that I was lucky enough to catch was this marvellous little gem of a play called If The Shoe Fits and yes it had its bleak moments and could have been seen as a dark play but it had its lighter parts. You’ve done an absolute shift in terms of performances.
I like variety. I like change all the time. I like to be different. At the moment, I want to be in something gritty, most of my other work is like this but I’ve done lots of comedies since and I wanted to do something sinister and gritty again. I’m writing a new play that I think will use professional performers and it will be a three-hander which I’m very excited about, when I finally get to sit down and pen it. It’s a dark, gritty one too unlike If The Shoe Fits.
You’re going ‘ across the water ‘ with this play?
Yeah, to the Floral Pavilionatre in New Brighton! It’s exciting and nerve-wracking, we need bums on seats!
If it’s like anything like last year’s production then it should be tremendous!
Thanks – yes! It was one of those moments where you think that this is real. All those characters you could see within the people of Liverpool. When I wrote it, I wrote it from the heart. You’ve got to write what you know about, people that you’ve known in your life. I always get my characters first and then write the play around them and then I plot it all. The research for If The Shoe Fits was in 2006 and it was a one-act play and I kept going back and tweaking the scripts because there’s always room for improvement.
It’s like poetry, it’s never really finished! It’s just waiting to be added to, I’m looking forward to it, the play that’s in August isn’t it?
It’s the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of August at the Floral Pavilion.
Going back if we may, what else can people expect from Our Country’s Good in terms of production, apart from the doubling up of the characters and the change of scene at the end?
Strong performances, good pace, energy, to watch young people act in a very professional manner that’s what I’d say. It’s not like watching kids on stage at all. They are young adults and then hopefully the costumes and the setting – it’s quite simplistic but hopefully it will be atmospheric and makes good use of the lighting. There’s tents that we’ve got hung up and what’s going on inside them will be interesting and make it an energising play to watch.
Our Country’s Good is on at the Lantern Theatre, Liverpool till the 30th March.
Ian D. Hall