Wild Flowers, Franny Conlin’s powerful play about a family torn apart due to their son crossing the picket line during the Dockers Strike of 1995, returns after a year away and will be spending two nights at the Epstein Theatre on the 29th and 30th March. This critically acclaimed play looks at the members of the Lavelle family whose son James turns away from the family and takes the path to personal destruction. It is a brutally honest play and one that deserves to be seen by a wide audience.
The cast have been rehearsing in a venue in Bootle and I was fortunate to meet up with a couple of the team behind the play and ask them about the production. From Liverpool, Russell graduated from Newcastle University with a B.A. in Geography and an M.A. in Finance. A veteran of radio plays and student films.
How do you think the play has evolved since it was on at The Unity?
“Since last time, it’s changed quite a lot actually. First of all, we’ve got a completely new Director from last time, so he’s took the reins, tried to make the scenes look longer and more entertaining. We’ve got a completely brand new score as well and all the music is completely new, with a new musical guy on board. We’ve had some cast changes, some guys dropped out, we’ve got some new actors and we’ve moved some of the cast around as well. So it’s actually worked really well. I think the play is a lot tighter, more entertaining; it should come that the acting is largely better as well.”
It hasn’t lost any of its dynamic?
“Hopefully it will improve, the second act needed re-working a little and I’ve done that myself to some more drama to it which hopefully you’ll see. The music has improved, the quality of the sound of the music is a lot better this time and it sounds more professional.”
How do you think it will transfer to The Epstein?
“It’s obviously on a bigger scale; The Unity is quite tight and cosy, which is great as you’re right on top of the action. So I’m hoping that the cast will make more of a grand delivery with the songs and the big numbers and that the theatre will hold it very well. It’s a big theatre so we’ve got to work hard to fill it but I think if we do get a lot of people in, the atmosphere will be great.”
What struck me last time watching it, I got an awful lot out of it as I learnt much about the city’s history on that night. How do you think it stands as depicting Liverpool at that time?
“I tried to encapsulate what was happening in Liverpool at that time of the Dockers Strike and that and what it tries to capture is from Franny’s writing is that even in hard times, people are breaking up, there are still serious issues and families pull together and there’s also a laugh to be had in Liverpool as well and this is what the play tries to show. James is a scab, which causes ructions in the Lavelle family because he gets involved with a drug gang and then it’s just what happens within the family all the way through. There are a couple of bad things happening and they are all due to his decisions and it shows just what can happen as a result of these. It’s just his job and his family almost breaks up.”
One of the things I noted last time was the relationship between the son, his brother and the father. It could be seen as the fallout that didn’t happen, does that come across in the play now?
“James is very jealous of his brother because he was the saint, he was the good one, the family always thought good of him so James was getting sick of always hearing ‘Peter, Peter, Peter’ – but it also shows Peter’s character developing. He started to becomes heated, comes out of his shell, he starts looking for his brother and he starts to get angry really. In the last play you saw he didn’t really do that, so we added to his character so hopefully it will work. The relationship between the two of them develops, they are now in a lot of scenes together but you’ll see a lot more emotion from the brother and James I think.”
You’ve said that there’s a lot of scenes with them both in but there are one or two that seem to capture the spirit of the times – looking at it from a larger point of view, you could say it was the splintering of not only a community but the country as well with the way normal relations broke down like between the two brothers.
“He was jealous as we’d gone down south. He was doing really well and all that stuff and James was stuck with the strike and as a docker and when they did strike he wasn’t happy and he instantly became a scab as the thought I’m not going along like a sheep. I’m going to do my own thing and he obviously mixed with the wrong crowd but he was still doing something on his own, which is what he wanted.”
He made his own choice, which is laudable but it was the wrong way round of doing things, going against his family as well, which is never a good thing.
“It was a huge thing at the time because being a scab was massive and people look back now and won’t understand that because all the families worked together as in factories, shipyards or the docks. So for that one person to become a scab and walk out of the strike, it was a major decision. Kids now wouldn’t understand as they don’t see families working in the same places.”
Similar productions such as Brian McCann’s Down Our Street have ships and local themes running through them, do you think that’s a good thing for the area?
“Yes I do! I literally spoke to Brian McCann before, he actually asked me to be in Down Our Street but I couldn’t do it. It’s a bit of shame, it’s a great part, it’s a great play and a big production and he’s got some money behind this. I think it will be really, really good but I couldn’t commit as I’d planned weeks of work and rehearsals and I couldn’t commit to it. I think it’s good though, whether it happens in small or big theatres, the more things about the history of the city the better. Like yourself, who don’t know a lot about it, you come and watch it and you get a bit of education and you’re entertained hopefully as well.”
Do you see the play as an education or do you hope that it just inspires?
“I see it as that, I want to do more entertainment, there’s less this time round about the strike and its causes. It’s not based around the strike as much. It’s more about what happens in the family but I’ve tried to make it more entertaining – fingers crossed, we’ll see!”
Mal French is the man behind the new songs that bring the action in Wild Flowers to life. A salesman by trade and is from Allerton and now lives in Crosby. Mal has a history of being part of the music scene in Liverpool and has fond memories of performing in the Cavern in the 1970s and 80s.
How are you this evening?
“I’m fine! The play is really coming together now! I’ve never seen the play from beginning to end because it obviously started last year but I wasn’t involved at that point as there was a different guy who did the music. For one reason or another, he’s left the production along with his music and so I was drafted in to replace him. What’s been interesting I guess for the actors and especially in terms of the singers – although they know the music to the songs and the emotions where they sit within the play. I’ve written completely new melodies for everyone so for them; it’s like a fresh set of songs. I think I’ve had a slightly different approach than the previous guy. I’ve worked quite closely with each individual singer, trying to establish what suits their voice best and where they sit within the play.
In terms of what the feel for the play is, what the emotion is within the play, I’s a very emotional piece – the family story really. It’s been a ball for me, trying to capture that within the music and to try and convey that culture to people. I think we’ve managed to do it.”
It’s a very difficult but enjoyable play, a very demanding and sensitive subject with Liverpool itself, how important do you think it is to have these moments in time portrayed on the stage?
“Very important, especially as that particular strike affected hundreds of families in the area and probably still does. To be honest with you, the feeling of that strike and how it affected individual families ran pretty deep and I think it still does today. My family fortunately was never involved with it. We lived the other side of Liverpool but I know it pretty much touched everyone in some way in the city. As I just said, feelings run deep so I think it’s a subject that’s still very much in the forefront of people’s minds and I guess I’m thinking more of friends now and acquaintances who were affected by it and in some instances, some never really got over it. People lost their jobs, their livelihoods, their homes, a whole host of things really.”
Not wishing to diminish the strike’s impact but it seems to have been largely forgotten or neglected in the wider community. People seem to remember the miners’ strike more?
“Possibly because it was localised to this city to be honest, it’s very much the old Liverpool mentality – football and the rest of it! They’ve got a lot of memories for certain things and I think with the miners’ strike being more of a generally U.K. thing, the miners’ strike affected cities rather than individuals, this was more of a local thing.”
Has Liverpool recovered in some ways and changed for the better?
“It’s an absolutely great city; I mean it’s become a tourist city in some respects. A lot of the core businesses and the port infrastructure had disappeared over the years although we do have the Freeport obviously. I’ve written a song for the play, which is about that and the loss of those buildings within Liverpool. I think it’s much more a tourist attraction city now. We’ve got the major cruise liners docking now at the Pier Head, all the new museums, the one at the Pier Head and all the investments like Liverpool One and that makes it a big tourist city.”
Do you think 2008 helped that?
“Yeah, I think so, the Capital of Culture certainly put the city on the map on a European level but it’s quite funny though. People who are born and bred in the city go past all these buildings, the Three Graces at the Pier Head; they look at them every day of their lives and never give them a second thought. It’s only when you see a cruise liner and all the American tourists pouring off them amazed and they walk around all day looking at them in awe and you think then that actually we’re quite lucky to live here. It’s always been a city that’s been proud of its culture, especially on the football side of things, entertainment-wise too, it’s true what they say though, Liverpool people are fairly unique.”
Do you think the city’s humour in the place comes across?
“Absolutely! I think the humour of the Liverpool people will win through. I’m not sure how it wold come across on tour though, it remains to be seen! As long as audiences are educated or entertained by it then that’s a plus. It’s a play for all the Liverpool people without a shadow of a doubt.”
Do you have a favourite character in the play?
“I do, it’s Anthony Russell, He’s very passionate and full of beans. He’s a great singer and a very good budding actor and he’s got a bashful, ‘Jack the Lad’ sense of humour. The role he plays is actually very sad. He plays a character who is badly affected by drugs and he’s sort of fallen into that lifestyle but he wants to get out of that. He doesn’t want to do that anymore and they’re great songs that Anthony sings. There’s one where he’s talking about ending up on a park bench, which is basically his home, he goes on his drug trip, he’s had enough of that and he wants to be accepted by the community as the guy who he can be. Anthony plays it perfectly, his lines and his dialogue are really funny, they are my favourite bits.”
It always seems tense, how you do see this play being received at such an iconic venue in Liverpool?
“I hope very well. When the play was on last year, it got really good reviews. I’d never seen the play but obviously I heard some sections of it. I’ve never seen the play in its entirety and so I can’t comment on the music that was part of it. I can’t wait to see it now though. The Director, Producer and I have collectively may be given it a more vibrant feel to it. We’ve got people coming back to see it again and who enjoyed it last time so hopefully they’ll see an improvement and they will have an exciting time.”
Tickets for Wild Flowers are available from the Epstein Theatre in Liverpool.