FEAR AND MISERY IN THE THIRD TERM

'Later' is a strand of Paines Plough's work where playwrights get to try out a work-in-progress. Duncan Macmillan was, I think, playwright-in-residence there in 2008 and he invited to curate a Later evening. Duncan, Chloe Moss, Ben Musgrave, Mike Bartlett and I all wrote short pieces that (vaguely) addressed the state of Britain in the third New Labour term, which I cut together under an umbrella title (a nod to Bertolt Brecht's Fear and Misery in the Third Reich). 

Chloe Moss wrote about an uptight couple middle-class couple who move into a commune; Mike Bartlett talks about a desperate young man standing on a ledge being catcalled by onlookers (he would develop this scene as part of Earthquakes in London); Duncan had two parents trying to explain to their child why they can't go to Disneyland in terms of the global economic crisis; Ben's piece looked at a collapse in arts funding; I wrote a scene of two bankers competitively recalling their painful childhoods.

It got a one-off performance at Trafalgar Studios with a smashing cast: Richard Atwill, Kirsty Bushell, Frances Grey, Jonathan McGuinness, Pippa Nixon, David Sibley, Rosie Thomson, Danny Lee Wynter and the late Fred Ridgeway. Duncan Macmillan directed.