It’s no secret that words have power, yet every day we use them carelessly, en masse, to communicate everything from fury and fear to love, hunger, hate, surprise, confusion and the need for a fruit smoothie. We talk to our partners, children, colleagues, cats and neighbours. Indeed, the average person will speak 7,000 words each day; 123,205,750 words in a lifetime. But what if there were a limit? What if every single word needed to be chosen carefully, uttered sparingly?
Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, which plays at Manchester Opera House this month, starring Jenna Coleman and Aidan Turner, is a romantic comedy looking at this very concept. Bernadette (Coleman) and Oliver (Turner) are living under a new government rule that restricts people to speaking only 140 words a day, and the play explores love and communication – what we say, how we say it and what happens when you can’t say anything at all.
Sam Steiner's play premiered at Warwick Arts Centre in 2015 and won three Judges' Awards at the National Student Drama Festival, before appearing at Latitude Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Camden People's Theatre, London. It has received consistently praise-filled reviews from the first opening night, something to suggest that Steiner, who was still a student at Warwick when he wrote it, is a name we shall all become increasingly familiar with in the coming years. Indeed, he has already started work on a feature film currently in pre-production, Morning, which has named Benedict Cumberbatch, Lorna Dern and Noah Jupe as its stars.
Josie Rourke grew up in Salford, and was the first in her school to achieve a place at Cambridge University. While there, she began directing theatre productions and was the first woman in history to direct the Footlights Pantomime, co-written by Richard Ayoade. This I have lifted from her Wikipedia page, which is a breath-holding scroll of famous names, theatres, plays and films (including the award-winning Mary Queen of Scots, starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary, and Margot Robbie as Elizabeth I), which one must complete with an exhaled ‘wow.’
Josie and Sam have a mastery of words, it’s clear, which is why the writing and directing of a play designed to use so few is such an exciting partnership. So how did it come to be?
“I met with Sam to discuss a different project,” Josie says, “a new piece I wanted to work on with him, and while having coffee just asked him why Lemons hadn’t been revived, because I thought it was such a wonderful play. We got chatting about me maybe directing it and I had a gap in my schedule, due to a delay on a feature film I was due to direct, there was a theatre free [the Harold Pinter theatre in London], there was an amazing couple of producers who wanted to do it, and so we put it together quite quickly.”
When we meet, Josie and Sam are fresh from rehearsals for the play, which is already on stage in London. First written and performed in 2015, does this mean the play has changed, evolved, under Josie’s direction?
“It feels like a completely different show, in lots of ways,” Sam says. “We’re doing it on a completely different scale, with two very different actors – they're older, I’m older, so it feels like a very different experience, but also it’s returning to something that was really important to me and it’s really special to revisit it, and find new things in it both on a writing level and a production level.
“I’ve done lots of tweaks on this. I think it’s really grown and evolved. It’s still being tweaked, even today, in fact.”
“We very much regard London as our opportunity to get it right for Manchester,” Josie interjects, and I am not sure if she’s entirely joking.
“Josie would describe it as a maturing of the play,” Sam adds, “and I don’t think she’s wrong. I think it’s grown up a bit; it’s grown to fill the space we have now.”
“I think it therefore appeals to a broader audience, really” Josie says. “It takes in more life and more life story.”
Sam began writing while at Warwick, studying English Lit, after he joined the Drama Society, initially as an actor. I am curious as to how one realises that ‘playwright’ is a job one might do.
“I started doing it because I saw other people doing it and thought ‘oh maybe I could do one of those some time, that looks really fun.’ I remember acting in a play at uni that someone had written and being quite fascinated and awestruck by how it must feel to have a group of actors read out your words.
“It was really a lot to do with the opportunity to do so, having role models. I had that kind of get-up-and-go attitude and just got on with it; it took the preciousness out of it a little bit, made it seem like something you can just have a go at, and it can be bad for a while and then get better, and that made it feel more possible.
“It’s about getting going, basically, and getting to the end of something. I remember as a teenager I wanted to be lots of things. I wanted to be a rockstar, I wanted to be an actor. Then when I started writing plays and short films and stuff, I don’t think I was any better at it, naturally, but as I got into it I knew it was something I was prepared to put the work in to get better at. It’s always about finding the thing you’re prepared to put the work in to get better at.”
And the idea for Lemons?
“Lemons just came out of a series of conversations I had with my friend, Ed, who directed the original production, about writing a show for two actors, and writing a show that could be done with very little, that would make a virtue out of its limitations, rather than be inhibited by them. It’s hard to say where the idea came from itself, but yes, the number that we put on the daily word limit obviously was derived from Twitter, but the whole concept didn’t come out of that.”
Manchester has a reputation already for bringing big shows and famous names to its theatres, but for Lemons, it’s one of just three locations for this run.
“In terms of it going to Manchester that was enormously important to me, as someone who’s from Salford,” Josie says, “with all my family still in the North West, and also getting work out of London was really important, actually, to bring quality work, with stars in it, to Manchester is absolutely what Manchester warrants and should have. And yeah, my mum’s already sold 50 tickets...”
Lemons may not be on for the eight-week run it’s enjoying in London, but the Opera House holds 1,920 seats, against the 796 of the London theatre, so it’s still a huge deal.
“It’s a very big venue, and although we were optimistic about how it might sell, we didn’t quite realise how popular it would be – we've just put more seats on sale. It’s to Sam’s credit, and Jenna and Aidan’s, that that they’re able to sell so many tickets for a run in such a big house.”
It must feel rather wonderful, regardless of all their previous success, to be bringing a play of this stature to Manchester, where family and friends await.
“I’m one of those people from Salford whose entire family, not just my immediate family, lived in Salford. I’ve been in London for a lot of my career, I’ve been in New York and Chicago, and was associate director at the Sheffield Crucible, for a while, and a big draw for me doing this play, is despite my best efforts, I’ve never been employed at Manchester Royal Exchange, which is where I have still seen the most plays ever, but I did manage to do several years back was a show at the Manchester International Festival and it was so fantastic to be able to do a piece of work that my family could come and see. They’re very engaged with what I do, but don’t always get the opportunity to travel to where I am. So this show coming to Manchester is a tremendously big deal. It’s not just my mum and her 50 tickets, it’s the people who taught me, the people from my schools, family, and it feels like coming home, to work, which is something I hope to be able to do more of.”
Sam feels the same. Having grown up in Didsbury, he will be sleeping in his childhood bedroom for the duration of the play.
“The original production toured to Manchester,” he says, “and it was extremely moving to be able to see my friends and family at that time, it felt really special. So the opportunity to go back with this version of the show feels hugely rewarding. I’m really looking forward to it.”
Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons plays at Manchester Opera House 21 – 25 March, agttickets.com
