David Pugh & Isobel McArthur Interview: Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of)

So, tell us about how you originally come together?

David: It was 2018, pre-Covid, and a very young, then unknown, incredibly talented writer, director and performer called Isobel McArthur did a show that summer in a little theatre in Glasgow.

I was in Edinburgh at the festival seeing all these shows, but down the road in Glasgow was this big hit show. I fell in love with it and we brought it to the West End, opening to the most incredible reviews. At the time, Isobel was directing it and starring in it, playing Darcy and Mrs. Bennet, as well as having written it!

Three weeks later, the country went into lockdown and sadly we were closed. It was bittersweet because we had these wonderful reviews with full houses, but then people couldn’t come! And then Isobel won the Olivier Award, and then the Evening Standard Award, so we went out on tour as soon as we could.

So why Newcastle? What made you think we MUST create the new show here?

David: One of the dates that we came to on our UK tour was Newcastle’s Theatre Royal, and one night, early on in the week, Isobel was leaving the stage door and people were coming up to say, “You've got to come back, we want to come again but it's sold out”. So we knew we've got to come back here.

Isobel: Absolutely, as an ensemble you're going city to city, week after week. You have good shows and bad shows, and some audiences really get it and some don't. But in Newcastle, immediately, there was this connection with all the material, what the show stood for and what we as artists always look for in the creative community – generosity and everybody really backing each other.

We were meeting young, up-and-coming stand-up comics, many of them women, and with the show being an all-female ensemble it really chimed with everybody here. People might not know Pride and Prejudice that well, but I always thought it was a story that I couldn't really connect with, because it's not necessarily about relatable themes or normal people.

But our adaptation comes from the point of view of the servants and it's actually much more in the tradition of things like variety and music hall, which this city has such a rich tradition of. The planets really aligned when we brought a show like that to Newcastle. The performances were electric and we just left every time wanting to come back. Knowing that the audience felt that way too just felt really undeniable.

So you’re both very familiar with the city already?

David: There’s a connection with Newcastle because when this first started after the trial in Glasgow, it came to another theatre in the city, Northern Stage.

Isobel: Yeah, I stayed in a beautiful Tyneside flat and it was so welcoming, like we could have stayed there forever! It was a sense of immediately having neighbours, immediately being part of a community. I feel much more of a kinship with communities or urban spaces, however big they are, where everybody's business is everybody else's business.

David: I had a very long-standing relationship, not just with this city, but with Theatre Royal. Then, Marianne Locatori (Chief Executive of Newcastle Theatre Royal) came here and I knew her from when she was at Plymouth. So there's me ringing Marianne saying, okay, if I was to do another tour, could we come back for a week? And she said yes, of course, but why don't you start it here? Then, because I knew Isobel loved it so much, I said why don't we do, not a ‘Geordie production’, but a production for Newcastle?

I can't think of anything nicer than to work with Newcastle Theatre Royal again. But it also means Newcastle is the production. After our run here, we'll be touring around the country over 40 weeks, and everybody who comes to see it will know that this show started here in Newcastle, celebrating everything that's here.

So what makes this Newcastle production different?

David: We sat there thinking about things we could replace from the original production. There's a wonderful gag about Irn Bru, which works well in Glasgow, but Newcastle Brown Ale could work here. Isobel had a great Greggs gag in her mind this morning.

But it's basically a very true rendition of Jane Austen’s book, made much more open by the five actresses who will play all the different parts. Isobel has named them and given them life, so they tell the story and play all the different parts. I've done a lot of productions where the actors come on stage and then sit in their dressing rooms for 20 minutes, but these actors never leave the stage because they're in the wings changing costumes! One minute she's Mary Bennet, then she's Lydia Bennet, then she's Reverend Collins.

And the only place we're auditioning for the cast, apart from London, is here in Newcastle in a month's time and we’ll rehearse here too. So we want to find the talent, start it here, prime it in this theatre, enjoy the town when we're here for over a month. And then take Newcastle around the country with us, and we're rather proud to do that. Because this town should be celebrated, the talent should be celebrated. And this beautiful theatre should be celebrated.

How important is it to you to harness local talent in the region?

David: We're working incredibly hard at it at the moment. We're getting around local theatres and dropping posters to go onto stage door notice boards. So to Alnwick Playhouse, South Shields, North Shields, Live Theatre and Northern Stage. Stephen Tompkinson and Denise Welch have given us a lot of pointers of where to go, such as various drama schools and dance schools. We're going to take time to audition as many people as possible, even if it's just for the experience of them coming onto that wonderful stage in the theatre and playing a part.

Isobel: I've been on both sides of the auditions table hundreds of times now. And I really think that what's so refreshing about working with David is access. So many West End producers are London-based and would say that anyone who wants to audition for them has to come to London. That's the direction of traffic and it's become so normalised that we don't question it. But artists here can meet us here, and I hope will continue to base themselves here and carve out far more enriched careers as a direct result of staying in contact with their local touch points, their own families, everything that informs their lives and identities as artists.

David: We just thought it was right. This is a Newcastle Theatre Royal production, so it needs to be people from the North East. This is a theatre town. Those theatre towns are disappearing and the talent up here is fantastic. Even the receptionist at the hotel this morning was a real comedian. People here have a love for entertainment because they're entertaining, you know?

Isobel: Coming from my background and my parents’ respective backgrounds, you've got to have a gag, you've got to have a story, you've got to have the patter. And that's what this show's like because they're all hat-swapping the whole time. And I know that I can meet a hundred model film actors in London who can't even carry off a gag, but it’s something that’s so culturally inherent in places like this.

What can people expect from coming to see the show? 

Isobel: Well the short answer is, it's Pride and Prejudice, told by the servants, with karaoke.

The slightly longer answer is it's a big dynamic rom-com - an ensemble comedy where these undervalued, overlooked servant characters are suddenly playing every part. So a working-class young woman is playing the most high-status male – the Mr Darcy character in the story.

If you're writing an adaptation, you've got to honour the people in the audience who've loved the book their whole lives. But you’ve also got to honour the young kid who’s like, “Jane who?”, and everybody in the middle who only know about Colin Firth coming out of a lake in a BBC adaptation. You've got to tick all those boxes, and I'm proud to say I think it pulls that off.

So, it's a great one to drag your partner who hates the theatre along to, or to bring your niece who's obsessed with Jane Austen.

David: The Daily Telegraph said it was totally true to the story, but raucously funny, which was a rather nice quote.

What’s your favourite part of a production’s journey and why? 

David: It's now. It's rediscovering. The script we have now isn't necessarily going to be the script that will be performed here because Isobel can't stop improving it! I think it's perfection, but she’s always coming up with something.

Isobel: I think meeting actors is absolutely one of the most inspiring things I get to do in my job, and we get to collaborate with them in their home town. And that's going to be the single most exquisite part of it, I can tell!

David: It is. I think people need to be encouraged to come back to the theatre. Not just audiences, but also performers to an extent. It's been a terribly tough time. We're also both great personal champions of keeping ticket prices down. It's one of the things I'm most vocal about and while we're here, we're going to make sure we do just that.

Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) plays at Newcastle Theatre Royal from Thu 19 – Sat 28 Sep 2024. Tickets can be purchased at www.theatreroyal.co.uk or by calling 0191 232 7010.

Main image: (L-R) David Pugh, Isobel McArthur and Marianne Locatori