THE PLAGUE started life as a book, not
as a show, and is a very extraordinary book.
In 1947, Albert Camus, in France, who had just
come through being part of the French Resistance,
in the immediate aftermath of the Second World
War, sat down and wrote this incredible story.
I feel really great to be back at the Arcola
for the most obvious of reasons. It is because
last time lots of people couldn't get in
to see the show because we sold all the tickets!
We first did the show in early Spring of 2017
and then Brexit was creeping up on us, Trump
was creeping up on us and it really felt pertinent.
It does feel a bit different this time. Rather
than us reflecting on a situation where people
are saying, 'we feel as though something really
bad is about to happen',
we feel like we are in the thick of dangerous times.
Three of the original cast are back and two are new colleagues,
so we're rehearsing the show,
like any other, from the ground upwards. It's changing,
scenes are coming alive in different ways.
This is a story that somehow really intersects
with the present moment. And it's the friction
between the imaginative and the real.
It actually is the autumn of 2018 and there is no getting
around what we are all bringing into the room.
We all read the same websites. That's what is exciting to me.
Right in the middle of the rehearsal period, I'm 60.
That means I've been making professional theatre for 40 years now.
It's got every trick I've learnt in those 40 years: how to tell a story;
how to make people enter into the
imaginative world that you're dealing with.
So they really feel they're in that city
with the people who have been through the plague.
