THE EVIL DOERS

COMMENT

There seems to be a prejudice against re-writing. As if you should leave the work of the Muse alone and not tinker with it. That's not how I feel. Laurel & Hardy used to watch their films in the cinema with an audience, then go back and re-edit them; the Marx Brothers would go to a theater in San Francisco and try out their material in front of an audience, then revise it before they shot their films. Are comedians the only ones who take their work seriously?

When I write something that catches the interest and imagination of an audience my instinct is the same as a stand-up comic's - I want to work it. Polish it.

If there were another production of The Evil Doers I would revise the first half. The strength and pace of Simon Usher's direction hurried the show over certain bumpy parts in the script; but the director and cast are not magicians, it's not their job to make hitches disappear.

Best moment in the Bush show? Dougie Henshall and Katy Murphy stole the reviews with seductively funny performances; and I don't think I've seen the MIND of an alcoholic better played than it was by Alison Peebles.

But watching big Tom Mannion in the last scene, all bloodied after being beaten up by the loanshark, and full of dignity and acceptance as he explains to his daughter the uselessness of loving her alcoholic mother, was one of those times when you are not watching theatre but a quietly momentous event in someone's life.