The Camden Fringe is almost upon us, providing one of the best times in the capital to get into Fringe theatre, and the stories it can tell. To get prepared for the festival, Read About Stuff is running a ‘Five From The Fringe’ interview series, where creative teams answer five questions about their upcoming Festival shows.
In this interview, I chat to Adam Radford about their new show Pilgrims.
Can you tell me a little about your show and what audiences can expect?
Essentially, Pilgrims is the tale of a very modern love-triangle: one played out between mountaineering prodigies, Dan and Will, and aspiring academic, Rachel.
Initially, Rachel – despite her scruples – is overwhelmed and smitten by Will’s forceful charisma. However, she soon finds herself falling for the more soulful and enigmatic Dan, who (unlike Will) seems keen to appreciate her on her own terms.
Dan and Rachel each make major sacrifices for the sake of their budding romance. But, gradually, their relationship comes under increasing strain – as much due to their keen but divergent ambitions, as to their guilt for betraying Will.
In an effort to patch things up between all three of them, Rachel persuades both men to embark on another major mountaineering expedition together. As the play reaches its climax, though, it remains unclear whether Will and Dan will make it down safely from the mountain, whether either will “get the girl”, or whether Rachel, ultimately, will get the better of both men.
Along the way, the play touches upon all sorts of thorny but fascinating topics: myth and legend; memory; colonialism; Romantic poetry; the perils and inexplicable appeal of extreme alpinism. But, at its heart, Pilgrims is a show about gender roles, and about how best we might find happiness in this life: whether in loving but potentially restrictive human relationships, or in the unfettered ability to do what we want.
What drew you to this specific story, and why does it belong at the Camden Fringe?
Oh! There’s so much that originally drew me to Pilgrims: its fascination with folklore and storytelling; its sparse but eloquent dialogue; its mythic overtones; the range and depth of the emotion that it packs into such a compact form – and, not least, the creative license that its elliptical form offers theatre-makers!
But, I guess that what kept pulling me back to the play – and what convinced me that I had to stage it – was its frank engagement with an obvious but inconvenient truth: that, for most of us, our innate desire for freedom, autonomy and worldly “success” often conflicts with our equally primal need for security, belonging and love. In recent times, I feel that popular culture and politics has too often refused to acknowledge this.
What’s great about Pilgrims is that it doesn’t clearly proselytise in favour of one side or the other in this struggle. It takes seriously both the attractions and pitfalls of a life in which either of these imperatives is prioritised over the other. And, ultimately, it beckons audiences to reflect for themselves upon whether any reconciliation of these competing impulses might prove workable in their own lives.
There are, obviously, some serious political implications to this dilemma: I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this play was first performed in 2016; and its depiction of characters, torn between their ‘urge to keep moving’ and their fear of living ‘without roots’, speaks very powerfully to our current, post-Brexit age – specifically to its tensions between so-called “Anywheres” and “Somewheres”.
However, there’s also great merit – and truth – in showing how these conflicts play out, not just between different embattled parts of society (as in large, lavish “state of the nation” dramas), but also within individuals. That’s what Pilgrims does so well – delicately, tenderly, honestly. And, for such a show, I can’t think of any better home than the fringe: an environment in which plays with smaller casts, in smaller venues, can speak intimately but publicly to audiences of limited size about private struggles and desires.
What has been the biggest challenge in bringing this production to life?
Well, there’s two possible answers to that!
One considerable challenge has been due to the play’s wonderful but somewhat complex structure. Rather than proceeding chronologically, Pilgrims unfurls non-linearly. At the start of rehearsals, I was concerned that this might prove confusing for audiences. But, as we’ve gone on and started running the play as a whole, I’ve come to see how brilliantly it’s plotted: so that, whilst scenes may jump both forwards and backwards in time, the audience is always given enough information to keep them up to speed with where the characters are and what, at a basic level, is going on. At the same time, though, this structuring allows for the build-up of immense suspense: early on, the audience sees the play’s three characters in extremely dangerous, difficult or perplexing situations – but they’re made to wait for any explanation as to how they got there! As with any really top-notch playwriting, Pilgrims answers some of the questions that it raises, but it also leaves many others open-ended, inviting audiences to make up their own minds!
The second contender for ‘biggest challenge’ has to be the show’s one item of set: a rather ingenious, adaptable item of furniture, called a “library chair” – a sort of chair-cum-stepladder. It perfectly embodies some of the play’s key themes; it provides us with an easy but effective means of signalling shifts in the story’s location; and it enables the creation of some very striking visual images. But, as to its practical viability and safety…. well, you’ll have to come and watch the show to find out!
How does the design of your show (set, sound, or lighting) impact the presentation of your story?
From a design perspective, our production is pretty simple. It is, I feel, a classic fringe show – in the sense that, at a purely material level, it only consists of three actors, one (rather special!) chair, and two rucksacks (containing a handful of important but basic props). This, though, affords us lots of freedom to leap with ease and speed between wildly different settings: from bedrooms to bars to mountaintops! Hopefully, it’ll also prove really engaging for audiences, as it requires them to imagine a lot for themselves. However, equally, it demands great clarity and precision from us as performers in our physical and visual storytelling.
Perhaps this is trickiest in those parts of the play which, in rehearsals, we’ve been calling the “meta-narrative”: a sort of liminal space, outside of the play’s more concretely situated scenes, in which the characters compete for control of the overall story. Rachel begins the play as much as its narrator as a character in it; but, her presentation of her past dealings with Will and Dan is soon challenged and even hijacked by these two other characters.
This is really exciting, as it means that each character has an agenda of their own towards the audience – and that the play’s own storytelling process becomes a matter of active contestation. But, it does introduce a further technical challenge: how to clearly distinguish between those scenes, which purport to show past moments in the characters’ lives, and those in which Dan, Will and Rachel clash as storytellers. The answer here – we hope! – has a lot to do with clever lighting!
If you could sum up the show in one word or phrase, what would it be and why?
With all the world at your feet, is love too steep a climb?
Pilgrims runs 26th – 29th July at the Drayton Arms Theatre, South Kensington; from 12th – 13th August at the John Lyon’s Theatre, Covent Garden (as part of the Camden Fringe); and from 24th – 29th August at the Forest Theatre, Greenside @ George St, Edinburgh.
