So, I finally got to see Willy Russell’s musical play Blood Brothers. And I get why it’s so popular, and very much enjoyed it, even if I disagree with a lot of Russell’s beliefs, at least as they come across on stage. Yeah, like he or anyone else is going to be bothered, 26 years into this phenomenon’s international touring history.

In essence, Blood Brothers is old-school Marxist thinking as rendered in three dimensions plus orchestrated sound by Jim Steinman. Steinman, you’ll remember, is the record producer responsible for Meat Loaf, whose approach could be summarised as ‘never knowingly understated’. I read an interview with him once in which he described his job being to produce music “for people who wear chrome pyjamas in leather beds”, and that sums up his melodramatic approach to musical narrative perfectly. Subtle, he ain’t.

The story is semi-Shakespearean, in kitchen sink drag. A put-upon mother of many children becomes pregnant once again, and ends up swapping one of her new twins in exchange for a week’s paid holiday from the posh woman whose house she cleans. No, it doesn’t make much sense if you think about it, even with some swearing on the Bible involved, but please swallow this conceit or what follows really won’t sit with you.

What follows is tried and tested stuff in which the twin brothers grow up in separate homes of very different sorts, but become bosom buddies none the less. Actually, the title of the piece gives away the nature of their relationship with more precision. One brother is socialised with proletarian values, the other becomes a member of the bourgeoisie. It’s put with slightly more subtlety than that, but only slightly.

It’s when the brothers are young – though played by adults – that the play was at its strongest for me. The performers (I was too much of a cheapskate to buy a programme to find out who, save that one of them, the mother of the twins, was a Nolan Sister) did an excellent job at bringing their characters to life as kids. Looked like some time had been spent to good effect getting them to inhabit what kids look and sound like – stuff that wouldn’t have been in the didactic script I’m sure, but was brought out in the rehearsal process. Anyway, it paid off: these sequences were lively and convincing.

Unfortunately, somewhat florid narration got in the way of emotional connection with the audience. Sequences that could have been conveyed by the good actors were rendered redundant by what amounted to voiceover. Perhaps this is because the show has its origins in what amounts to a theatre in education piece, and Russell wanted to make the script immune to the vagaries of directors and performers. Anyway, what it means is that the flow is interrupted from time to time.

This being a piece with a message, it’s no surprise that brother Mickey, the working class one, got a raw deal. Heading for minimum wage work while his middle class sibling swans off to university, it’s not long before Mickey gets caught up in crime, locked up, and hooked on medication to deal with depression. Or maybe that should be anomie, the correct Marxist term for what happens when workers are alienated from the means of production, distribution and exchange.

Yes, it’s heavy handed. But there’s also a kind of truth in that dogmatism, and when put to relatively stirring tunes with super-retro syndrums booming and thwacking away and a sax tootling over the top, it makes for grand entertainment. And that relieved me of notions of my place in the global economic order for a while and allowed me to enjoy myself, which is what musical theatre should be all about.

(Please note that Jim Steinman was not the actual musical director of the show on this or any other occasion: that was a metaphor of some sort.)

I had a meeting the other day with The Garnett Foundation, a fascinating bunch who use drama in training on issues such as diversity and leadership for the public and private sectors. Their approach is first to show a scripted play, and then to workshop it using a method called forum theatre. I’ve seen their work on several occasions, and somewhere down the line they’ll be touring a piece I’ve developed for them on creativity and innovation.

I’m looking forward to the rehearsal period for a film I haven’t written yet.  This is technically known as ‘getting ahead of yourself’, but I never saw the harm in anticipation.  And it’s reassuring that the director in question is keen on the rehearsal process too.  Some filmed projects don’t allow time for it, but I believe it’s a valuable part of the business of making any script come to life.

I’d strongly recommend any writer to get actively involved in rehearsals of their work.  Only, go along with the intention of helping your precious script change for the better, rather than believing your presence will inspire the actors to perform it word-perfect.  Those words might be just dandy on the page, but if an actor can convey the same meaning with the curl of a lip, or a momentary glance, then go with that option and avoid your words being redundant.  Besides, you’ll get the credit for your lean and psychologically insightful script if you do it this way.

The Sandfield Centre in Nottingham, where I did scriptwriting classes, was home to actors and writers learning their craft under the tutelage of professionals from RADA and other noted institutions, and it was an amazing resource.  I was seemingly the only writer there to put 2 + 2 together and realise that student actors plus student writers would be well advised to collaborate, and that led to some valuable early lessons in writing for and working with actors.  As such, I spent just as much time with budding thespians as wannabe wordsmiths, and learned a lot about the differences between the two. 

One weekend, I had lunch Saturday with the writers, and Sunday with the actors.  The writers said little, and got on with the business of eating their modest packed lunches (cheese or ham sandwich, crisps, apple and a can of drink) while reading a book.  For the actors, lunch was a social occasion, each of them taking the opportunity to flourish ‘a little something I found in the fridge’ (Persian style chicken legs and tri-coloured rice salad) and share it with their chums, who were happy to reciprocate with chunks of runny Camembert they had knocking about the place, smoked salmon that would have otherwise been thrown away, and so forth.  Hmm.

Where film is concerned, I recommend getting on set if you can, though some directors like to be the sole voice of authority at that point.  I still wince when I catch one dialogue exchange in a short film I scripted, rewritten to take shooting practicalities into account, which was devised jointly by director and actors.  It features one of my pet hates; reference to a past situation framed by ‘remember that time when..?’; a kind of flashback in disguise that I’d have patched over more elegantly had I been on set at the time.  Instead, I was in the production office surrounded by cans of Red Bull and boxes of KP Crisps, which some enterprising production person had blagged, and phoning through a list of 150 potential extras to see which of them could commit to being in the audience for the boxing match scene we were shooting that weekend.

It’s fascinating to see the way that different performers prepare for their roles.  In a production I put together that used a couple of dancers, they went through their moves at high speed together to get them wired into their bodies: a lot of performance skills require that kind of muscle memory.  Actors will similarly go through their lines as fast as possible in rehearsal, just to be sure they actually know them.  The less a performer has to consciously think about the content of what they’re doing, the more they can deliver it with finesse.

And why stop at watching others deliver your lines?  Taking even a basic acting class will open up the issues involved in making lines on a page come alive, and going to improvisation classes will present you with the problem of how to engage fellow performers and an audience with nothing beyond bodily movements and concepts you can conjure out of thin air.  In either case, you’ll be learning what it’s like to utilise space and movement as part of your repertoire, and in doing so feed that understanding back into your writing, which gets better as a result. 

I went to see a theatrical version of The 39 Steps with friends yesterday, and it was excellent. I don’t go to the theatre as often as I’d like, and I’ve walked out a few times in recent years when I have been. This production had me captivated throughout. So, what were they doing that worked, when some trips to the theatre had ended prematurely?

Most importantly, the key to the show was the effort that the cast had put into devising inherently ridiculous solutions to impossible problems. The story is based on the film(s) and book of the same title, and features chases, train journeys, desperate runs through boggy terrain, and a cast of maybe a couple of dozen characters all performed by the same four actors. Realism was clearly out of the question, and so the performers looked elsewhere.

I wish I’d seen the process of devising and rehearsal for the show, because it was evidently a lot of fun. Given the necessity of entering into the realms of the absurd, they did so with gusto and team spirit, which is the only way to enter uncharted territory. Anthropologists talk about liminal zones, where normal social rules no longer hold sway. This applies just as much to audience members as it does to performers. For an actor to persuade an audience that a piece of silvery cloth being moved by someone offstage is a stream they’re wading through requires more than the sound effect of running water: complicity with the illusion is required.

The 39 Steps was built on many bold and audacious acts of complicity, which we as an audience accepted because they were entered into joyfully for one thing. But those devices are often used by small theatre companies doing plays for small audiences, whereas on this occasion the venue was filled for several consecutive nights.

The key to this conundrum, I believe, is that inventiveness in The 39 Steps was firmly wedded to a familiar narrative. Even if you don’t remember the film in detail, you’re aware of the gist: guy goes on the run to Scotland after getting falsely accused of a murder, and is enmeshed in an espionage case. Beginning, middle and end are clearly delineated, and many other dramatic conventions were observed along the way. Like, the hero had a conscious want – for adventure – distinct from his initially unconscious need – for the stability of a relationship. In achieving one, he secures the other, just like in so many films audiences are used to.

This balancing act of experimental physical theatre with conventional narrative made for a compelling audience experience. A more faithful recreation of The 39 Steps story would be dull on stage, with its hackneyed period characters, stilted dialogue, and tricky to realise action sequences. And a full-blown evening of avant-garde theatre would be too self-indulgent for most audiences to take in the absence of narrative. Here though, the combination was perfect, and hilarious, and an artistic success on every level.

I’ve relished the opportunities I’ve had to work with actors, and look forward to doing so again. One show I did, a theatre in education play called In Your Head on the theme of dyslexia, was a powerful and enjoyable learning experience. Sometimes I scripted scenes that actors performed. Other times they improvised and we shaped a definitive script from what worked between us. And on a few occasions they gave me a brief that I’d have never come up with myself, but delivered for them. In the show itself, the distinctions between working methods faded, and instead the audience responded to different elements: this part humorous, this moving, this polemical and this musical.

For no particular reason other than it’s fun, here’s the conclusion to In Your Head, which audiences - particularly teenagers with dyslexia - loved. To set the scene, protagonist Brian has made the journey to accepting and celebrating his dyslexia, and comes onto stage in a new guise as stand-up comic:

Think. In the beginning was the Word, which gives you some idea of where God stands on dyslexia. Although quite what you’re supposed to make of someone who spells their name YHVH and pronounces it Jehovah I don’t know. Maybe - just maybe - He’s dyslexic Himself. Anyway…

God goes round creating stuff - the heavens and the earth and the beasts that crawl and the fish that swim and every fowl of the air and every other living thing unto the ones that’s never been on Wildlife on One. But after all that work he couldn’t be bothered with doing an index for it. So he creates Adam, and one of the first jobs Adam has is to name everything.

Now what you’ve got to ask is, why did God get Adam to do the names? Sounds to me he was a bit worried about it. Scared he might get it wrong. Like a dyslexic?

And that might explain a few things. If we’re living in a messed-up world that no one can make sense of, maybe that’s because it was put together by a dyslexic deity. And if He made everyone in His own image, then dyslexics are just that bit more God-like than anyone else…

Bow down to me my people, for I am the Lord Brian, and those who tell me where to put a capital letter shall suffer my wrath…And mighty indeed is my wrath…