Jacqueline Sharp talks to Jeff Merrifield

EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL 2008

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Jacqueline Sharp talks to Jeff Merrifield

Director, Playwright, of ABFCAP, The Life and Rhymes of Ian Dury and Founder of Playback Theatre

Q               Your opening scene sees Ian Dury get a telephone call from Andrew Lloyd Webber, offering him opportunity to write libretto for CATS, why do you think he turned him down?

A               Laughs!  Because he thought it was crap!

Q               Jeff, are you an Ian Dury and The Blockheads fan?

A               Yes, I have liked them for a long time. 

Q               Did you get to meet Ian Dury then?

A               Yes, I have met him three times.  The second time we were talking about a theatre production.  We had also scheduled to meet ten days after his death, about the finer details of a project with him, involving a musical I was interested in writing.  However, that meeting didn’t happen due to his untimely death.

Q               Is that why you incorporated the scene into your production, with talk of a musical, as Dury and Spider talk about involving prison stories and a bus, in a musical?

A               Yes, it was part of his life, as I said we were scheduled to meet, but it never happened, due to his untimely death.

Q               Where did you get your research and ideas for The Life and Rhymes of Ian Dury?

A               I went to visit Sophie his widow six months after his death of March 2000.  We exchanged ideas.

                  Sophie got out his address book and we began to get in touch with his friends and the people who knew him, bouncing off ideas.  I also spoke to Denise, Dury’s long term girlfriend.

                  The bulk of what I know came from Fred “Spider” Rowe, who knew Dury for a very long time and was very close to him.

Q               What did you think of Fred “Spider” Rowe?

A               Laughs!  He is amazing; he can actually climb up any building to make a getaway you know!

Q               Do you know of Fred “Spider” Rowe has done a biography of his friendship with Ian Dury?

A               Laughs again!  Yes he has one written, however when he trawled it to the lawyers, they told him he would never get it published as it would cause so many lawsuits or death threats.  So, his story remains unpublished.

Q               I am aware that The Life and Rhymes of Ian Dury is a worldwide premiere, at the Fringe this year, do you intend to showcase it anywhere else?

A               Yes, we are taking the show on the road to the Kazimere in Liverpool later on in the year, as part of Liverpool’s Year of Culture.

Q               So will you be venturing off on a nationwide tour then?

A               Yes, we hope to tour, we have had lots of offers to tour within the United Kingdom. Talks are in the pipeline for a West End show.

Q                     How do you think your audience enjoyed The Life and Rhymes of Ian Dury?

A               Funny you should say that, Jacqueline, I’m now giving you exclusive information.  Bill Bailey, famous comedienne saw our show, he loved the show so much that he recommended it to his own audience at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre on 13 August 2008.

Q               Why did you choose the actors Jud Charlton, as Ian Dury and Josh Darcy, as Spider?

A               Jud Charlton is a mate; he had wanted to play the role of Ian Dury passionately, so I agreed.

                  I choose Josh as I admire his work and he impressed me.  He was very keen to do the role, so much so, that he lost two stone to play the part and cut of his very long beard and tones up by doing lots of press ups. 

Q               Tell me about your other work, what else have you written about in the past?

A               I have written a book, The Perfect Heretics.  I researched this by spending time exploring the medieval sect, from the Languedoc region of France.

                  For those of you who don’t understand heretics, my book concentrates on an era in 1208, where Pope Innocent III, most horrendously set out on a brutal crusade against a sect of devout Christians living in the Languedoc, an area on the French side of the Pyrenees.  They were commonly known as Cathars and were burned in large numbers.  Perhaps, they would be known as “good Christians”, delivering the message of Christ, by word and by example, would now be known as religious extremists.

                  My book The Perfect Heretics digs into the murky depths of religious intolerance and persecution.

                  The other book I have written is Damanhur: the Story of the Extraordinary Italian Artistic and Spiritual Community.  Dammanhur, had a population of around seven hundred, to be found on the Italian Alps.  The community of Dananhur constructed Temples of Humankind and developed a sustainable community, embarking on a unique experiment in social, economic and spiritual living, based around a temple, built within a mountain.

                  I have a website for anyone who would like more information on my book,  writings or interests in:  science and heretics, Ken Campbell, Marilyn Monroe,Cathars, Catharism, Damanhur, Time Travel, Knights Templars, Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett – A Travesty by Jeff Merrifield and Alan Lever.

                  Feel free to browse around my website for lots of invaluable information www.playbackarts.co.uk

Q               Thank you for telling me about your published works, would you like to talk me through what you are writing about at present?

A               Yes, id love to, again this is exclusive information for you Jacqueline.  I am writing a book about Heresy, not agree with conformity, again heretic.  Times of tortured and burials, because they told stories to other people that there were other worlds out there, with people living in them.

                  I have also been writing “Men Who Invented Opera”, heretic piece of work as it is about first opera ever, Dafne.  This era in time was where opera, was a secret musical society, a cult, magical tradition.    

                  This project has been put on hold though!  As I am seek to find a talented genius of medieval music.  I don’t have anyone in mind, but hope someone would approach me. 

                  This would then be an opportunity for me to take the project forward, combining talents, with our rendition of how we perceive the world’s first opera medieval music to be at the time, as there is nothing on record.  The only thing we can compare it to is the work of medieval scholars, whose work concentrated on the works of the world’s second opera medieval music of the time.

Q               As a writer, who inspires you?

A               Ken Campbell, he is a man of theatre, a writer, actor, director, pure genius.  I have a Doctorate, my dissertation about him.  I am looking into writing a book about him.

Q               So do you know him then?

A               Yes, he is my best friend.  He has given me thumbs up for this.  He was so delighted with my dissertation that he gives his friends copies and he placed a copy into Beadles Library.

Q               If Ian Dury was alive today, what do you think he would think of your production, The Life and Rhymes of Ian Dury?

A               Ian’s long time friend Fred “Spider” Rowe, gave me the answer to that question, he said, “Ian would love it”.

Q               Has Ian’s widow Sophie seen your show?

A               She will see it when it goes to London.  One of the Blockheads is coming to Edinburgh to see the show next week.  You already know Spider saw the show, last week.

Q               You had seventy minutes to give us, in this Fringe show, do you think this was a struggle?

A               I did try to emphasise Ian Dury was a difficult man to get along with, he turned his back on the very people who loved him, but at the end of the day those closest to him stuck by him, they loved him and still do.  But they all say “he was biggest bastard on earth”. 

Q               Is there any other production about Ian Dury out there?

A               Yes, in 2010, the anniversary of his death, there will be another one to come by the Graeae Theatre Company, a disabled led theatre company.  www.graeae.org

                  Their production, I presume will concentrate more on Ian Dury’s disability, as he got polio as a child, whilst swimming, which crippled him. I give that production the thumbs up. 

                  Ian Dury fully supported disabled causes; he had a song Spasticus Autisicus, which he wrote for the year of the disabled in 1981.