P - The Queen's Theatre

Absolutely Frank
Tim Firth’s work is back in
Hornchurch after Neville’s
Island was a huge success at
the Queen’s last Spring. Here,
we catch up with Tim and find
out all about his new comedy.
What inspired you to write Absolutely Frank
Seeing two guys battling to put up a huge T of
TESCO on top of a building in the middle of a dull
train journey one time. I remember thinking it was a
bizarre thing to be doing in the howling rain, and then
started to wonder what those guys might have
thought they would end up doing for a career when
they were at school. Plays always tend to start from
some kind of mindless rumination.
Alan Ayckbourn commissioned you to write
the play as a one-act piece for Scarborough’s
Stephen Joseph theatre in 1991. How did that
come about
Alan had read a play I wrote in the course of one
afternoon while I was at university - about two people
and two yucca plants - it was shown to him by his
assistant director at the time, Connal Orton, who had
known me at university. He said it wasn’t right for the
Firth's The Flint Street Nativity began life as a festive
star-studded TV play and was subsequently adapted for
the stage
theatre but liked the writing and showed me into a
café at the theatre where they did lunchtime plays,
one–acters. It was full of pensioners eating soup. So
I decided to write a play where the characters
legitimately would have to shout so that they could be
heard over the clatter of the cutlery - hence having
two workmen on a building ledge above a busy road.
Thanks to the success of the show, which was
originally called A Man of Letters, I have worked with
Alan on various projects. He commissioned me to
write Neville’s Island and directed my play The Safari
Party, among other things.
Your collaboration with Alan over the years
has led some people to think there are
similarities between your writing - would
you agree
Sure, you might say there are similarities between our
work. But then from far enough away two large red
letters will look identical. It’s only on getting closer
you realise one is a distinct A and one a T.
What made you return to A Man of Letters
and extend it into a full-length play Was
that difficult
I returned to the ledge because I loved the one-act
play and after all this time wanted to know what
happened to Frank after the play ended. It took me
fifteen years to decide.
Tim Firth’s award winning TV series Preston Front focused on the
relationships of a team of Territorial Army volunteers
The original hadn’t dated because it was about
ambition and the pursuit of happiness, and the gap
between the two - and that still exists.