Monthly Archives: May 2025

HARPO MARX AND THE ATOMIC BOMB

Posted on by
Reply

Towards the end of our second week of performances here in New York, the temperature outside shoots up into the high 70s and wouldn’t you know it, the air con in the theatre develops a fault.  We have three weekend shows and it can’t be fixed till Monday.  I’m not so concerned for myself, but for the audiences – full houses in a small theatre where they are watching a concentrated serious drama for eighty plus minutes with no interval.  

Amazingly, no-one leaves and no-one faints, though there’s a fair amount of programme flapping.  Riko and I are drenched in sweat and by the end of the two Saturday shows I’m feeling pretty spent.  We have a busy show the next day too, Sunday afternoon, and the heat persists.  It’s astonishing that the audience stays with us, comes with us all the way on our journey into the Hiroshima ‘heart of darkness’ – saving their complaints until afterwards for the front of house managers.  

On Sunday evening, having nothing planned, I am good for nothing anyway.  I lie on my bed, at the downtown guest house where I’m staying, completely flaked out, wondering if I’m suffering from heat exhaustion.  

I compose urgent emails to the theatre director and manager.

Next day, Monday May 4th, is a day off, and of course, it tips down with rain!  Not until I’ve walked some of the wonderful, leafy High-Line, though; after which I wend my way to Little Italy – where the words of ‘Volare’ are spelled out in little lights, strung across the streets.  I dive into a recommended restaurant, Zia Maria, and have a delicious lunch while watching the rain bucketing down outside.  At least the temperature is cooler.

Continue reading →

Five Amazing Women … (Or – ‘Gonna take my problem to the United Nations…’)

Posted on by
Reply

Did you know – I’m ashamed to say I didn’t – that 928 nuclear bomb tests were conducted in the USA between 1951 and 1992 at the test site in Nevada?  928.  Each one of which was more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Each one of which had ‘fallout’ which for those people and communities ‘downwind’ of those tests has proved lethal.  In numbers of cases, fatal even.

One of the amazing women I met last week at the United Nations – (‘Hey, I thought you were in New York at 59E59 Theaters, not the UN!’ I hear you cry?  I’ll explain shortly, don’t worry) – anyway, one of the women I met there is of that group who identify themselves as ‘downwinders’ – and she has been fighting for justice and compensation from the US government for years.  She’s also written a play about her experiences.  More of that shortly, too.

I mentioned previously how there  have been so many links, loops and circularity on this tour of The Mistake in the US.  

Well, in a rather extraordinary coincidence, which I did know about before leaving London, the latest round of talks on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)  are taking place at the United Nations, New York, at exactly the same time we are performing a play in the city about the dangers of nuclear weapons. 

Continue reading →

Before the House Un-American Activities Commitee (well, kind of )

Posted on by
Reply

Scene:  a forbidding committee room arranged in the style of a courtroom.  A stern official – seated – is firing questions at a British actor/playwright – who is standing in front of him.

‘It has come to our attention that an audience member at a performance of your play The Error – ‘

‘Mistake, your honour.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘The play is called The Mistake.’

‘Don’t interrupt again.  An audience member at a performance of your play deemed it to be un-American.

I must therefore ask, are you now or have you ever been a playwright who depicts the sufferings of innocent victims of war?  More specifically, a playwright who writes about the victims of American atomic bombs?  A playwright opposed to war in all its forms and to the military-industrial complex?’

‘Yes.  I am.  And I stand by everything I’ve written.  But it has never been my intention to create a work that was un-American.  I have tried to portray all sides of the debate, of the conflict.  Fairly.  To give every character the opportunity to vigorously make their case.’

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Again.  Back to my first full day in New York City – Monday April 21st – before we’ve even entered the theatre which will be our home for the next three weeks.

I find myself singing as I walk the streets downtown with our director Rosamunde Hutt, who flew in the day before.

Continue reading →