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.

‘New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town!  The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down!   The people ride in a hole in the ground!  New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town!’  

Well, the subway leaves a little to be desired.  ‘Hole in the ground’ doesn’t seem so inappropriate a description.  Makes the London Underground (which I normally have many complaints about) seem quite luxurious by comparison.

But a whole day off to explore a small part of the Big Apple.  Exciting!  First stop?  It has to be Greenwich Village – on the trail of Bob Dylan’s early haunts and the haunts of many other famous folk… On the way we take in the iconic Flatiron building.  Argh!  It’s all covered up and surrounded by scaffolding.

Okay, on a little further to the Chelsea Hotel, dark and atmospheric inside with wild art on the walls of the lobby.  Plaques outside the building honour the many artists who have stayed there.  

My eye is drawn to one for Leonard Cohen, whose song ‘Anthem’, with its line ‘There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in’ reminds me of Leo Szilard’s mantra uttered twice in my play, ‘We have to believe in a narrow margin of hope…’

Then further on we reach Cafe Wha? where the young Dylan first arrived and asked if he could sing a few songs – announcing the arrival of a remarkable new talent.  

The recent excellent movie about Dylan’s arrival in Greenwich village was called A Complete Unknown.  (Chalamet was brilliant, truly inhabiting the role of young Bob with great subtlety and nuance – why didn’t he get the Oscar?) I feel that the movie’s title is an appropriate description of myself, wandering around NYC, hoping to muster an audience for a play which is not remotely commercial, doesn’t have a star name and is not the kind of fare a theatergoer looking for a fun night out would choose. 

It’s now time for ‘elevenses’.  Which turns out to be hot cross buns at Tea and Sympathy – a British-themed tea room in the Village, with pictures of the late Queen and the current King gracing the walls – and a vast range of leaf teas to choose from served by none other than Molly from Dublin.  ‘I’ll come and see your play,’ she promises.  

Following the Dylan trail further, we reach the atmospheric Cafe Reggio, where the beat poets hung out, and which boasts being the home of the ‘original cappuccino’.  The original coffee machine is still on display, a highly polished and most impressive-looking artefact. We, of course, have to order cappuccinos.  Hmm.  Not bad.  Though not the best I’ve ever had.  

There are a lot of links and circularity on this tour of ours.  My first task on the tour was giving the talk on the role of the arts in promoting peace – which feels like a lifetime ago but in fact was just two weeks previously at Manchester University.  During that talk I referenced and sang verses from  Dylan’s early protest songs ‘ Masters of War’ and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’.  And here I am now in Greenwich Village paying homage at the places where he first performed such songs.  

We walk along lovely tree-lined streets, full of attractive brownstone houses; past the Cherry Lane Theatre, the oldest continuously-running off-Broadway theatre in the city; past Henry James territory – Washington Square Park – with a jazz combo in full swing; on past 75 1/2 Bedford Street, the narrowest house in the Village, where the poet Edna St Vincent Millay lived for a while; past a fabulous mural featuring her and many other artistic icons including Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez.  

But hey, as the day draws to its conclusion, I’m not a tourist, I have to remind myself.  Not just a tourist.

Next day, now in full actor/playwright/producer mode, I go into the theatre with Ros to find Riko and to meet Ant, our wonderful stage manager for the next three weeks, and we start preparing our performing area, check sound levels and witness Angelo Sagnelli our lighting designer working his magic in a small space with not very many lights to play with.  

The whiteboard I have purchased just for this New York run is assembled and seems to work well.  Though Mark Friend’s lovely canvases are not staying firmly on the magnetic surface of the whiteboard.  As sewing is not something I have ever mastered, Riko and Ros kindly and wonderfully offer to sew more magnets onto the canvases, and that seems to do the trick.

We’ve loved performing in the variety of non-theatre venues prior to New York, but it adds another layer to the experience of the play that we now have numerous lighting effects as well as excellent speakers for Claire Windsor’s atmospheric soundscape.

And before we know it, it’s Thursday April 24th and we open The Mistake to two packed previews with tremendous audience feedback. 

Apart from one negative comment.  

‘ Un-American.  That play is un-American.’

Provoking my flight of fancy at the start of this blog.

And yet the very next day, during the talkback after the performance, other Americans praise the fact that I didn’t remotely demonise the American pilot of the Enola Gay – the B29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb.  That I didn’t make him a villain.  That I humanised him and gave him space to state his case, the military’s case, strongly and with conviction.  How did I do that, these American audience members wanted to know?  Well, it’s what I always strive for – to show the complexity of these issues, that it’s never simply black and white.

The fact is that The Mistake is landing with far more impact here in the USA than it did in the UK – naturally.  You can feel the electricity in the room as key scenes and moments unfold.  

Many people share stories with us afterwards.  A lady whose father had been killed by a kamikaze pilot, the play clearly being a difficult watch for her; the Jewish-American woman married to a Japanese man – whose family couldn’t accept her as she was American – ‘the enemy’.  This woman, hugely impressed with the play, said it would be a hard sell right now with all the bad news happening in the US – people would not be keen on seeing such a serious subject matter, she felt.  

And by the way – did you hear about the Enola Gay?  
As part of the recent US purge of DEI-related content (Diversity, Equality and Inclusion), images and posts mentioning the Enola Gay were flagged for removal.  Because of the word ‘Gay’ it seems.  But Enola Gay was pilot Paul Tibbet’s mother’s name!  He used her name for the B29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb which led to victory in the Pacific War for the USA.  

‘Nope, we’re not having the word ‘Gay’.  Wipe that woke name from the records…’

What the hell is going on here?

What crazy times these are! 

But when I say this, please realise – I’m not being un-American…

To support this tour with a donation, please click here.
Thank you