Joe Penhall interview
This article was first published in the London Newspaper Group in 1994.
Giving up the day job
I never thought I would find myself interviewing a fellow reporter about his meteoric rise to fame as a young playwright. But fate can deal us hard blows.
By Lucy Hodges
Until he gave up his job as a reporter on the South London Guardian in February, Joe Penhall and I had worked on the same news patch.
With his misshapen overcoat stuffed with notepads and pens and nicotine‑stained fingers, he was the embodiment of a news hack.
But whereas most reporters’ sunken cheeks and ash‑faced complexions can be put down to nightly dousings in the pub, Joe’s unkempt appearance was due to more esoteric reasons.
Like many struggling new playwrights, Joe, 27, had the drive most of us can only dream of - to sit down and write after spending a full day on the paper.
His first play, Wild Turkey, previewed at the Old Red Lion in Islington last year, focused on his experiences of running a pizza bar in Clapham.
Joe then started work on Small Voices - loosely based on a wild friend of his who ends up on the streets - which opens at the Royal Court tonight.
Released from hospital, Ray goes in search of his brother, who runs a restaurant in Hammersmith, only to fall in love with the first woman he meets.
After starting up an affair, Ray - a schizophrenic - finds himself in a downward spiral as his impulsive and often irrational choices land him in trouble.
As Joe explained, it is precisely this devil‑may‑care attitude of Ray, and his friend, that attracts people to them in the first place. But invariably, it leads them into the most dangerous of situations.
He said: “I wanted to write about a friend of mine who, like many schizophrenics, is highly intelligent and sensitive yet has this unerring ability to provoke others.
“At first someone who doesn’t give a damn about what they say or do is very appealing. But when you see them blindly heading for trouble over and over again you realise that there is nothing heroic about their behaviour.
“Their lack of control is caused by a chemical imbalance. My friend drank like a fish and was constantly being beaten up.“He eventually ended up losing everyone and everything, just like Ray.”
It has been less than a year since Joe put the finishing touches to Small Voices.
In that time he has packed in his day job - the day after the Royal Court commissioned him to write the piece - moved to a studio in Shepherd’s Bush, and been commissioned to write two films for the BBC.
Sitting through the final days of rehearsals, Joe admitted to cringing at some of the more overblown and vitriolic lines of the play.
He said: “I was quite fed up at the time so I wanted to blow a few people’s sockets.
“There is a lot of anger and violence in this play - much more than I would want to express now. I think I’d like to make people laugh next time.”
