Jake Murray on bringing the covid monologues to the stage

‘The Moth’, by Paul Herzberg, was originally filmed as a 10-minute piece to camera, as part of a series of short films from Elysium Theatre Company called ‘The Covid-19 Monologues’. The film was seen around the world, winning several awards including Best Monologue at the Kwanzaa Film Festival in Harlem.

Now the company has worked with Herzberg to adapt the film for the stage, which arrives at Lowry, Salford on 10 April as part of a 25 venue tour. Quays Life talks to Elysium Artistic Director, Jake Murray to find out more.

Tell us about the COVID 19 Monologues project. How did it come about and did its success surprise you?

Jake: “When Covid hit, Elysium, like every other theatre company in the country, was shut down. We had to cancel a tour of ‘Look Back In Anger’ and had no idea what our future was going to be. We knew we wanted to stay creative and wanted to do something to inspire people as they struggled through the pandemic, but didn’t know how.

“Then I saw a friend of mine, Anand Vyas (sadly no longer with us), an Indian-American, live streaming himself playing the Sitar to give people support. I was then asked to create an online piece of theatre by the Gala and Assembly Rooms Theatres here in Durham, and became excited by the possibilities of monologues that could be rehearsed and filmed over Zoom under lockdown conditions. I came up with the idea of five such monologues. When they did so well, we commissioned five more and then five more.

“We had no idea they would be successful. They won several awards, including an Olwen Wymark Award from the Writers Guild of Great Britain. ‘The Moth’ was seen all over the world and is still racking up views. All 15 are still available online on our website and YouTube channel, so the work is still out there for all to see”.

Is ‘The Moth’ the third of these short films you’ve brought to the stage? How has the process been of adapting these films for the stage?

Jake: “Actually it’s the second. The first was ‘Reiver – Tales From The Borders’ which Steve Byron adapted from his original work ‘Blackmail’. That was an enormous success two years running touring the North East.

“It was Paul’s idea to turn it into a stage play. The first draft was gripping, but Paul went on to keep working on it right up to the rehearsals. I think the first draft was delivered in 2021, so that’s four years of work he’s put into it. The style and format were entirely his creation, as were the characters and themes. All I did was help him refine his vision. It’s been a long process but hugely rewarding. He has done a magnificent job and has always trusted me, even when we disagreed. He’s a fantastic writer”.

The original version was a 10 minute short film (performed by Victor Power). The version you’re touring is a 90-minute, two act, two-hander (featuring Faz Singhateh and Micky Cochrane). How did closely did you and writer Paul Herzberg liaise on that?

Jake: “The main thing is that Paul has taken the short monologue and realised a whole universe with it. The original monologue just focused on the central anecdote that Marius delivers to John on the train. We know very little of who John is or what he does and there is no interaction between the two men beyond that. In the stage play Paul extends the story over three decades with three crucial meetings between the two men in each. The drama alternates between the actors dramatising these scenes together and direct address to the audience.

“All the new detail and the style the play would take were entirely Paul’s creation. It was his decision to make John a TV host and celebrity writer of political journalism and use the idea of a hard-hitting TV show as the format. It was his decision to flesh out the back story of both characters and trace their interaction from 1997 to the present day. All I did was help him refine his already extraordinarily detailed vision”.

How did Bridgerton star, Adjoa Andoh, come to be involved?

Jake: “We needed an actress to provide the voiceover for John’s mother. It so happened that Paul new Adjoa from when she played a character in a radio version of one of his earlier plays, ‘The Dead Wait’, from back in the 90s and worked with her again in an episode of ‘Bridgerton’. Our consultant producer, Andy Jordan, also knew her, so we dropped her a line and to our surprise and delight she said she was happy to do it. It was a great act of generosity. She did it brilliantly, without any direction. It comes in a key moment in the play and is the only time we hear a female voice in what is a very masculine drama. Her performance is perfect”.

What would you like audiences to take away from the encounter between a black British activist and a former member of apartheid South Africa’s armed forces, as presented in the play?

Jake: “I think there are two primary things: how race defines and divides us and how the wounds of the past, political and personal, cast shadows across the rest of our lives. These are the two key strands of the play. However, what makes Paul’s writing so special, and what takes it beyond a lot of what we see written and said in our discourse today, is that he doesn’t believe these things are static; we don’t have to be trapped.

“What is remarkable about ‘The Moth’ is that while it confronts some of the darkest and most traumatic elements of our lives, it does so with an incredible Humanism. Paul doesn’t want to go into these things to leave us there or revel in them almost pornographically, he goes into them to heal them. And that is what the play does: it gives hope of some kind of process of healing, however partial, whereby we might be able to free ourselves from the past. It never loses sight of the crimes of history or the need for justice, but it does shine a little light on the way forward, or at least the possibility of a way forward. There is an appeal to our universal humanity, which is profoundly under threat in our turbulent and hate-filled times”.

You’re already part way through a 25 venue tour of the North and Midlands of England. How’s it going so far?

Jake: “You never know how a new play is going to be received, especially one with as powerful and ambitious a set of themes and ideas as this one, so I am delighted to say that it has really found its audience and is striking a chord everywhere it goes. People love it. We are getting full houses, standing ovations and big crowds staying behind for our talk backs. It’s speaking to people in a way that is very rare. The issues it deals with, particularly the scars of history and race, are ones that people want to hear about, especially in a world that seems to be slipping back into vicious bigotry, tribalism and sectarian hate. Because the play tackles this head on but also shows us the possibility of coming through and even find some healing – it is finding its audience”.

You have a long association with this part of the country. How does it feel to be coming back?

Jake: “I grew up in Manchester between the ages of 6 and 21 and went on to work at the Royal Exchange for 7 years between 2001 and 2008, so Manchester was formative for me. Now I live in Durham and have put down roots in the North East – I love it there! I love bringing work back to Manchester as it connects me with my past. The city has changed massively, its almost unrecognisable to how it was growing up as a teenager in the 80s, but I love its vibrancy and energy which just gets more and more intense each year. It will be very special to come back again with ‘The Moth'”.

Are you and Elysium Theatre planning further stage adaptations of the COVID 19 monologues, or are you looking ahead to new projects for the company?

Jake: “There is a third Covid19 Monologue, ‘Fake’ by Chris Barlas, which has been adapted into a stage play, now called ‘Truth’. Like ‘The Moth’ its a powerful, challenging piece of drama which we’d love to find a home for. Some of the others which deal directly with Covid such as ‘One Of A Kind’ cry out for live performance. ‘Oh By The Way, I Hate Myself’ by Hannah Ellis Ryan has had a performance in Manchester, and all the scripts are available for anyone to take up and perform, so we’ll see!

“Next up we are continuing the other strand of our work, Shakespeare. Having done ‘Macbeth’, ‘Othello’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ we’ll be doing ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. We’re the only professional company in the North touring full scale Shakespeare now so that’s very exciting. I’ve been waiting all my life to direct his plays and now, finally, I can”.

As someone whose entire life has involved theatre (Jake’s father, Braham was artistic director at the Royal Exchange from its foundation in 1976 until he retired in 2012), are you able to be optimistic about the art form’s future in this country?

Jake: “I think theatre is really struggling in this country. The UK is still seen as the home of great theatre all around the world. We really are ‘world beating’, the gold standard. Yet years of chronic under funding and lack of investment, the disappearance of the canon of world drama from our education system and the massive blow of Covid has meant British theatre is massively reduced. London is thriving, and there is plenty going on in Manchester, but look everywhere else and there is a serious lack of drama touring. One of the reasons Elysium is doing so well is that in many regions we are all there is if you want to see serious theatre. Regional theatres are either closing or are unable to produce work, so we are not seeing the wealth of theatre the country had in the 60s, 70s, 80s and even the 90s. In short, the world my father worked in. My generation faced far more challenges. The generations coming up even more.

“And yet I think there is a huge hunger in the population to see good drama, drama that excites them and speaks to them, be it classical or modern. Theatre people are resilient. We don’t stop. Give us the resources and we will find the audience. People want the live experience, and in a world in which AI has the potential to replace all human input on our screens, theatre and all live performing arts have the potential to make a comeback as the only authentic human creative experience we can have.

“We have to keep going, battling against the headwind.”

The Moth comes to Lowry, Salford from 10-12 April 2025.