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Forcing the binge issue

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Language of the street: Roy Williams looks at how young people are affected by decisions taken by those in positions of power

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• The flight of Pedro Pan

Roy Williams is pushing buttons again. The playwright has always had little patience with 'politically correct' thinking and, time and again, has produced vigorous, confrontational theatre as a result.

Explosive examples were 2002's Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads (about football hooliganism) and 2003's Fallout (about a racially motivated teenage murder - an adaptation airs on Channel 4 in June), both forcing audiences to confront the fault lines that run through our society.

Days Of Significance is another. First staged last year at Stratford as part of the RSC's Complete Works season, it loosely wears the plot of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, while taking a hard look at modern-day Britain through the lens of the Iraq war.

Two soldiers on the eve of their deployment binge-drink their way around town with a rowdy bunch of mates, then are plunged into the realities of war in Basra; their friends and family deal with the shocking consequences afterwards.

'One of the reviewers for the Stratford production thought the play was tantamount to treason,' says Williams, as the Muslim call to prayer echoes through the rehearsal rooms in Clapham where the cast are gearing up for the play's London premiere. 'There was also an ex-Army lieutenant at a postshow discussion who said it showed soldiers in a negative light,' he adds.

A particularly unpleasant piece of hate mail also arrived, scrawled around a copy of the aforementioned review.

But a hatchet job on 'our lads' was never the intention. Instead, Williams is again cutting through the rhetoric to consider how the powerless in our society are affected by decisions that lie out of their control.

'I wanted to look at how we're asking our young to fight this war thousands of miles away and impose our morality on these countries, yet we encourage those same young, particularly working-class, people to drink themselves to death at weekends,' he explains.

And it is, Williams wants us to acknowledge, the very young men and women who are vilified for terrorising town centres across the land who make up the bulk of our Armed Forces.

This is by no means a new phenomenon - it was, for example, an argument raised in the US in the wake of the Vietnam War. 'It's very much the point Oliver Stone was making in Platoon,' says Williams. 'These people are considered the dregs of society; they come from poor towns, they don't have jobs or careers - and they are always the kind of people we send out to fight.'

At 18, Williams (now 40) almost joined the Army himself, momentarily beguiled by the charms of an attractive female officer touting for recruits - in much the same way that Michael Moore highlighted in Fahrenheit 9/11, and Williams's soldier characters Ben and Jamie are persuaded.

'It wasn't because I had a sense that "I believe in this", it was because I had nothing else to do,' he says. 'I think it's wrong if young men and women join up just because they have limited options. We're asking for trouble by allowing that.'

None of this, admittedly, seems to link Days Of Significance to Much Ado About Nothing. 'It's not my favourite Shakespeare play,' Williams cheerily concedes. 'But it does have the soldiers coming back from war and the battle of the sexes played out between Benedick and Beatrice. In city centres nowadays, you see the young people in tribal packs of boys and girls, charged up, wanting to get drunk, have sex, fight.'

So Benedick and Beatrice become Ben and Trish, who lead their gangs' leery, obscene banter. Williams's ear for language is often rhapsodised: reviewers delight in his 'popular music of street patois'.

Williams winces at this, then grins. 'I suppose I am flattered by it. I just hear what people are saying, record it in my head then repeat it on the page. Also, it's not that far away from how we spoke when I used to go out with my mates.'

Williams insists that young people's street language is richer than people give it credit for. 'It's great to hear the way they describe things. But it can also be limiting. I'm saying don't box yourself in. How you speak is no excuse to stay where you are. You need to be open to other people who are expressing themselves in different ways.'

He's also aware that the fact this play doesn't deal directly with issues of race - a topic he's tackled energetically elsewhere - seems to be cause for comment.

'Some people say: "Why are you writing about white characters?" But when I write about black characters, they say: "Why are you always writing about black characters?" You can't bloody win! You just have to have a certain stubbornness and say: "I'll write what I bloody well want - and I'll be judged for it." You've got to stick to your guns.'

Days Of Significance previews from tomorrow, opens Mar 18 until Mar 29, Tricycle Theatre, 269 Kilburn High Road , Mon to Sat 8pm (Mar 18 7pm), various mats, £10 to £18. Tel: 020 7328 1000. www.tricycle.co.uk Tube: Kilburn

 

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