Interview: Another Slice of Bacon

Director Matthew Iliffe on the continued life of Bacon

Everything Theatre gave Bacon by Sophie Swithinbank a full five stars on its debut at the Finborough Theatre. Now a multi-award-winning play, it examines ideas of powerplay, masculinity and sexuality through a toxic relationship between two year ten boys. It succinctly articulates the turbulent, confusing vortex of the teenage experience, yet offers surprising humour and deep humanity.

The play is currently at the Edinburgh Fringe, in advance of a run at the Bristol Old Vic. We were delighted to spend a little time with the Director of this extraordinary work, Matthew Iliffe, who received the Off West End (Offies) Award for Best Director for the piece.

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Matthew, thank you so much for taking time to chat with us. I have to say Bacon is a phenomenal piece of work. I’ve now seen it twice and it just choked me up both times. How did you come to be involved with the project?

Neil McPherson at the Finborough Theatre sent the play to me in the Summer of 2021, when there was very little theatre going on, particularly small-scale Off-West End work. I was rooting around for a post-pandemic project and Bacon caught me by the throat and wouldn’t let go.

The casting for the production is flawless. Did you know of Corey Montague-Sholay and William Robinson before you began the auditioning process, or did you just see the magic in them when they came along?

William and Corey are, as you say, magic in the play. We were mutually unknown to each other when they came to audition and the talent that our Casting Consultant Nadine Rennie assembled was so great. It was clear, however, that William and Corey were uniquely gifted actors and had a great rapport.

One of the electric, visceral things about their performance is the use of proximity, especially on the see-saw that’s centre stage. Can you tell us a bit about your thinking behind that?

Designer Natalie Johnson and I were interested in creating an abstracted space as a constant visual metaphor for the complex relationship dynamics in the play. Our jointly agreed brief was to make a set that was tangible and mutually manipulatable by the actors, like a Newton’s Cradle, where one body would directly influence the other. The result is a constant physical renegotiation of space. My job, in collaboration with the actors, was to physically realise the ever-shifting power dynamics in Sophie’s play, sometimes leaning into and sometimes shying away from the resulting symbolism.

Although William and Corey make it look easy, they’re performing an incredible dual feat: performing an intense, fast-moving two-hander that is constantly shifting in chronology and location whilst gracefully balancing and manipulating the set in a kind of choreography. When Sophie and I have a go on the see-saw we can rarely stand still and balance!

The pace of the dialogue and use of vocabulary is clearly integral to the deeply affective tone of the play. Was it a challenge directing the actors to capture the power and dynamism of the language?

Not at all! Sophie’s text switches between dialogue and direct address, naturalism and a kind of heightened naturalism that verges on poetry but is always deeply rooted in a nuanced understanding of each character.

William and Corey have found great joy in digging into this complex use of language and often provide brilliant insights in performance, such as Corey’s Mark slowly shifting, almost imperceptibly, towards Darren’s MLE dialect the closer their relationship becomes. It’s my great privilege to collaborate with such exacting actors on a text like this.

What’s it been like redesigning the production for new venues? Is it difficult to retain the intense sense of focus and oppression that you achieved initially at the Finborough?

It’s interesting playing in a range of new spaces, but the design has remained the same. The main difference has been going from a traverse playing space at the Finborough, to end-on at Riverside Studios, Summerhall in Edinburgh and soon thrust at the Bristol Old Vic, which mean that the production must be recalibrated each time.

I’d be a fool to try to retain the unique intimacy of somewhere like the Finborough, which offers a totally different experience to most other theatres. Instead, you work out what the opportunities and benefits of a new space are and work them to your advantage.

The show won multiple Offies awards last time round, and now much later has had an additional nomination for the lighting design at Riverside Studios. Is this the play evolving, or just elements being seen differently in a new space?

Both! The same work takes on different qualities in a new space and sometimes needs to be rebuilt. Although conceptually our brilliant Lighting Designer Ryan Joseph Stafford’s design is the same as seen at the Finborough, a larger space has allowed him to light things differently and we’ve had a year to reflect on our previous work before coming back to it.

There are some horribly disturbing moments in the play, but it’s not graphically in-your-face. Would you say imaginative engagement with the audience is fundamental to your directorial style?

Yes, absolutely. Legendary Broadway director Hal Prince thought that theatre was more closely related to radio drama than film or TV, because of its active employment of the audience’s imagination, which I think is a great insight. I’m always interested in planting image into an audience’s mind through performance, text, lighting, production, and sound design, rather than the presentation of a fully formed image, which I think is much less theatrically rewarding.

I’m a big fan of Forced Entertainment’s work too, which requires audience imagination to complete a performance. That may be an image that’s being described but not shown or the insistence that an inanimate object is a character from Shakespeare. In this, the audience are in direct collaboration with the performers, which I think is exciting.

What have audience responses been like to the play, and have they led to any revisions in your direction?

Audience responses have been hugely positive so far and I’m very thankful for that. As a director you already have many voices contributing to the work, so I tend to find individual audience responses more overwhelming than helpful. However, watching and listening to the audience as collective during performance is invaluable. The tricky thing is that no two audiences behave alike, so you must be cautious about making changes too readily based on their reactions.

And finally, is an international audience in Edinburgh ready for Bacon?

Who knows? To date, Bacon has spoken to diverse audiences who have been deeply moved and riveted by the play. The opportunity to remount the production arose from a huge demand at the Finborough Theatre and excellent reviews from critics and audiences and I feel fortunate for that. I hope Edinburgh likes it and maybe we’ll get to do it all over again, again.

Many thanks to Matthew for taking the time to chat with us about this powerful production. We’re looking forward to seeing its further success on its travels!

Bacon is currently running in the Cairns Lecture Theatre at Summerhall until 27 August as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Further information and bookings can be found here.

Bacon will also be playing at Bristol Old Vic from 12-16 September. Tickets can be found here.