RM: Tell me about why and how you came to write this play situated in the Hungarian town of Szeged and which brings together an American researcher, an English art dealer, a Hungarian language teacher BW: When an earlier play of mine, Getting Over You , was performed in London at the Etcetera Theatre , it was seen by a Hungarian director, who subsequently contacted me to ask if she could work on the play with students at the University in Szeged. I was delighted; and she subsequently invited me to Szeged, where I worked on the play with the student cast - and later went back to see the play in performance.
The play is about an English rock star who goes into reclusive retirement in the early s; but has never come to terms with the reasons for his reclusiveness. I wanted to revisit the 60s and 70s and see these years beyond the commodification of a particular lifestyle.
Whilst not in any way wanting to reclaim or recuperate the more vacuous excesses of the period, I wanted to focus on the fact that it was a time when many people were seriously reviewing ideas about family and society, about individualism and social cohesion. I was intrigued by the fact that a play that seemed to me to so very English the modern day scenes are all set in a grand house on the banks of the Thames could be relevant to a Hungarian audience, let alone as successful as it was.
I realised that the appeal of the play to the Hungarian cast and audience was the questioning of identity in a time of immense social change. RM: It seems that through people's attitudes to food, so much is revealed about Western and Eastern European attitudes towards being Hungarian.
BW: Yes, James, the English art dealer is clearly dismissive and exploitative. Anna, the Hungarian adopts a self-deprecatory voice, almost parodying herself - perhaps in defence against James.
