It is a great pleasure to have you here. Now you are very busy right now because a play that you originally wrote in 2012 and put on in 2012 has been revived at the National Theatre in london in just the last few days. And its got me wondering, as you have been heavily involved with the revival, how have you sort of seen the evolution of your own writing and what interests you . Have you changed in the decade . Yes, i think i have. I mean, its so interesting to go back to something you wrote just over ten years ago. As you say, 2012 was the first production of it. Its a play called the effect, and it follows. It follows two triallists taking part in a Clinical Trial for a new antidepressant and two doctors running it. And the triallists basically start to fall in love, but dont know whether they are actually falling in love or if its an effect of the new antidepressant that theyre trialling. And of course, when i wrote it originally, i felt very close to these young sort of Romeo And J
Now you are very busy right now because a play that you originally wrote in 2012 and put on in 2012 has been revived at the National Theatre in london in just the last few days. And its got me wondering, as you have been heavily involved with the revival, how have you sort of seen the evolution of your own writing and what interests you . Have you changed in the decade . Yes, i think i have. I mean, its so interesting to go back to something you wrote just over ten years ago. As you say, 2012 was the first production of it. Its a play called the effect, and it follows. It follows two triallists taking part in a Clinical Trial for a new antidepressant and two doctors running it. And the triallists basically start to fall in love, but dont know whether they are actually falling in love or if its an effect of the new antidepressant that theyre trialling. And of course, when i wrote it originally, i felt very close to these young sort of Romeo And Juliet 20 somethings feeling excited and r
Because a play that you originally wrote in 2012 and put on in 2012 has been revived at the National Theatre in london in just the last few days. And its got me wondering, as you have been heavily involved with the revival, how have you sort of seen the evolution of your own writing and what interests you . Have you changed in the decade . Yes, i think i have. I mean, its so interesting to go back to something you wrote just over ten years ago. As you say, 2012 was the first production of it. Its a play called the effect, and it follows. It follows two triallists taking part in a Clinical Trial for a new antidepressant and two doctors running it. And the triallists basically start to fall in love, but dont know whether they are actually falling in love or if its an effect of the new antidepressant that theyre trialling. And of course, when i wrote it originally, i felt very close to these young sort of Romeo And Juliet 20 somethings feeling excited and romantic for the first time. And
is really an idea that has emerged because it s alliterative and easy to talk about without nuance. and i think that i m interested in specific examples of human beings trying to treat each other well. and i think they re mostly fine. just one more example. the critic and sort of culture commentator kate copstick, she s particularly interested in comedy. now, i mean, actually, a lot of what you write is funny, but you don t do. thank you. ..outright sort of comedy. but she says, at this year s edinburgh fringe. and the fringe is a sort of artistic sort of firmament that goes on in edinburgh every year. she says, i ve never known the fringe be so censorious. that word censorious do you feel an intolerance, a censoriousness, in the arts today that might not have been there ten years ago? i understand what people mean when they say that. i think the idea that they might say
imean, ijust. ifind it extraordinary that a generation and it is particularly, often, generational who are so happy to accuse young people and the culture in general of being fragile and of being unresilient have such a hard time when people say that the things that they have deliberately politically come out about and discussed with passion and even vitriol, they then have to hear consequential reactions to that. i just. ifind it extraordinary and quite boring. and so, yeah, i think cancel culture is really an idea that has emerged because it s alliterative and easy to talk about without nuance. and i think that i m interested in specific examples of human beings trying to treat each other well. and i think they re mostly fine. just one more example. the critic and sort of culture commentator kate copstick, she s particularly interested in comedy. now, i mean, actually,