Interview: Actor & director Joyce Branagh on taking CLASSIC! to Edinburgh Fringe
Manchester’s award-winning Hope Mill Theatre makes its Fringe debut with new comic play Classic! this summer, which races through a multitude of classic novels in 60 minutes. We had a chat with actor and director Joyce Branagh (recently seen in Oscar winning film Belfast, directed by her brother Kenneth) about taking the production up to the Edinburgh for this year’s festival.
Classic! has been in various stages of production for a few years now, having had a smaller version of it in Manchester years ago. How does it feel to be taking a full-length version to Edinburgh this summer?
It’s such a relief! We started out maybe about 6 years ago? With a 15-minute version of Wuthering Heights at an evening of short pieces called JB Shorts in Manchester. It went down SO well that we thought – hang on, I think we’ve got something here. So writers Pete [Kerry] and Lindsay [Williams] came up with a new 15-minute version of Wuthering Heights – again, it went down a storm. So they decided to put together a whole show of classic books that you ‘ought’ to have read, in as many different silly approaches as possible. We’ve done umpteen readings, did a workshop during a gap in lockdown, and so to finally have a whole show is amazing – and from the previews we did in Manchester, it feels like it’s really doing what we set out to do, which is really satisfying.
What can audiences expect from the production?
An hour of absolute nonsense which moves at lightning pace, packed with lots of giggles. Just what we all need right now. The actors don’t get a moment – they are running about like idiots, swapping hats and accents willy-nilly. And there’s live music! And silly songs. If you don’t know much about literature, you’ll enjoy finding out a bit about some of the best stories there are, and if you do know the books, you’ll love all the silly references.
The production sees many different styles of theatre, what is your favourite to direct?
We do one of the books – an incredibly well-known British classic – and we do it like a US ‘film noir’. Weirdly, it kind of works as a gangster story! It was fun to send up all those American black and white film clichés – the moody ‘Sam Spade’ narrator, the sexy siren, the weirdly softly spoken baddie… And the accents are bonkers – you can tell that the actors love doing that bit!
What is your favourite classic novel? And why?
Pride and Prejudice is my ‘go to’ comfort read. I love Jane Austen, she’s so much funnier than most people think. I think a lot of people get her muddled up with the Brontes, but they’re much more gritty, and moody. With Pride & Prejudice, it’s an out and out rom com – with plenty of com. I think she’d like what we’ve done with it!
Which classic novel would you like to see on-stage as a musical (that hasn’t been done already) and why?
Catch 22? Such a great satire on the futility and absurdity of war – again, lots of jokes, even though some of it’s really grim too – could you make that into a musical??? Or maybe Middlemarch – though maybe that would make a better soap opera???
Classic! plays at Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance One (Venue 33) from 3-28 August (not 8, 15, 22) at 2.40pm, with tickets available here.