Preview: Living Quarters, Factory Theatre

“The play is attractive to me because it is so completely immersive, as Friel’s worlds always are. He has the Chekhovian gift of putting a family on stage, completely and subtly.”

Andrew Hilton, artistic director of Bristol’s renowned Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory (stf), is explaining why he’s returning, some 20 years after his last encounter with it, to Brian Friel’s play Living Quarters.

Friel’s poetic, atmospheric plays about life in rural Ireland have been well served by Bristol companies in recent years, with standout productions of Faith Healer (Bristol Old Vic), Translations and Dancing at Lughnasa (both Bristol Old Vic Theatre School).

Now Hilton is returning, in a Tobacco Factory Theatres in-house production co-produced with stf, to a play that he first directed for Bristol’s Show of Strength theatre company in the play’s only English production to date, above the Hen and Chicken pub just up North Street from the theatre.

This production, like that one, is a Bristol affair through and through: one of five TFT in-house productions and co-productions this season, it also features a largely homegrown cast including stf regulars Chris Bianchi and Simon Armstrong (pictured top).

The play centres on Frank Butler (Armstrong), an ordinary army officer from Friel’s fictional village of Ballybeg, Donegal (where both Translations and … Lughnasa are also set), who suddenly becomes a hero in middle age. Frank returns in triumph to his battalion, to his family and to his young second wife. But a day of celebration will soon turn to tragedy.

Lughnasa, Translations and Faith Healer are all powerful plays. Does Living Quarters share that power? “The relationships are the key, even when – as in Translations – there is a powerful political point being made,” Hilton explains. “Here Friel remakes the Hippolytus story completely, but I think the play also echoes Chekhov’s Three Sisters, and perhaps has a dash of Pirandello as well. So it is a truly European play, and yet thoroughly Irish and thoroughly Friel: and it has that greatest of dramatic virtues, narrative drive and control.”

The play, Hilton explains, moves through various moods – anguished, nervous, festive. “The characters enjoy the hottest day of the summer, they relive farcical moments in their pasts as well as painful ones. They drink, they smoke, they gossip, they eat ice cream and dress up, and laugh together at bad jokes.”

What sort of a character, then, is this Frank Butler? Is it some flaw in his own character and backstory that’s responsible for the tragedy that occurs, or is that due to extraneous circumstances? “He is certainly a rather vain man, rather contemptuous of the people of Ballybeg, feeling himself deserving of a much grander posting.

“In the world of classical tragedy to which the play refers, he is guilty of ‘hubris’ (excessive pride or self-confidence) and pays the price in a form of acute humiliation. At the same time he has moments of self-doubt, even melancholy. But I don’t think we would put the cause of his humiliation directly to his own fault; it is fate; in metaphysical terms only, it might be seen as the punishment of the gods for a cardinal sin.” 

Hilton is pleased to be partnering with Tobacco Factory Theatres on this one. “It makes complete sense for stf and Tobacco Factory Theatres to work together, and yet as independent partners. On Living Quarters Tobacco Factory Theatres is leading (and paying the bills), while stf leads on the spring Shakespeare seasons, as well as now taking one or both of the productions on a national and international tour.

“As a director, I was absolutely delighted to be invited by [TFT artistic director] Ali Robertson to direct this terrific play as part of TFT’s growing in-house production programme, and for stf to lend its support.”

Living Quarters is at the Factory Theatre from Thursday, September 17 to Saturday, October 3. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/detail/living_quarters