GREGORY BURKE
STAG
Gregory Burke would have good reason to be nervous about his follow up to Black Watch. But, as he tells Steve Cramer, he's taking it in his stride
regory' Burke feels more mellow. more
at home with himself than the
thirtysomething who entered the public domain with the premiere of (iugurin Buy in IBM. .-\t that time there was a sense of a man dal/led by the sudden attention the play brought him. These days. after the legendary success of [Huck ll'ult'lt which totlt‘ed throughout the world alter its triumph at the lidinburgh l‘ringe of 2000. returning to New York last ('hristmas and finally garnering four ()li\ ier Awards in March Burke seems milder and more mature. He is now in his 4()s. settled in lidinburgh and dey'oting time to fatherhood. but what hasn’t changed at all is his affahility'. As he sits across from me at lidinhurgh‘s Tray erse Theatre. the warmth and chuckling case is as strong as ey'er.
His new play. Hours. he tells me. will ineyitahly be seen as a follow-up to Black ”tiff/I. yet it was written before his epic e\atnination of the li\'es of sey'et'al soldiers scrying the eponymous regiment in Iraq. Its story tells of the aftermath of a catastrophic stag weekend. during which the groom has died. ()n the night before his funeral. a day originally intended to be his wedding. his bride. her sister and two of his tnale friends gather to steel themselves for the day ahead. But the piece is a whole lot funnier than this sombre scenario suggests.
'When I was in my early 20s. we‘d just go out for a night. locally.’ says Burke reflecting on the self-destructiy'e nature of stag eyents. and their place in today‘s society. ‘But there's that consumer logic of “if one stag night was here. let‘s go further away. Let‘s make it bigger. longer. further away and spend more money." These days people go to Las Vegas for a week. You think. “When was that email sent around'.’ I missed it." How does that cultural thing about this traditional way of saying. “This is your farewell to singledom." become. “Let's go to Amsterdam and haye sex with trafficked women“? If you boil it down to its bones what's left is we give our money to organised crime for fun.‘
18 THE LIST 30 Apr—1.1 May 2009,
W‘ M1,, N; 'K’\-
‘WE GIVE MONEY TO ORGANISED CRIME FOR FUN'
The potential humour of funerals. the sense in which the absolute finality of mortality brings with it an urge to laugh interests Burke. ‘The thing about lloors is weddings and funerals are the only time we see people from a wider circle of friends. and folk y'ou‘ye known a long time and don‘t see any more.~ he says. 'lt‘s one of the rare times when a social conyention is created where you haye to behaye in a certain way. People have to be happy at weddings and sad at funerals. But sometimes funerals can be hysterically funny. And when people die they become these fantastic people « you know ~ ”He had a great head of hair" and you think. "No he didn't he was bald'T
The clash between social conyentions and a more primal self that the play examines. though. goes further than this. ‘l)id the girl in it really want to get married or did she feel
obliged to. as a rite of passage'.’ That kind of
question feeds into the play.‘ says Burke. ‘There‘s also that thing about people who go away. One of the characters has been away ~ but when that happens. people assume they’ve been successful in life. They might be
a tramp in the city they li\e in. but that assumption is made.‘
We return almost ineyitahly to li/m-A llillt'll. Does a play that can boast such phenomenal success hang o\ er a w rilet"s subsequent work like a judgement'.’ 'l‘m \ery happy to haye done [Huck Hit/(Ii from a professional point of \ iew. a financial point of y iew eyerything it has done for me. You can‘t HUI enjoy that. But I don‘t want to keep writing Blur/t llillt'll. The number of times people haye cotne to me to write scripts about soldiers it‘d be easy to get trapped in that. The good thing about winning all those ()liyiers was it closed the curtain. So that’s great. that‘s it met: l‘y'e been through this all before with (jugurm ll’uy'. But initially after that one. I was kind of paralysed - I couldn‘t remember how I’d done it. This time there‘s more a feeling of
jtist get on with it. I wanted to write
something that‘s just kind of funny. I mean it‘s about a serious thing. but it‘s meant to he a good night out.‘
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 1-Sat 23 May and touring.