The Observer
04.08.19 9Interview by
Tim AdamsPortrait by
Pål HansenL ucy Prebble operates an “elephant
in the room” method when it comes
to writing plays: she tries to take on
the biggest overlooked ideas that
shape our world.
“In theatre there is always a lot of
very tasteful, refi ned work,” she says.
“I wouldn’t be dismissive of that. But
it doesn’t feel very representative of
life at the moment, which feels to
me quite ugly and lacking taste and
unrefi ned. Rambunctious.”
Sitting cross-legged on a sofa
in the back offi ces of the Old Vic
theatre, Prebble, 38 , is quick to fi nd
a self-deprecating angle to things.
In a summer dress and with an
open smile she does not look like a
fi restarter, but don’t be fooled. Her
new play, which I have only read,
but which comes to vivid life on
the page, is a dramatisation of the
murder by poisoning of the former
KGB whistle blower and British
citizen Alexander Litvinenko in
London in 2006. It is loosely a spy
drama, but it is not John l e Carré.
“It is,” Prebble suggests, “hopefully
quite crude, a bit crass. There is this
British idea of espionage having
elegant cuffl inks, but that is perhaps
not the brutal reality.” The Russian
agents who murdered Litvinenko
by putting p olonium-2 10 into his
teapot were blundering stooges, not
elite operatives.
The play is based on the book
A Very Expensive Poison , by the
Guardian’s Luke Harding , which
followed the belated 2016 inquiry
into Litvinenko’s murder. Harding
could not be more enthused about
the way that Prebble has brought
to life the “awful mixture of
playfulness and ghoulishness” at
the heart of the story. “The terrible
death of Alexander Litvinenko islike something out of John Webster,”
he s aid to me, speaking about the
play. “But at the same time there
is something comically absurd
about these two moronic assassins
wandering around London with
this powerful poison – they don’t
know quite what it is – strewing
radiation all around the place,
trying to pick up women, going for
rides in cycle rickshaws. What Lucy
captures really well is this clash of
incompetence and malevolence.”
Some of that tone, and the comic,
expressive way she articulates it, will
be familiar to audiences of Prebble’s
breakthrough play, Enron , which
skewered the hubris and banality
of boardroom greed, while also
offering a nuanced song-and-dance
primer on the forces that collapsed
the world’s economy.
She says she tries to wait for
stories to announce themselves to
her. “I am not the sort of writer who
wants to have plays on all the time,
exploring aspects of me. I think it is
a big ask to get people to come out
spending money and sit in these
seats. I think I won’t bother people
unless it feels quite important. And
this to me felt quite important.”
Importance, for Prebble, is about
portents. She was sent Harding’s
book to read at the beginning of- The Salisbury poisonings
hadn’t happened yet, but Trump had
just come to power. Her excitement
about writing the play boiled
down to the sense that “there was
something in the present that I felt
was explained by this story”.
When she interrogated that
feeling, it was to do with the way
that the surreal had crept up to
become commonplace in our lives.
The absurdist criminality of the
poisoning of Litvinenko felt like a
harbinger of all that we have been
experiencing for the past fi ve years,
in a way; reality being knocked
out of shape by forces beyond our
control. “It’s about sudden shifts in
the boundaries of what is normal,”
Prebble says. “We all thought Trump
defi nitely won’t get in. Or Brexit
defi nitely won’t happen, and then
each time the reality shifts you have
to adjust.” From there it is not far
to the idea of “nothing is true and
everything is possible”.
Theatre seemed the perfect place
to explore the unsettling spectacle
of politics. Though Prebble has
been widely acclaimed as one of
the signifi cant dramatists of her
generation, she doesn’t think of
herself as a woman of the theatre,
necessarily. Her fi rst loves were
Continued overleaf
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