Staging of Alexander Masters' award-winning debut novel to premiere at new 200-seat Underbelly theatre Topside
A stage adaptation of Alexander Masters' bestselling debut novel Stuart: A Life Backwards will help to launch a major new venue at this year's Edinburgh Fringe festival.
Jack Thorne, best known for writing the Bafta-winning television shows This Is England '88 and The Fades, has adapted Masters' autobiographical story about his unlikely friendship with a local homeless man, Stuart Shorter, who died at the age of 33 after being hit by a train. As the title implies, Masters runs the chronology in reverse.
"I just think it's a story with such soul it's untrue," Thorne told the Guardian, "I was drawn to the character of Stuart and the fact that he's allowed to be complex."
Masters' novel won the Guardian first book award in 2005 and was subsequently made into a TV drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy. Thorne, who owns an unproofed copy of the original manuscript, has seen the screen version, but tried to forget about it when he started writing his own two years ago. "I didn't want to do a play that was based on a TV series that was based on a book," he said.
The play will premiere at a new 200-seat Edinburgh Fringe venue called Topside, part of the Underbelly group, which will host a programme focused on theatre and cabaret. Located in the new rehearsal complex behind the Edinburgh Festival theatre, it will be the 15th venue in the Underbelly empire.
After the Fringe, Stuart: A Life Backwards will tour to the Watford Palace theatre and the Sheffield Crucible, which is co-producing the show with HighTide Festival theatre. The last, whose annual Suffolk festival starts today, has become a significant force in Edinburgh since winning a Fringe First for Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's Lidless in 2010. West Yorkshire Playhouse associate Mark Rosenblatt will direct, with design by Jon Bausor.
Thorne also has two other adaptations on the go at present. His version of John Ajvide Lindqvist's vampire novel Let the Right One In is being produced by the National Theatre of Scotland in June, while a film of Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down is due for release next year. "To spend six to eight months of your life reading a story and working out how a great writer tells stories is a really great thing," he said. "It's got to be a brilliant book, but you learn so much from that writer."
via Books: Fiction | guardian.co.uk
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