It is one of British cinema’s most quotable comedies: a tale of destitute London actors “drifting into the arena of the unwell” who go on holiday by mistake to the Lake District. Now, the inebriated world of Withnail and I – complete with the notorious super-sized joint called the Camberwell carrot – is destined for the stage, adapted by the much-loved 1987 film’s writer-director, Bruce Robinson.
The play will have its world premiere at the Birmingham Rep in May, directed by Sean Foley, who described Withnail and I as “part of the furniture of British comedy” and said “if it wasn’t so funny, it would be tragic”.
Robinson, 77, said that the prospect of the stage production was “most bizarre” for him, coming almost half a lifetime since he made the film. “I’ve written so many other scripts but I may as well have not bothered with any except this one,” he said, “because it’s the only one that seems to have any traction in my life.”
The film gave early roles to Richard E Grant as the mercurial alcoholic Withnail and Paul McGann as “I”, the melancholic narrator, who swerves the advances of Withnail’s ruddy Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) when they stay at his countryside cottage. But it was a novel before it became a screenplay and was based on Robinson’s own experiences as an out of work actor.
“I was sitting there with four quid a week National Assistance in Camden Town,” he said. “It was just so devastatingly awful, life then. It was a question of: do I want to cry my eyes out at the situation I’m in or is it so ridiculous I may as well laugh at it? That’s why I sat down and wrote the novel. I never thought it would go anywhere.”
In his early 20s, Robinson secured a prominent role as Benvolio in the hugely successful film of Romeo and Juliet (1968), directed by Franco Zeffirelli in Italy. The director’s unwelcome personal attention, he said, included asking him “Are you a sponge or a stone?” Robinson gave that line to the lascivious Uncle Monty in the film.
“I don’t want to slap the dead about but Zeffirelli wasn’t a very kind man,” said Robinson. “I had a lot of those kinds of problems going on all the time … I had problems with people who had the power to cast somebody in a movie … who thought it was their right to do what they would. It was terribly disturbing. It was the thing that actually, on the positive side, made me want to be a writer – a proper writer – because to arrive in Rome straight out of drama school and to get hit on like that was, you know: why have you cast me? Have you cast me because you fancy me or because you think I can play the part?”
Robinson had further roles in TV and film but said that the “only acting I’ve ever done that I really self-approved of was in a play”. That was a 1972 production at the Mermaid theatre in London of RC Sherriff’s classic Journey’s End, directed by Eric Thompson. “I did fringe theatre and bits and pieces all over the place but that was a proper part in a proper play,” he said. Journey’s End features in Withnail and I, as does Hamlet, whose speech “What a piece of work is a man” is delivered by Grant in the film’s rain-soaked ending.
Nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for The Killing Fields (1984), Robinson made his directorial feature debut with Withnail and I, produced by George Harrison’s company Handmade Films. He has little history of writing for the theatre professionally. “When my grandfather died, I was about 12 and I got his typewriter,” he remembered. “The first thing I wrote on it was a play. It was about a man who had been condemned to death in a prison cell. One guard was a bastard, the other sweet. Something in my brain was itching to write down drama.” Robinson described his time at school as “bloody awful” but said that school plays had drawn him into drama: “I can thank them for that but not for anything else.”
Sean Foley, who will stage the world premiere at Birmingham Rep – where he is artistic director – said it is a profound account of “a friendship falling apart”. Foley’s CV includes directing a theatrical adaptation of the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers and he said that taking a well-known story from screen to stage was both a “poisoned chalice and holy grail”. While attempting to satisfy the original’s fanbase, he explained, you also try to reach a new audience while “holding the essence” of the film. Next year, in London, Foley will direct Steve Coogan in Armando Iannucci’s stage adaptation of the satirical war film Dr Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
A Mean Girls musical and a play based on Minority Report are among several other forthcoming productions directly inspired by films. What does Foley think of those who worry that theatre is relying too heavily on cinema for source material? “It’s like saying to William Shakespeare, ‘Please make up your own stories. We’re not putting these on – you’ve stolen them from other sources.’ That’s my argument. Theatre is constantly using source material from other places. It always has done. Over the last 130 odd years we’ve had this new artform called cinema – it’s just another source.”
Casting for Withnail and I, which runs from 3-25 May, has not yet begun. “I’m very keen to hear from actors who want to be in this play,” said Foley. “They are amazing parts and I’m very excited to see who we cast.”
