Penhall

Aug 14, 2022

Tanya MacNaughtonThe West Australian Comments Camera Icon Cast of Theatre 180’s upcoming season of Blue/Orange, Jarryd Dobson, Tinashe Mangwana and Andrew Lewis. Credit: Simon Santi/The West Australian Share to Facebook Copy the Link Playwright and screenwriter Joe Penhall has always felt like a bit of a misfit wherever he has lived, whether it was migrating from London to Perth at age four before his family moved east, or moving back to London at age 22 to spread the wings of his career. With a South African father and peripatetic background leaving him with a hybrid accent, Penhall understands a thing or two about identity and the tendency for people to make snap judgments about others — who they are, where they are from, how smart they are, how sane they are. It is partly why he loves his job as a writer, feeling legitimised when the likes of Daniel Craig, Ray Winstone, Bill Nighy or Michael Caine speak his words. “I think there’s something about having actors, particularly my favourite actors, speaking my lines that is really special and weirdly reassuring in a way,” Penhall says. “Writing a novel or writing poetry is quite challenging and confronting because I have so many selves, but if Daniel Craig is the character or Ray Winstone is the character or Michael Caine is the character, then it’s really clear who this guy is. “It’s kind of magical really. It’s a bit like writing a song and assembling a crack band to play it.” Camera Icon Playwright Joe Penhall. Credit: Supplied More passionate about people’s stories than reporting on straightforward facts, the former journalist left his job at a West London newspaper to pursue playwriting. His works were performed by the Royal Court Theatre and the National Theatre before adding screenplays to his resume with films including The Last King of Scotland and King of Thieves plus Netflix original series Mindhunter. Theatre 180 is presenting a season of Penhall’s 2000 Olivier award-winning play, and subsequent BBC film adaptation, Blue/Orange at Burt Memorial Hall from August 20, featuring Jarryd Dobson, Andrew Lewis and WAAPA graduate Tinashe Mangwana in the powerful three-hander examining race, medical ethics and mental health, specifically schizophrenia. Christopher (Mangwana) is on the verge of being released from a London psychiatric ward, despite still believing oranges are blue and Ugandan dictator Idi Amin is his father, while psychiatrists Robert and Bruce (Dobson and Lewis) argue whether the patient is ready to return to society. “He’s kind of at the mercy of these two very well-educated, very articulate and privileged, white psychiatrists who have all sorts of assumptions about who he is, what his state of mind is and what his backstory is, and they’re not necessarily right,” Penhall explains. Camera Icon Blue/Orange cast Jarryd Dobson, Tinashe Mangwana and Andrew Lewis. Credit: Simon Santi/The West Australian “I think in the last few years since the death of George Floyd and this massive social revolution that’s happened in the arts, particularly in the theatre, it’s a play that a lot of people want to do, because it’s a play with a black character who is at the mercy of the authorities and articulates his position well. “I don’t want to say anything as glib as it’s a plea for tolerance, but it’s a plea for intelligence. “It’s a plea for patience and specificity and asking people to investigate identity and not make assumptions. It’s kind of like an airbag where it expands on impact. I did manage to pack a lot in there.” Camera Icon Tinashe Mangwana plays Christopher. Credit: Simon Santi/The West Australian The Theatre 180 season will mark Blue/Orange’s WA premiere, remaining true to the original script, while Penhall says he sees potential in doing an Australian account. “When I wrote it and it was first done in Australia, I really wanted to do an Australian version,” he says. “I wanted Christopher, the patient in the mental hospital to have an Aboriginal background where they’re fighting over whether he’s mentally ill or these stories that are convoluted and unbelievable to them are actually true. “But nobody wanted to do that because they wanted to do the successful English version, which is fine. I can’t complain about that because it’s a champagne problem. “But I suppose, what I would like Perth audiences to do is think about how it applies to Australia. The play is about the complexity of identity and how important it is to understand all the complexities of somebody’s identity. “The world is starting to get that way now but it wasn’t like that when I grew up in the 1970s and 80s; it was pretty basic.” Blue/Orange is at Burt Memorial Hall, Cathedral Square, Perth, August 20 to September 3.