Lisa Dwan told David Hennessy about 23.5 Hours, her new play that tackles sexual misconduct and evokes thought about issues like cancel culture and #metoo but stays free of any agenda or message for the audience.
Lisa Dwan, the well known actress from Athlone, is about to return to the London stage in a play that provokes thought about issues such as #metoo and cancel culture.
23.5 Hours by American writer Carey Crim centres around the aftermath of a sexual misconduct conviction and its effects on friends and family.
Lisa stars as Leigh: A wife standing by her convicted husband amidst doubt and scrutiny. Leigh navigates the ultimate test of love, truth, and loyalty with each revelation forcing her to re-evaluate their life together.
Lisa Dwan is known for her roles in Netflix’s Top Boy and Fair City.
She is also one of the best known performers of the work of Samuel Beckett and regularly performs his work as well as writing and lecturing on late great Irish dramatist.
Directed by Katharine Farmer, 23. 5 Hours, in its European premiere, focuses on what happens when a high school teacher who’s been found guilty of sexual misconduct returns home from prison.
Even though convicted, Tom continues to proclaim his innocence.
23.5 Hours follows Carey Crim’s earlier piece Never Not Once which looked at the aftermath of a sexual assault on the survivor and her family.
The playwright has described 23.5 Hours as ‘a companion piece’ to that play with the focus now firmly on the family and friends of the convicted.
The audience, like Leigh and other characters in the play, only get as much information about Tom as he is willing to share.
As family bonds strain and secrets unravel, 23.5 Hours is a story of the corrosive power of doubt.
Joining Lisa Dwan in the cast are David Sturzaker (To Kill a Mockingbird, West End), Allyson Ava-Brown (Angelica in Hamilton, West End), Jonathan Nyati (The Jungle, West End) and Jem Matthews (The Unfriend, West End).
What is it that attracted you to this play?
“It’s the first good play I’ve read in a long time.
“It is full of nuance and invites nuance, and therefore is very human.
“It doesn’t have an agenda for the audience and I think as a result, it’s very provocative in the way theatre does best.
“I think in these very polarizing times where things are so extreme, where conversation is dead, theatre can lead the way in a more thoughtful, humane, considered nuanced way.
“And it’s really exciting to be part, and a small part in many respects, but be part of helping people remember why theatre is important precisely because this play does that.
“I feel very privileged, and I’ve only just realised how much I’ve missed theatre like this, because I was brought up on theatre like this, and I’ve missed it.
“I think it’s a really excellent play.”
Tell us about Leigh. She is very loyal but also has her doubts. She just doesn’t know, isn’t that right?
“Well, no one knows.
“And what I love about this play is there’s no agenda for the audience.
“It’s an extremely complex situation and these days, we don’t like complexity.
“We want a hashtag and we want an opinion and we want a side.
“I think this examines the trauma of what can happen to a family after a cancellation and the victims involved, both the accused and the victim aren’t at the actual centre of it, it’s the people around.
“It’s a painful position for a character like mine to be involved in because she’s naturally a caretaker, she’s a nurse, she’s a mother, she’s a feminist, she’s a wife.
“It’s very complicated for her.”
It is a side we often don’t see, isn’t it? Whenever an individual is publicly disgraced or vilified, there is little thought for their family..
“Yeah, and what may have been permissible 20, 30 years ago isn’t now.
“All sorts of things can happen to you now if you put a foot out of line on social media for all sorts of reasons.
“That’s not to minimise sexual offence which is a very serious conviction but I’m just saying that we’re human beings as well and we’re all fallible.
“We love people who are fallible, and that can be very complicated.”
The audience goes on the same journey as Leigh. Just as she does not know the truth of it, the audience must make up its mind…
“And what I’m hoping to do as a performer is to pay homage to this brilliant play but not in the least be didactic.
“I want to keep this as free as possible for the audience to confront their own relationship with this issue and not have an agenda for them.”
Leigh also has to think of her son Nicholas..
“Of course, and the impact this has on him.
“He’s 14 when it happens and how alienating that is for a teenager: Imagine going to high school and something like this happens to your father.
“It’s very painful for everybody involved in a situation like this.”
Are you having interesting conversations in the rehearsal room?
“Yes, we really did.
“And what I’ve kind of fought for is that as actors, and thank God we’re so busy that we don’t have time to have that much conversation, but that we can allow each other to have different opinions about each scene that we’re in, and for it to be moment to moment.
“You know, it can be a hair’s breadth at any given moment which way our sensitivities and feelings lie so I want to keep it as precarious as that the whole way.”
This follows Carey Crim’s Never Not Once and is also the European premiere of this particular play..
“This is my first time encountering her work and I am so impressed.
“I find there’s something sort of Arthur Miller-esque about this because even though the topic might seem to be pertinent or of now the #metoo movement, etc, this was actually written in 2012 so it precedes that hashtag. it precedes Trump, it precedes Clinton running. It precedes that #metoo movement and I think as a result, it’s very thoughtful and more human in a way, and less predictable.
“I think there’s a timeless quality to it and this issue in a way that Miller has brought us in things. The Crucible comes to mind a lot.
“The Crucible and cancellation are very similar bedfellows artistically in these days, I think.”
You say you fell in love with theatre like this..
“Theatre was that one space where in a darkened auditorium you could confront all your own fears and see yourself in so many characters, in the other, that’s very hard to enjoy when the director or the theatre or the playwright or the actor has a message for you.
“I feel very spoiled because the theatre that I really fell in love with, as you know, is Samuel Beckett and Beckett did away with narratives altogether and therefore the space that Beckett brought us into was devoid of any politics or message or agenda for the audience. It was simply opening a space where you could put your finger on a very human wound and the audience could find their own wounds without the public scrutiny.
“These days there’s nowhere to escape public scrutiny on social media, under hashtags, the fear of saying the wrong thing. We’ve become immensely intolerant to all sorts of people and about all sorts of issues. You’re either in one camp or the other. We have lost the ability to say, ‘I don’t know. I’m confused, this is a complex issue’.
“We seem to have lost the ability to hold opposing views in the same hand and confront that and I think theatre is a very sacred space and I think unfortunately a lot of artistic directors and directors and writers, maybe chasing modern audiences, have maybe lost the ability to recognise that and defend that.
“I think theatre started chasing relevance and as a result stopped recognising what it was really brilliant at and so therefore it feels like old times for me in what I love about this play is the intellectual space that this creates and the emotional space and how it invites the audience to expand its own opinion of themes like this.”
Is that what Beckett and something like this play have in common, they are not chasing ‘likes’ or trying to preach?
“It’s not a pulpit and theatre started to become a bit of a pulpit.”
You’ve mentioned #metoo, what is your feelings on it? Has it made things better?
“I think that movement was long overdue but it hasn’t ended.
“Some people kind of think, ‘Yeah, well, that’s done and dusted’. It isn’t. It isn’t over and actually we’re living in a time where this is the pushback.
“We’ve had a pushback against that movement.
“We’ve had a backlash.
“I would say other terms like ‘Karen’ and things like that that have entered our vocabulary are backlashes against the #metoo movement, of which there are many other strands that are fuelled from the same place which is misogyny.
“And misogyny is as old as time, because women are extremely powerful and I’m sure we will always be and always be threatening and men will always be easily threatened, I think.
“And also, let’s not forget women’s internalised misogyny.
“Years of internalising man’s hatred towards her has fractured any kind of real propensity for a women’s movement to stay and last, I think so I think that the #metoo movement was long overdue, but I don’t think ultimately that much has changed.
“I think the same forces have just moved on into something else, or found other ways of expressing themselves because for me #metoo and the abuses that led to #metoo were never really about sex or enjoyment of, it was all about disempowering women.
“It was another weapon to disempower women, to shame women, to abuse women.
“I don’t think it’s really about any kind of real gratification, maybe in a few twisted instances, but it’s mostly about power, not gratification.
“I think also men are victims of this too, because power is a weird one.
“Often you’re not even aware that you’re powerful, you’re fuelled by so much insecurity and self-loathing and perhaps fear that you’re not aware that you have power and with that comes responsibility.”
I bet you’re looking forward to seeing how this play resonates with an audience. It’s very important subject matter, isn’t it?
“Yeah, I think it is.
“I know they did audience polls back in 2012 when they first performed this and so many people sided with Tom.
“I suppose since the #metoo movement and people being really educated on this issue that wasn’t really spoken about, I know that it’s definitely, in recent years, swayed the other way.
“However, I still want it to kind of defend that middle space, because for me, that’s the more interesting space, the space for nuance and doubt and questioning.
“I think there’s an awful lot to be said for ‘I don’t know’.
“I’m somebody who likes to read multiple sources of news and information.
“I like to have friends from all different kinds of political opinions and places.
“Even if some of them seem incredibly disdainful to me, it is even more important that I engage.
“I feel that we’ve become sort of intellectual Philistines in that regard, hashtags and social media have shut down conversation. I think it’s so important to keep trying to get to know the other, even the other in you and that’s what, again, I think theatre can invite an audience to do without scrutiny, in the dark, in the dark themselves.”
In these days of cancel culture, people are so quick to say, ‘He’s guilty’, or ‘She’s a bad person’ without ever being in possession of all the facts…
“It seems like you can diagnose someone’s entire morality by a f**king tweet.
“The fact that Twitter has become a real thing…
“When they started introducing that in work meetings, I thought it was a joke.
“The fact that it’s become such a currency in our society is just insane.”
Do you ever bother with social media yourself?
“Unsuccessfully, yes. I’m not quite sure what the hell I’m doing or want to do. I’m reluctant, reluctant.
“All it ends up doing is I end up buying things I don’t need or in the middle of the night falling down a kind of rabbit hole of inquiry that I’m no better off from.”
The interesting thing about the play is that it is concerned with the fallout and less with the offence itself.
The story is not about determining Tom’s guilt or otherwise, that becomes incidental.
“It’s all about the wounds, transgenerational wounds which comes up in the play.
“It’s all about the wound and theatre at its best houses that.
“We don’t see that in social media, do we?
“We watch the kicking.
“We watch the scraps but we don’t see the wounds, the aftermath and this is the aftermath.
“How can we expand our humanity without seeing that, without confronting that?
“This just makes me feel so proud to be part of this company reminding audiences of that space and the importance of it.
“It’s made me miss it and realise how long it’s been since I’ve been in a play that’s brought me here.”
Sounds like you haven’t been in a play you’ve been as excited about for a long time..
“Without a shadow of a doubt.
“And it’s a wonderful company of actors.
“We’re a real team working on this and that feels great, too.”
You are well known for doing the work of Beckett, what has he meant to you?
“Beckett changed my life without a shadow of a doubt and not just professionally.
“I think the lack of narrative in Beckett and precisely that space that Beckett gives us, gives the audience, gave me, he introduced me to me.”
You did No’s Knife a few years ago, is there more of his work that you would like to discover?
“I would happily go back into his world again and again and again.
“Too much of anything is bad for you.
“It’s good to have a rich and varied work life balance.
“I’m delighted that Beckett is a kind of stronghold in my career but I love to do other things and I’ve had an extensive TV career. I do all sorts of things on top of that.”
More recently we have seen you in Bloodlands and Blackshore, has it been good to be doing some work at home?
“It’s great, I’ve really enjoyed that.
“Yeah, I’ve really, really, really enjoyed it.
“It’s important for me, it’s important for my family, to remember that I am Irish and to keep a foot in the old country.”
As the industry at home goes from strength to strength, it’s great that there’ll be more opportunities to work at home.
There’ll be more Bloodlands’ and Blackshores..
“I hope so, yeah. I hope so.
“I love Ireland very much so I hope so.”
Blue Touch Paper Productions, OPM Productions and Adam Kenwright in association with Park Theatre presents 23.5 Hours at Park Theatre 4 September- 5 October.
For more information and to book, click here.
