Guest Blog: Dan Skinner On BRIAN & ROGER - A HIGHLY OFFENSIVE PLAY

The characters of Brian and Roger were birthed by me and Harry Peacock on a TV set back in 2014. Hanging around between takes, we started to improvise and pretend to be these two divorced middle-aged men, trying really hard to see the positive side of their situation. They both had rictus grins on their face talking about sharing a pork pie in the park and how it was great that they wouldn't be seeing their kids for two weeks because it will give them some freedom to do what they like. But they were both dying inside. And we found them very funny.

When filming ended, Harry sent me a voice note as the character to my phone. It made me howl with laughter and so I responded. We went from there and, soon after, the podcast began. It was a very quick birth, and because it was so much fun, we threw everything at it.

I think what made the podcast successful was the characters' dynamic. They are both middle-aged white men who are on the scrap heap trying to get on with things. Roger is extremely vulnerable and desperate to get back with his wife Claire and son Jamie, Brian just wants to move forward and focus on his impossible dream: to build a four-lane single motorway from Mongolia to Eastern Europe to revolutionise trade routes. He thinks being a single man will help him achieve this.

Brian is also a predator, whereas Roger is a vulnerable victim, and so the pair enter this toxic relationship in which Roger does Brian's bidding - the result of which is usually some massive personal cost to Roger. It sounds bleak, but we find it funny, and so do lots of others it turns out. Obviously, we are messing about with extreme ideas and consequences in the podcast because exaggeration is funny, but it does serve to some as a warning not to mess up their marriage!

David Babani, who runs the Menier Chocolate Factory, is a big fan of the podcast and got in touch in late 2019 asking us if we'd like to turn it into a play. It was a fabulous opportunity that we couldn't turn down.

It presented us with a lot of questions, however, or 'solution opportunities' as David likes to call them. What do these characters actually look like? How do they interact? How could you tell these stories as a play? David helpfully had an answer to all these questions, and in early 2020 we all sat down and wrote the show. We finished it just before Covid struck and then we all went home for about a year. We re-emerged in April 2021 and picked up where we left off!

We all decided that if we were going to do a play then we might as well go for it and make it something epic which will take us around the world. David has assembled a sensational creative team, which has made it possible for us to tell an epic story and to realise our wildest dreams on a stage. The play looks stunning; the design, the visuals, the lights and the sound all help us to tell the story and it wuld be a far lesser theatrical event without them.

We were about a week into rehearsals when we hit a major stumbling block. Harry suffers from Lupus, a very nasty and unpredictable autoimmune disease. It can come out of nowhere and knock him sideways, which is exactly what happened during that first week. Harry came to the very difficult decision that he was going to have to pull out. He was heartbroken, obviously, not only for himself, but for the show.

David, however, sprang into action and in no time at all he had found a replacement in Simon Lipkin, an astonishing talent, who managed to learn all of Harry's 700-plus lines or 43 monologues in about three or four days. A stunning achievement. Not only did he learn the lines, but he brought the character to life, made him hilarious and brought something new to the part that none of us had seen previously. He really complemented the show and we're very lucky to have him.

And the result is Brian & Roger - A Highly Offensive Play. Whilst the theatrical version is its own thing, it still retains the podcast's anarchic, silly, touching, often outrageous and dysfunctional elements - and we think it makes a great play.

Brian & Roger - A Highly Offensive Play is at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 18 December - book tickets here

Photo credit: Nobby Clark

To post a comment, you must register and login.