Guest Blog: Playwright Josh Azouz On VICTORIA'S KNICKERS

A few years ago, I came across a story about a boy who broke into Buckingham Palace and stole Queen Victoria's knickers. He served a three-month prison sentence and then on release broke back into the palace. Between 1838 and 1841, there were two more recorded break-ins and two more prison sentences.

The boy was called Edward Jones and the tabloids nicknamed him 'The Boy Jones.' He captured the public imagination - perhaps because nobody knew why he kept breaking in. Charles Dickens interviewed him in prison, but the boy gave nothing away.

Alongside this mystery, what fascinated me was Ed's audacity. He wasn't willing to just settle for living in a slum with six of his siblings and an alcoholic father. Instead he spent time in the royal library, sat on the throne and ate like a king.

I thought the story might make for a good piece of theatre, because there were so many half-truths and conspiracies that I'd be forced to construct a play that might, in turn, speak to today.

In the summer of 2017, the director Ned Bennett and I spent a month with 30 young actors as part of a National Youth Theatre course called Epic Stages. As a group, we imagined our way around the few facts we had about Ed Jones, courtesy of a book called The Queen's Stalker by Jan Bondeson.

We would spend all day playing games, improvising, putting action sequences together - such as how does Boy Jones escape palace guards; or how do we create a coronation with thousands of people; what is most imaginative way to kill Victoria (there were six assassination attempts on her life during her reign). I would write at night and bring in scenes for the actors to try out.

The scenes on first glance bore no similarity to what the actors did in the day. Instead, I was trying to channel the spirit of the room (hard to explain) and smuggle in facts about the actors' lives (often gleaned from tea breaks) into the scenes.

I don't normally overtly thieve from actors' lives, but I was interested in how the actors might be able to play themselves in a Victorian-set story. Ned and I didn't want the language or the performances to feel like they belonged in a BBC Dickens Christmas drama. We wanted something that felt a lot more present.

I thought that the far-fetched nature of the story might be best expressed as a musical. Chris Cookson started writing pop songs, and the NYT Epic Stages group wrote lyrics. At the end of the month, we presented 40 minutes, and the positive reception spurred us on to want to flesh this story out into a full-length show.

A year later... Ned and I started working with the NYT REP Company on what is now a five-act musical called Victoria's Knickers. Again, I have tried to absorb some of the actors' lives into the story, and have been writing and rewriting throughout rehearsals.

Ned is a visual director, so I try and leave space in the text for him to have some fun, yet also include moments of spectacle that probably require both Hollywood budgets and a different medium (film) to fully achieve. I expect those moments to be glorious.

Throughout rehearsals, we've been experimenting with the tone of the show. Is this a filthy romcom? A blood-soaked tragedy? A Horrible Histories-esque gag fest?

Regardless of tone, we've tried to tell the truth, avoid cynicism (it's too easy to be cynical), and lean into sentiment. The audience should expect a love story, big tunes - and some torture.

Victoria's Knickers is at Soho Theatre 27 October-10 November as part of the 2018 National Youth Theatre REP season

Photo credit: Helen Murray

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