Interview: 'This Play Is Not What You Think It Is': The Cast of CUCKOO at the Royal Court Chat Penguin Bars, iPads and Pinter

It’s a breezy Friday afternoon. The rest of Sloane Square is winding down for the weekend, pints and Aperol Spritzes. But the cast of Cuckoo, however, is gearing up for another performance. Midway through their run at the Royal Court, it’s tea and coffee for them. Maybe a biscuit.

Michelle Butterly, who plays rough edged matriarch Carmel in Michael Wynne’s new play, tells me that being an actor is a bit like being a monk. The cast arrive at five in the afternoon. They rehearse a line run in their dressing room before each performance. Daytime might be free, but they have to reserve energy. Everything orbits the night.

“This play is not what you think it is.” Michelle is right. Cuckoo is sui generis. On first appearance it sits firmly within the tradition of kitchen sink dramas, a genre spearheaded by the Royal Court in its early days when it championed writers like John Osborne and Arnold Wesker. But appearances are deceiving.

Set in a family living room in Birkenhead, Cuckoo demands a tightknit dynamic from its actors to breathe life into it’s characters, three generations of women struggling to connect with themselves, each other, and the outside world. Simultaneously funny, cryptic, and dark, Wynne’s writing is disarmingly beguiling. Persevere and you will be richly rewarded.

“I think that's Michael's ability of always finding layers underneath that are often very dark…it’s quite Pinteresque with its mundane chat alongside absurdist humour - very much the overall anxiety of life and living. That’s to say nothing of the pauses" Michelle remarks.

It does indeed start with a long pause. All four women are gathered around the table eyes transfixed to their phones in a silence that is both uncanny and funny to watch. We recognise ourselves immediately. We have all been there, lost in a digital screen, removed from reality, removed from the ones we slowly forget that we love.

Emma Harrison, who plays Carmel’s adolescent daughter Megyn, tells me that it is all thanks to Michael's script. The writing grants permission for the audience to laugh at things they might think that they can't laugh at.

“When I walk into the room after being in the bedroom for so long, there’s a lot of nervous laughter. You're laughing at something that you know shouldn't actually be funny. But you don't know how else to react.”

For Sue Jenkins, who plays Carmel’s aging mother, insists it is closer to Chekhov than Pinter.

“I find some of it quite Chekhovian, that balance between tragedy and comedy. Some of it is hysterical but there’s the balance with mundanity and confinement of everyday life…there's some elongated periods where no one really knows if they should be laughing.”

Like Chekhov there is a quiet politics that lingers beneath the surfaces.

“Look at how many Marks & Spencers are closing. For a lot of older people it's a community centre. It's happened in Wigan, it happened in Birkenhead – when they close there's a real loss within the community and slowly the community itself disappears.”

Sue agrees with Michelle. “Take somebody of Doreen's age, I mean she's finding a new way because of her iPad, but a lot of older people are deeply isolated. To me that is a political question.”

The Royal Court is just the first stop for Cuckoo before a transfer to the Liverpool Everyman.

“They're going get every reference, every joke. I've had a lot of comments about my character being a hard bitch. In Liverpool they would say she’s just quite passionate” Michelle giggles to herself.

“Although Liverpudlians call us people from across the water in Birkenhead 'woolly backs' because they say we're not proper Scousers. But you open your mouth in London and you're just a Scouser.”

Michelle doesn’t think a different audience dynamic alters the play’s DNA. The cast don’t play it for laughs; as a cast they search for the truth, but she admits that there is something beautiful about taking it home.

“It's a city that loves a good night out. You need to have its own story told back to it and the representation and that we're all authentically from that place. It feels like it's going to mean a lot.”

Cuckoo is not the first time Michelle and Sue have played a mother and daughter on stage. In fact it’s not even the first time they have done so in a play by Michael Wynne at the Royal Court. Wynne’s 2002 play The People are Friendly, follows a woman returning to her roots in Birkenhead after escaping to London.

“Michael messaged me to say he heard I've accepted, you know that kind of thing, he showed me cast list - and I just went, this is the perfect team. I'd done radio with Jodie and remembered how amazing Michelle was, genuinely. And I just thought, well, this is just perfect.”

There is some poetry to the casting: Cuckoo marks Emma Harrison’s professional stage debut.

“In the audition I was, like, sorry, this is just, this is really mad. I didn't even have an agent. I was recommended by somebody I worked with in drama school, recommended me to the cast and director, and that's how I got the audition.”

The Royal Court’s Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner was the first play Emma saw after lockdown. She’s been coming back as often as she can.

“It's just like crazy to think that now I'm on that stage. I feel very lucky, this is cringey, but I believe everything happens for a reason. I believe, like I was meant to work with that director in third year and then get recommended for this role and be here for this job. I think it's very special that this role came about the year that I was graduating from drama school, this play, that's so rooted in my background and my family. It’s very special.”

Much of the production’s quilted cosiness comes from its’s use of food to unlock nostalgia. Penguin bars, Walkers ready salted crisps and orange squash were props in all our childhoods. Just a sip or bite is enough to spark reminiscences to pre-teen school trips, sports days, endless summers, sunshine.

“It’s what I have when I go to my nan's house. It’s comfort food…that's what I guess the play is about.” Says Emma. For Sue it makes no difference:

“I just think I eat a little bit more if I've not eaten before the show. I eat a bit more fish and chips that night if I'm starving and have a few more bites of the Club biscuit. Honestly it doesn't really guide anything.”

“What's difficult is when you mistime it” Jodie, playing Carmel’s sister Sarah, interjects. “You put a big chip in your mouth and then you go, oh fuck I've got to do that speech. But also, I think it's really important to show women on stage eating loads of food. As much as I find it difficult, my stomach's up the wall because I’m on stage with the adrenaline and everything and we've got to speak and be clear, but I think the image, the action of it is really important.”

We are in a backroom of the theatre with a window that opens onto the street. The evening clamour from outside is getting louder. It is almost five and the cast will have to disappear for their line run. I have a final question: Why did Vicky Featherstone choose this play as her swansong show to round out her time as artistic director of the Court? Sue offers one answer:

“It's very different than I think anything else that Vicky's chosen before. She kept remarking on how different it is. There are so many props in this and she's like, I never do plays with props.”

We mull over a few theories. Perhaps it’s a wink to the Royal Court’s proud history of placing working class voices literally and metaphorically centrestage. Perhaps it a reflection of the theatre’s dedication to writing and writers: Cuckoo doesn’t allow for grand directorial interpretations. The play demands a rigourness from its director to being the page to the stage. But according to Sue, Vicky’s style allows for some theatrical wiggle room. 

“She gives us a lot of freedom. I think that's probably her style of directing as well, to give freedom. I think she was happy to do so because she loves everything about it. She loves the relations. Even she would relate it to her own family. You know what I mean? Everybody does apparently.”

Cuckoo runs at the Royal Court until 19 August. It plays at the Liverpool Everyman from 6 to 23 September.

Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan

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