Josh Finan as Cain in Shook
(Photo: The Other Richard/Southwark Playhouse)
022 – Shook, by Samuel Bailey
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Samuel Bailey’s play Shook is set in a young offenders’ institution, where three young men have signed up for a vocational class. But they have not chosen the usual options of carpentry or bricklaying. They’re being taught parenting skills – how to look after a baby – because these three teenagers are, or about to become, fathers. Within the confines of a single bare room in the detention centre, Bailey gives us a glimpse of the challenging lives of young men who are still boys caught in a cycle of criminality as a result of their dysfunctional families, macho models of masculinity, and social prejudice. The play is sharp, funny, thought-provoking and very moving. It is all the more remarkable for being Sam’s full-length debut work.
Shook won the 2019 Papatango New Writing Award, and was produced by Papatango at the Southwark Playhouse in November 2019, before a short UK Tour. It was scheduled to transfer to the Trafalgar Theatre in London’s West End in Spring 2020, but sadly this run was cancelled by the Covid lockdown. Papatango released a filmed version of their production of Shook online in February 2021, which is available to view until 28th March 2021 on the Papatango website. Click here to visit Papatango.
I’m delighted to welcome the playwright Samuel Bailey, as well as George Turvey, the Artistic Director of Papatango and director of their production of Shook, to talk about this exceptional new play.
Note: this episode contains strong language.
Samuel Bailey
Samuel Bailey was born in London and raised in the West Midlands. He began writing plays in Bristol and developed work with the Bristol Old Vic, Tobacco Factory Theatres and Theatre West before moving back to London. He is an alumnus of the Old Vic Theatre’s Old Vic 12 program and of the Orange Tree Writers’ Collective. His play Shook won the 2019 Papatango award. He currently has a new play in progress for Paines Plough and Theatre Royal Plymouth, as well as a film script for Peter Cattaneo, the director of The Full Monty.
Recommended Play
Sam recommended The Mikvah Project by Josh Azouz
George Turvey
George Turvey trained as an actor and has appeared on stage and screen in roles as diverse as the world première of Arthur Miller’s No Villain at the Old Red Lion Theatre and Trafalgar Studios, and Batman Live World Arena Tour. George co-founded Papatango in 2007 and became the sole Artistic Director in January 2013. As their dramaturg, he has led the development of all of Papatango’s productions. Credits as director include Shook (Papatango, UK tour), Hanna (Papatango, UK tour), The Annihilation of Jessie Leadbeater (Papatango at ALRA), After Independence (Papatango at Arcola Theatre, 2016 Alfred Fagon Audience Award, and on BBC Radio 4), Leopoldville (Papatango at Tristan Bates Theatre), and Angel (Papatango at Pleasance London and Tristan Bates Theatre). George is the co-author of Being A Playwright: A Career Guide For Writers, published by Nick Hern Books.
Recommended Play
George recommended Faith, Hope and Charity by Alexander Zeldin.
The Footnotes to our episode on Shook include more observations on our prejudices against people from different classes or circumstances, parenting as empathy, and the heartbreak of long-distance childbirth.
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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg
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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.
Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.
Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.
114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.
I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
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