Neil Docking Archives - The Play Podcast

Neil Anthony Docking

by Douglas Schatz | Mar 4, 2022 | Contributor

Neil Anthony Docking

Neil Anthony Docking was born in South Wales, and studied music at the University of Westminster before finding work as a writer in press, television, radio and film, where his credits include Casualty, Emmerdale, Nuts & Bolts, The Throne Room, Station Road and many more.

He is married to the actor/director Maxine Evans, who also expertly directed the first productions of The Revlon Girl. The Revlon Girl is his first play for the theatre.

Podcast Episode(s)

004 - The Revlon Girl, by Neil Anthony Docking

Recommended Play(s)

Neil recommended All My Sons by Arthur Miller.

004 – The Revlon Girl, by Neil Anthony Docking

by theplaypodcast | May 14, 2020 | Podcast Episodes

004 – The Revlon Girl, by Neil Anthony Docking

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Show notes

It is June 1967 and a group of women are gathering in a function room of the hotel in a small Welsh mining village for a demonstration of beauty tips by a rep from the Revlon cosmetics company. The women are keeping the Revlon Girl’s visit a secret from others, because they fear that their neighbours may not think it appropriate that they treat themselves to a beauty session. This is because it is only eight months since a coal tip above the village collapsed, engulfing the local school and killing 116 children and 28 adults. Five of these children belonged to the mothers who are meeting in this hotel in Aberfan, to talk, cry and even laugh, without feeling guilty.

Neil Anthony Docking’s heartrending and funny play The Revlon Girl premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2017 before a run at the Park Theatre in London, which earned it an Olivier Nomination and the 2018 Off-West End Theatre Award for Best New Play. The play asks us to consider how one can carry on after such tragic personal loss? Who should be blamed: the National Coal Board or God? And how can we ensure that such preventable disasters never occur again – a question unbearably topical as the Grenfell fire demonstrated only weeks before the play premiered.

I’m delighted to be joined in this episode down the line from his home in London by the author himself.

Neil Anthony Docking

Neil was born in South Wales, and studied music at the University of Westminster before finding work as a writer in press, television, radio and film, where his credits include Casualty, Emmerdale, Nuts & Bolts, The Throne Room, Station Road and many more. He is married to the actor/director Maxine Evans, who also expertly directed the first productions of The Revlon Girl. The Revlon Girl is his first play for the theatre.

Recommended Play

Neil recommended All My Sons by Arthur Miller.

We have footnotes for this episode …

More in our Footnotes to The Revlon Girl episode on the political aftermath of Aberfan, the Queen’s visit – or rather non-visit, and how the Revlon Girl’s sales patter hits a nerve.

Footnotes for Patrons

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063 – Dancing at Lughnasa, by Brian Friel

May 24, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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Brian Friel’s magical memory play Dancing at Lughnasa is set at the time of the harvest festival in rural Ireland in 1936. It’s account of the events of that summer in the house of the five unmarried Mundy sisters is filtered many years later through the memory of Michael, the son of the youngest sister. His memory is undoubtedly unreliable, but it is also funny, poetic and profoundly poignant.

Josie Rourke, who directs the gorgeous new production of the play currently playing at the National Theatre in London, joins us to explore Friel’s spellbinding masterpiece.

062 – Private Lives, by Noël Coward

Apr 26, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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Noël Coward’s play Private Lives is both a dazzling dramatic comedy and an excoriating portrait of love and marriage among the disaffected elite of the Jazz Age. Coward himself starred in the premiere production in both London and New York in 1930, the critics acclaiming the show’s construction and wit, but predicting that it would not last. As a new production opens at the Donmar theatre in London, I ask Coward’s newest biographer, Oliver Soden, why the play has aged so well.

061 – Sea Creatures, by Cordelia Lynn

Apr 13, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

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Cordelia Lynn’s play Sea Creatures is a poetic exploration of loss and grief, its setting betwixt the sea and shore rich in metaphoric resonances. As we record this episode, Sea Creatures is playing at the Hampstead Theatre in London in a spellbinding production directed by James Macdonald.

I am delighted to be joined by playwright Cordelia Lynn to talk about her fascinating new play.