BBC Audio Drama Award

Last year I was involved as an actor in an online drama called The Kindness of Time, which recently won BBC Audio Drama Award 2016.  If you’d like to listen, here’s a link to the site: http://www.rosieboulton.co.uk/ 

Seeing Noise in South Africa

I went to see my play Noise at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, and was kindly hosted by the play’s director, Dorothy Anne Gould and her husband, Mike who made me very welcome.  It was a fantastic production, great reviews and standing ovations!  Had such a great time also hanging out with Dorothy and Mike and seeing the wonderful work she does with some of the homeless guys there – an inspirational woman!  Lots to remember and reflect upon…  We talked about some of my other my plays too; most notably, River’s Up and Mr and Mrs Schultz, don’t know if anything will come of this, but I would love to see my work again in that amazing theatre.  Also had the all clear just before Christmas following a scan and biopsy as I had some worrying results following my regular medicals to do with my previous cancer, so a very positive end to 2015.  Below are a couple of reviews and a production photograph of Dorothy’s very talented cast…

'Noise' is relevant and uncomfortable

Jennifer de Klerk  ‘Artslink Co Za’

11/21/2015 11:56:11

Jennifer de Klerk: Music so loud that the walls vibrate, plaster dust sifts from the ceiling and the bass throbs through your head.  You can’t think, you can’t sleep; all you can do is stuff your ears and endure, hoping that the neighbours will come to their senses soon. They never do.  It’s not an uncommon scenario in my part of the town, so I related well and truly to the dilemma of Danny and Becky, a delightful young couple staking their claim on a flat in Hillbrow.  Young, so very young. He’s 18, starting his first job. She’s 17, pregnant, cast off by her family. It hurts, but she has Danny and the baby and a fresh start as a new family.  The first scene is beautifully played, kids in love, having fun, playing house … then the noise floods through the walls and reality sets in.  Exhausted, irritated, bickering, they ask the neighbour to turn it down. He turns it up. They report him to the agents and Matt, physical, psycho, unemployed, drunk and booze-driven, enters their lives.  There’s another beautifully played scene between Matt (Rowlen von Gericke) and Becky (Nokuthula Ledwaba), a delicate game of connection and withdrawal, a cat playing with a mouse…  The end is clear, the future is written – desperately you hope for a resolution, a way out, a way to preserve the innocence, the dreams. But this is reality …  The play was originally set in Birmingham in the UK, obviously then a down-and-out city. Unfortunately it transposes only too well to modern Johannesburg and has been neatly recast in the vernacular. Danny (Thabo Rometsi) and Becky are instantly recognisable and so, unfortunately, is rage-filled Matt lashing out at the world that has denied him.  Fear, helplessness, nowhere to turn, where the strongest rule and the weak endure, or leave, or die … it’s a bleak and despondent outlook.  This is not a comfortable play, but one impossible to forget, a searing piece acted and directed with exceptional skill.  Certainly I will remember it next time the noise shakes the ceiling and no one answers the phone.  Noise is written by Alex Jones and directed by Dorothy Ann Gould. It runs at the Market Theatre until December 6.

This is a powerful piece of theatre, but you have to wonder why anyone would want to see it. We live amidst brutality and madness, where the abuse of women is rife, and men and women, alike, carry ourselves with a constant tinge of wariness. Noise heightens this in 90 minutes of domestic soapy cum thriller. Theatre Review by LESLEY STONES.  ‘Daily Maverick’

A play now running at the Market Theatre in Joburg is stunningly well performed, and excellently directed. But I would not recommend it to anyone. I came out of Noise feeling traumatised, as if I had lived the experience of the characters with them.  Noise was written by Alex Jones more than 20 years ago, and set in Birmingham in the United Kingdom. But the play feels like it has always belonged in Hillbrow, where it’s now set thanks to director Dorothy Ann Gould, and Mark Graham Wilson, who helped to adapt the script.  It is a powerful piece, but you have to wonder why anyone would want to see it, or why Gould wanted to revive it. We live amidst brutality and madness, where the abuse of women is rife, and men and women, alike, carry ourselves with a constant tinge of wariness. Noise heightens this in 90 minutes of domestic soapy cum thriller.  When we meet a young and decent couple, excited to be moving into their new flat in Hillbrow, we just know something bad is going to happen. And it does, when the neighbour’s music comes boom-boxing through the walls at all hours of the day, and night. That is intolerable by itself, but when they meet the source of that noise, the drug-addled, psychotic and unemployed Matthew, the trauma escalates.  Gould writes in the programme notes that Noise is “searing, brutal, and cathartic.” I missed the cathartic part, sitting through the show and jumping every time the music began, tense for what was about to unfold. Actors Rowlen von Gericke, Thabo Rametsi and Nokuthula Ledwaba are all excellent, but it the men who control this story. Von Gericke is terrifying as the psychotic neighbour, clearly unhinged and swinging from lost and lonely to violently deranged in a second. He is utterly believable, as is the entire story about a young couple whose hope and optimism is ground down, and snuffed out brutally by this third party.  Rametsi as Dan and Ledwaba, as his young wife Becky, capture a playfulness and almost tangible love between their characters in the early scenes, although their chatter drags on for too long, when you know that action is lurking in the wings. Rametsi is a powerful force, an open book of an actor, who has you initially sharing his enthusiasm and delight for life, then later feeling his fear, and helplessness, despair and loss. It is the searing combination of Von Gericke’s mania, and Rametsi’s shattered dreams, that make this play so viscerally gruelling, aided by the brutality that stunts Ledwaba’s Becky.  The noise that erupts from time-to-time hammers home the inhumanity of it, often so loudly that you cannot hear the words until the volume is toned down to let the dialogue continue. The pounding in your eardrums is another reason why you feel you are living the trauma with them. You leave wondering what you would do in the same situation. Call the cops? Resort to violence yourself? Be defeated and broken? You’ll admire the intensity, and talk about the actions, and emotions, for sure. But I doubt you will, actually, enjoy it. DM

Noise at the Market Theatre

My play, Noise is currently in rehearsal at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, directed by the wonderful Dorothy Gould; also a brilliant actor.  I am very proud to have a production of mine at such a prestigious theatre, and more especially because of its stand against apartheid, which rightly earned it the title of the ‘Theatre of the Struggle’, a place where black and white actors and playwrights could mix and perform on equal terms during those controversial times.  Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times review of the Soho Theatre production of 'Noise' remarked: ‘Alex Jones writes with fury, passion and compassion about those whose voices are seldom heard’.  It has been written that the Market Theatre has uniquely provided a ‘voice to the voiceless’, so I hope ‘Noise’ is perhaps a play that will have resonances for an audience in South Africa as its themes are also about a struggle to be heard.

http://markettheatre.co.za/shows/watch/noise

The other Alex Jones and gun control

There is more than one Alex Jones, and one of them is the notorious right-wing commentator whose opinions on gun control is in my opinion both inflammatory and dangerous; just check out his interview with Piers Morgan to see what I mean.  Anyhow some American citizens occasionally mistakenly contact me believing me to be him, and a few years ago an American student got in touch with a series of questions about a proposed gun control bill.  I emailed back to let him know that I was ‘the British playwright Alex Jones’.  He confirmed that he had indeed thought he was contacting the American Alex Jones, but was still interested in my opinion, so I answered his questions for him.  Following more recent mass shootings in America, and President Obama’s plaintive and somewhat resigned response to a horrific crime which is now seemingly a terrifyingly common event, I thought I would post the answers to the questions posed to me by Shannon Miller for a paper he was presenting at Ivy Tech College Lawrenceburg …

1.       Why do you disagree with the Proposed Gun Ban?

I obviously don't disagree with the gun ban.  It puzzles me and my fellow countrymen that guns are so openly available in America.  Gun laws are extremely tight in our country, and gun licences are more or less only granted for shotguns for farmers or games sportsmen.  No one in our country is allowed to own a handgun, and automatic or semi-automatic rifles are simply not available here.  The safety of the public would to my mind be compromised if our laws allowed private citizens to own fire arms, and anyone found in possession in this country would certainly be looking at a hefty custodial sentence.

2.       Do you believe passing stricter background checks will help stop mass shootings and keep guns out of the hands of the criminals?

Criminals are criminals because they know how to subvert the law.  How could stricter checks possibly make that much difference to someone who is intent on owning a dangerous weapon?  The mass killings that seem to be something of annual event in America truly shock us.  It seems unbelievably crass that your government would actually allow anyone to own a weapon that could be used in this way.  And after the event, your gun lobbies and NRA are always the first on the scene to spout banalities about how the ownership of guns protects society against these maniacs.  It seems to me that when these events occur, the second amendment of your constitution is generally cited as if it was some sort of biblical truth: well that particular document was composed in 1791 together with the rest of the bill of rights when the world was a very different place - it's an historic document, and should be treated as such, and not wheeled out on it's creaky rusty wheels to justify mass murder.

3.       Why do you think private individuals should be allowed to own these types of semi auto rifles?

Not only should private individuals not be allowed to own semi automatic rifles, but no one in America should be allowed to own such weapons.  Why on earth would anyone need such deadly firepower; it's like taking a sledgehammer to crush a walnut.  But I would go even further; I fervently believe that American citizens should not be allowed to own fire arms of any description.  If these weapons were removed from American streets and the ownership of guns made entirely illegal, it seems obvious to me that gun crime would inevitably go down.  Our police force don't carry guns at present because they don't need to; there are of course some guns on our streets, but it's an extremely rare event when police here are called out to tackle gun crime, and criminals here are reticent to use these weapons because they understand that even being in possession of an illegal fire arm could lead to a possible life sentence.

4.       Do you think the government’s true goal behind the Proposed Gun Ban is to reduce gun crimes or do you think there is another agenda behind the ban?

I do believe that the Obama administration would like to tackle gun crime in your country, but even now they aren't going far enough.  I said some years ago that what America needs to do before the rest of the world listens to its opinions, is to take care of its own people and grow up as country.  I have always believed there were three different things USA needed to do in order to be taken seriously as a voice of reason; the first was to provide a national health service free at point of contact for all of its citizens, the second was to elect a black President, and lastly ban the sale of fire arms to all private individuals, even if they think their precious bill of rights tells them otherwise.  America has achieved one of these aims, perhaps one day it will be grown up enough to tackle the others.  When someone shoots someone there is a summary justice at work that is obviously morally reprehensible, and your senators and governors are always straight away rightly ready to label the perpetrators as being monsters and deplorable criminals, but some of those very spokespeople also condone the use of the death penalty in various states.  A question needs to be asked of America I think, and that question is – how much do you really care about your citizens?

The Dirty Harry Band

My band has had a busy summer playing local festivals and pubs, pulling in the crowds and getting people up on their feet dancing like nutters.  I really love strutting my stuff  like some middle-aged rock god and just to prove it here’s a link from the Mapp festival a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fDbcPrhOOsY&app=desktop

River's Up Touring Again

River’s Up touring again…

The very first play to tackle the serious subject of climate change is touring again to retell the epic romance of Tom and Sally Millington.  Laugh and cry with two extraordinary everyday people, as they bravely battle cataclysmic odds and rediscover a deep-seated love and affection to help carry them through events which are truly global.   

The play…

Tom and Sally Millington’s house is about to be flooded yet again!  Sally blames the icebergs, but Tom is more concerned about losing custom from the drunken Brummie revellers he has to sail up the River Severn every weekend on his disco-boat.  But this time the water level shows no sign of retreating, and before long they’re drifting around a flooded landscape desperately searching for land – perhaps the floods haven’t yet reached France?  The irrepressible Millington's slowly begin to realise they are witnessing the results of a global cock-up.  Join them on their poignant journey in a dilemma that pits them against cataclysmic odds in a comic-tragedy of epic proportions...  Originally produced by Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, it has already proved to be an amazingly popular show both in this country and abroad, including major theatres in Rome, plus an acclaimed production for BBC drama too.  You can listen to a sound clip here: http://www.alex-jones.org/News.html

                     

Programme notes and press info for theatres…

It is now widely accepted by scientists and governments that global warming is with us, and that the consequences are far-reaching and probably irreversible.  One of the most profoundly unsettling events that points to this happened a few years ago when the Larsen B ice shelf, an area the size of Wales, thought to weigh almost 500 million billion tonnes, broke away form the Antarctic continent and shattered into thousands of icebergs.  Antarctica has warmed 2.5 degrees centigrade in just 50 years, and more similar events are predicted. 

As an environmental campaigner, I knew I had to bring this subject to the stage, and consequently wrote this play for Alan Ayckbourn's Theatre In Scarborough; it has since been produced by the Swan Theatre, Worcester and Oxford Theatre company, had a critically acclaimed BBC Radio production and two sell-out productions in Rome, where it is called Effetto Serra.  It is sobering to think I wrote this play back in 2000, before the recent dreadful flooding in Worcester, when I found myself stuck in my home town of Malvern completely surrounded by water and cut off from the outside world.

We can no longer ignore the consequences of our way of life - carbon dioxide emissions have caused weather patterns to become more extreme; from tornadoes to droughts and from floods to heat waves.  In addition sea levels have also risen by a foot in the last century.  For countries like Bangladesh that spells disaster.  But low-lying countries in Europe are also feeling the brunt of this phenomenon, as witnessed when Dresden and Prague were completely flooded and mass evacuations took place. 

River's Up is about how deforestation, pollution and the stripping of the earth's resources could affect every one of us, and I particularly wanted to tell this story through the eyes of ordinary people.  So welcome to the epic romance of Sally and Tom Millington, as they bravely battle cataclysmic odds and rediscover a deep-seated love and affection that carries them through events that are truly global.

Reviews

The Observer – This superbly realised play is also a memorable love story. 

Financial Times - A gently riveting story, its ecology worn lightly, beautifully acted. 

Sunday Telegraph - What starts as comedy promises an Old Testament denouement.

Radio Times – A small masterpiece; it could justifiably be described as a working man's Titanic.

Yorkshire Post - Few productions could be more timely and topical than this, and the tight dialogue remains superbly realistic.

Worcester Evening News - River's Up is a powerful, top quality play with a strong idea at its core

The Birmingham Post - In one poignant scene after another the tension builds in Alex Jones' highly watchable play.

The Stage - A finely wrought tragicomedy that provides laughs, tears and food for thought in equal measure – highly recommendable. 

The Oxford Times – A powerful evening of theatre which kept the audience on the edge of their seats throughout – a must see show.

Daily info, Oxford – Funny, poignant and heart-wrenching.

Acting role

I haven’t done any acting for literally ages and have really missed performing.  And then suddenly out of the blue I get a casting call for Doctors – a daytime soap on BBC TV.  I got the part, which was a character very similar to the one I play in another BBC soap – The Archers; ‘a drunken trouble-maker’.  So I spent a couple of days filming and loved every second of it.  Great feedback from the production team and then back to earth and back to work at the care homes!  Dunno why my acting career suddenly stalled; I used to get regular work on BBC Radio Drama and theatres all over the country, and that little taste of what I love doing has made me hope that there may be other roles out there…  Guess I should be a little more proactive, but I’m not great at networking or being dynamic.  By the way, my episode is on the telly 4^th June 2015 on BBC1 at 1.45 if you wanna check it.