1
INTRODUCTION AND SET
Welcome to this text introduction to Always Orange, a new play by Fraser Grace
commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company for its Making Mischief
Festival. The Festival marks the reopening of the RSC’s studio theatre under its
original name – The Other Place - after a 10-year spell as The Courtyard Theatre,
and a return to its original use as a space for the RSC to experiment with radical
new ideas and formats.
Fraser Grace is no stranger to the Company; his first play for the RSC, the awardwinning Breakfast with Mugabe, directed by Anthony Sher, premiered in the
Swan Theatre in 2005, before transferring to London. Always Orange is his
tragicomic response to the RSC’s challenge to the writers taking part in the
Festival: “What is unsayable in the 21st century?” He describes it as being “about a
bloke called Joe who’s caught up in a terrorist attack”, and uses this scenario to
explore our reaction, individually and collectively, to the threat of global terrorism.
How do we face up to and find words for the shock, fear, grief and confusion it
generates?
The action in Always Orange switches between an unnamed British city and a
university campus in North Africa, but the basic set gives little hint of location. The
acting space consists of a rectangular floor area, 3 metres deep and 7 metres wide,
covered with large square black mirror tiles, and a matching rectangular backdrop,
5 metres high. A narrow strip of textured silver metal outlines the floor area and
frames the backdrop like a proscenium arch. As the audience enters, the black
glassy surface of the backdrop reflects the back rows of seating, giving an
impression of depth - a stage even - but the backdrop projects only a half a metre
from the theatre’s back wall, creating no more than shallow recess behind the
mirror glass. Like most studio theatres, the surrounding walls are plain black, and
the overhead gantries and lighting rigs are fully exposed.
The floor area gradually fills up with debris as the play progresses: discarded
clothing, sheets of paper, files, books, cardboard packing cases containing more
2
books, small white plastic bags, and an abandoned baby’s buggy. Some are
brought on by the cast, but most arrive by air, thudding or drifting down from
unseen hands above.
The setting becomes more naturalistic when the scene shifts to a city park, some
two-thirds of the way through the play. A rectangular section of the mirror glass
backdrop flaps down to display its grass-covered reverse; in the recess behind it
stands a modern-style park bench made of slatted wood, under the bough of a tree
in full leaf. Seen against a brilliant white background, they have the clarity of a
photograph or painting.
CHARACTERS
The British characters in Always Orange reflect the multiracial city in which they
live. Joe appears first, to deliver the Prologue in the aftermath of the terrorist
attacks that have rocked the city. White, and with working-class roots, he
looks little older than an average student, in an outsize dark blue sweater,
peppered with holes across the chest, over a grubby, long-sleeved white T-shirt,
pale blue chinos, bagging at the knees, and scuffed black army boots. Joe is thin
and wiry, with tidy features, brown hair and small beard. His nervy expression
relaxes into a likeable smile, as a quick change into light grey suit, open-necked
white shirt, and black, buckled shoes with pointed toes, followed by a comb slicked
through his hair, transforms him into the trendy young executive he was on the day
of the first attack. His casual wear, seen in the park between attacks, consists of
short-sleeved white T-shirt with circular yellow-and-black motif on the front, and
light-coloured chinos.
In the opening episode, ironically entitled Jackie’s Last Day, Joe attempts to deliver
the office boss’s speech at Jackie’s leaving do, while dealing with a unexplained
intruder. Jackie looks every inch the model secretary; an English rose with a neat
cap of fair hair, small, pretty features, and a slim figure made taller by her beigecoloured court shoes. Her clothes are equally discreet: a dark-brown, calf-length
pencil skirt slit to the knee, and fine wool, light-grey cardi over a plain pale pink,
silk blouse. She stands speechless in the corner, wine bottle in one hand, wine
3
glass in the other, as Joe remembers her, immobilised by self-consciousness – and
possibly the awareness that the wine she drunk to overcome it has made her
unsteady on her feet.
The anonymous gatecrasher, christened No Name 1 in the cast list, is a buoyant
young Asian man, who keeps up a flow of comments on his surroundings but with
no explanation of his presence. He has classic good looks and a constantly flashing
smile, dressed casually but tidily in a light grey hoodie with a glimpse of shirt collar
beneath, grey trousers and black boots. No Name 1 carries a standard red-andgrey backpack.
In the next scene, Rusha, a secondary school teacher awaits the arrival of her
pupils with a sheaf of exam papers in her hand. She is British, of Pakistani origin,
a small, trim, feisty woman in her late thirties, with glossy black hair cut in a neat
bob and curling round her ears, dressed in a mottled grey-and-black, polyester
shirt-blouse, casual grey trousers and black boots. Her vibrant face, with its brilliant
dark eyes, definite nose and strong, almost masculine jawline, expresses her
forceful personality.
Her four pupils are in their mid-teens: two boys - Niall, who is White, a thin, active
lad with curly light brown hair and altar boy looks, and Parvendra, who is Asian,
as tall as Niall but more compactly built, with short black hair and conventionally
good looking, and two girls - Shermeera and Lorna, who are both Afro-Caribbean
in appearance. Lorna, with her gold hoop earrings, is the more mature-looking of
the two; Shermeera is so slight she hardly looks old enough for secondary school,
but proves the most responsible. They have all personalized their school uniform in
small ways. It is basically white polo shirts and grey trousers. Lorna’s grey jumper
is knotted round her waist while Shermeera’s is tied cross body. Parvendra wears a
grey hoodie; Niall carries a grey backpack in lieu of a satchel.
Mr Ibrahim, the head teacher, is also Afro-Caribbean in appearance, tall and
burly; his greying hair, small beard and moustache and stooped shoulders suggest
he is nearing retirement. He is immaculately dressed in white suit, shirt, and
discreetly patterned tie, and conveys a quiet authority.
4
The two Black actresses who play Shermeera and Lorna reappear as two girl
freshers at an unnamed university in North Africa: Amna, who is small and serious,
and her bigger and bubblier friend Houida. They wear identical red hijabs, framing
their faces and covering the shoulders of their ankle-length, cream-coloured tunic
dresses. Their tutor, Farouk, is elderly, his hair greying under his white skull cap,
and his once-powerful frame now stooped, but the impression of ineffectiveness
given by his bumbling movements and fluttering hands is soon corrected by the
shrewdness of the glances he shoots at Amna in discussion. He is dressed in a
collarless calf-length tunic of lightweight white fabric over trousers, with a heavier
sleeveless cream jacket on top. When Amna appears with him in the final scene,
she has exchanged her college clothes for a uniform white hijab, tunic and trousers,
and carries a flying helmet.
After the first attack, Joe is interviewed by Dolores, a White woman in her thirties,
whose actual job description is never made clear. In contrast to Rusha, the teacher
who also becomes a sounding-board for Joe, Dolores is an almost colourless figure,
with light blonde hair cut close to her head, small, neat features and a pale
complexion. Her clothes are lightweight, smart but not formal; a collarless white
silk blouse tucked into wide-leg, light grey trousers, and flat black slip on shoes.
She wears her black lanyard with its identity photo on the inside, and hugs a black
i-Pad to her chest. Meeting Joe later in the park, she thrusts her hands into the
pockets of her loose, pale-coloured raincoat.
It is in the park that we meet the Afro-Caribbean young woman described in the
cast list as No Name 2. She appears pushing a baby buggy with its occupant wellhidden under the mounded coverlet. Dressed in a long, maroon-and-navy patterned
dress under a blue denim bomber jacket, she seems preoccupied as she parks the
buggy beside the bench and sits. Apart from a glance exchanged with Farouk who
briefly occupies the other end of the bench, she does not communicate.
CAST AND CREATIVES
5
In order of appearance, the characters and cast in Always Orange, are Joe, a
business executive, played by Ifan Meredith; Jackie, one of his office staff.
played by Laura Howard; and No Name 1, an intruder at Jackie’s office farewell
party, played by Bally Gill.
Rusha, a secondary school teacher, is played by Syreeta Kumar; her teenage
pupils, Shermeera, Niall, Lorna and Parvendra, are played by Donna Banya,
Sam Cole, Bianca Stephens and Bally Gill. Mr Ibrahim, the head teacher, is
played by Tyrone Huggins.
Two students at a North African university, Amna and Houida, are played by
Donna Banya and Bianca Stephens; and Farouk, their tutor, who appears later,
by Tyrone Huggins.
Dolores, Joe’s interviewer, is played by Laura Howard, and No Name 2, a
woman with a baby buggy in the park, by Bianca Stephens.
Joining director Donnacadh O’Briain on the creative team are designer
Madeleine Girling; lighting designer Matt Peel; and sound designer Steven
Atkinson.
Audio description is by Mary Plackett, with additional input from Carolyn Smith.
The performance lasts approximately 1 hour with no interval.
SYNOPSIS
'Raise the Flag. Raze the city.'
In the aftermath of terrorist attacks, the population is on edge. Empathy and
community have been blown away by the storm of terror and replaced by fear. A
survivor of the first attack, Joe is convinced that he has found the key to turning
6
the tide of destruction and restoring tolerance and understanding. But the city is in
no mood to listen…
Following the award-winning Breakfast with Mugabe and TMA-nominated The
Lifesavers, writer Fraser Grace presents a tragicomic exploration of how to be
human in a world always on edge.
To request audio introductions to future RSC productions, please call 0844 800
1114 or email [email protected] to receive them.