.jpeg?width=1200&auto=webp&crop=3%3A2)
Jack Thorne is one of the country’s very best creative talents, the screenwriter behind little series like Adolescence, Toxic Town, This Is England and the new version of Lord of the Flies, and playwright of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, The Motive and The Cue and the Old Vic’s always-sold-out version of A Christmas Carol. Among his relentless stream of projects, currently running at the Underbelly Boulevard Soho is a revival of his play of Let The Right One In, performed this time around by the National Youth Theatre, who are this year celebrating their 70th anniversary.
Let The Right One in is of course based on the cult book by John Ajvide Lindquist and the international hit film directed Tomas Alfredson. Originally Thorne wrote it for the National Theatre of Scotland and performed at Dundee Rep in 2013, “and it’s amazing to see it’s hard a life beyond that. I’m looking forward to seeing what James [Dacre, director] has done with it.”
In case you don’t know the story, it’s about a Swedish kid called Oskar who meets a girl called Eli who seems to be his age but is actually an immortal vampire. Eli helps him with school bullies and the pair have a first love crush; until some bigger vampires come to play. “It’s a complicated story of someone that has lived a very long time with a lot of different identities, meeting someone who she can save,” says Thorne, “Oskar needs saving, and she becomes his knight in shining armor. What complicates matters is she is dependent on blood.”
Thorne remembers his first approach to his adaptation: “The climbing frame scenes where the pair hang out are the most important scenes in the film. But in the film they're not centred upon because the film can move anywhere and do anything. What I had to make work was this being a conversation between Oskar and Eli, where everything else was pushed back enough so that this was the focal point. Them understanding each other, and caring for each other, was the through-line.”
-(1).jpeg)
He made a connection to his own childhood in Bristol, “Going down Victoria Park and sitting on the swings or the top of the skateboard ramp and talking… just passing time together. I wanted to capture that.”
Indeed Thorne’s methodology – perhaps the secret of his success – is thinking what he personally can bring to any project… “What do I recognise of myself in this? There is a lot of me in Oscar. I have ‘Be Good’ tattooed on my wrist because ET is my favourite film of all time - and my son is called Elliot! When I first saw it, the idea that there was an alien that might understand me, that might be able to help me, was hugely important to me.
And similarly with this book, what I love about is it does follow the template of the kid that needs saving, it’s just that the thing that saves them is so unbearably complicated. Oskar has to negotiate with himself as to what he’s going to do as a result of his feelings for this person. I just love all the complicated mess, it felt new to me, and that on stage it could create an intimacy, there would be something theatrically interesting in that conversation.”
This new adaptation by the NYT is going to be a fresh version of the tale with a large cast of kids bringing it to life. Thorne actually attended the school back when he was a young actor, and quite simply, it changed his life:
“My drama teacher didn't think much of me at school, but I loved acting, and my dad brought me to London to audition for the National Youth Theatre. I actually auditioned twice before I got in. But the idea that they would take someone like me and then develop someone like me, was the biggest stamp of approval that you could possibly get.
And then you're in these groups away from home, you're spending time with other people that are ambitious about storytelling in a completely different way to my friends at school. They would never try anything. And then suddenly I'm around a bunch of people that were really ambitious.
I hope it still feels like that for these young people, that feeling of, let's get together and let's make something and see what we can do.”
Thorne has been vocal alongside his frequent collaborator Stephen Graham in championing younger people from less privileged backgrounds in a creative scene often dominated by the Eton crowd and nepo babies. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with them, it’s just about making sure the pathways are well lit for other kids too, the likes of Adolescence’s now multi-award winner Owen Cooper.
“It's easier for some people to break through because of the connections they've got, but a huge part of it is also that they think that world is possible. They see you can make a living as an actor, you can make a living as a writer, you can do any of those things. If you're not from that sort of background, the idea that it's possible feels so far away. What NYT does is make you feel like things are possible.”
He says that a new generation is coming through, pointing to three of the Best Actor nominations at the BAFTAs this year being scousers. But he says, against the backdrop of the recession, it’s hard to tell different stories: “If you were putting money together for a film, it would be easier to sell six posh guys in a carriage than six plumbers in a truck.”
Such struggles are the daily reality for writers. And of course Thorne did swap acting for writing and has become one of the most important voices today, particularly since Adolescence became a landmark series. But he is all too aware that his position is not the norm.
“I’m in a lucky place, and being brought into conversations I wouldn’t otherwise have been part of. But I’m also president of the Writer’s Guild and I can tell you most writers are struggling right now. I feel very fortunate to be in this lucky position in the middle of a recession because people who aren't in that lucky position are leaving the profession. And they are good voices that just haven't been given the opportunity to shine. We’re fighting hard to try and represent those those voices if we possibly can.”
One of the problems that he can see is long-running television series being taken off the air in the short termism of the streaming world. “The loss of Doctors and Holby City is huge, these shows where writers can try things and be part of something, have been taken away. We do need a production line for talent.”
The other threat comes in the form of AI.
-(2).jpeg)
“We're celebrating the fact that the government have abandoned this opt-out policy of copyright on AI, but at the same time, that is not an answer. They can't just go, well, the thing we've done is abandon our bad position. They need to have a good position to go to, and AI is going to be the biggest challenge facing writing. It’s true for a lot of jobs but especially creative jobs.
I did this speech at Parliament where I was talking about Michaela Coel. She had a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, that show got brought into the shed at the National. E4 saw that show, gave her a show on E4. BBC saw the E4 show and gave her a show on the BBC. Each time people needed to take a risk on new talent and put money into new talent. If then, you can type a few prompts into AI and get a script in the style of Michaela Coel, why would you invest in that new talent?”
He says writers’ work should be treated in the same way as drug companies: “We need patents, and copyright is our patent. Yet the government haven't got an answer to copyright yet. We need a proper robust response.”
The fight then for writers and all creative work, is both behind the scenes protection as well as productions which inspire. He considers whether there’s a common theme in his own work.
“When I did the Royal Court Young Writer’s Program, Simon Stephens who taught me said every writer’s got a myth. And you’ve got to work out your myth, the question you keep coming back to. I don’t know if it’s true anymore, but I did think my myth used to be: ‘How to help’. Really it’s the inability to help as well as the ability to help. It’s lots of people trying to do something and then the consequences play out in a way that's uncomfortable to them. But if you ask me how does ‘how to help’ play into Adolescence, I don't know. Maybe how to parent.”
He continues with regards to that hit and hotly debated show, “There's definitely a staring at the world bewildered, aspect of my writing which does play out really interestingly in Adolescence. It's not an instruction manual. It’s been interesting to see wildly different opinions coming out. When a debate happens around what a show means, you're sometimes staring at it from the outside going, I'm not entirely sure what it means. We just tried to tell the truth. We didn't try and pose it as an answer to anything. We just tried to pose a bunch of questions. For Stephen and I, when people talk to us about the show, there’s still no certainty. That’s because that’s the type of TV show we always want to make. I think it was the sixth thing I’ve made with Stephen and all of them are drenched in ambiguity. This one has no easy answers.”
The same goes for Let The Right One In, although Thorne is keen that audiences discover certain messages within it:
“I think it's a profound story about identity. How you wear different identities, and how you accept others and their differences. I hope people see the love story in it, and I hope people see the trouble in that love. I'm very proud of it and I'm so excited to watch the NYT do it.”
Let The Right One In is at Underbelly Boulevard Soho until 23 May https://underbellyboulevard.com/tickets/.
