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When Beautiful Thing was about to go on at the Bush I was called in to see a drama producer at the BBC. He sat me down and said how much he had enjoyed reading the play. Fair enough, I'd hardly have expected to be called in if he'd hated it. However I was quite taken aback by the reason he gave for enjoying it so much:
"I just thought it was amazing. Here you have a woman who lives on a council estate and yet actually shops at the Body Shop."
That such a detail could make a play amazing I find incredible. That such a fact could in itself be amazing I found even more so. I took heart, maybe Beautiful Thing could lay some widely held misconceptions to rest. I came to write the play during the summer holidays from my teaching job in 1992. I was 24 and desperate to get out of education. Writing for me was then a release, and I think it shows in the play. I started off by writing an argument between a son and his mother about him bunking off games at school. This was second nature to me. I hated football at primary school and used to look longingly at the girls' pitch where they played the much more enticing game of rounders. I'd pass the time avoiding the ball by playing Charlie's Angels with some other non-interested lads. Obviously, when using this detail in the play I updated it somewhat. Once I'd written the row I got bored and thought I'd introduce another character. I invented a next door neighbour who was a bit of a loudmouth and more than likely based on all the vocal girls I was teaching at the time. Leah may be a likeable character, but she'd be a bugger to teach. Bored again I invented love interests for the mother and the boy and girl. Compromising on character numbers in the hope of one day getting the play staged, I chose the same person, Ste, for the boy and girl to be interested in. Once I'd done this there was only one way the play could go. I had no idea what was going to happen next. But each time I came to a crisis, either in the drama, or through me getting bored, I would have to make a decision about where to take the characters next. I think it is the factors that influence these decisions that make one writer different to the next. The decisions I make would certainly be different from Alan Bennett's, and his decisions would again be very different from Sarah Daniels'. I don't bandy these names around because I think I am as good as them, merely because I admire them. When people ask if this is an autobiographical play, I would say that certain moments are, but where personal experience does play a major factor is in the decisions I took. I would hardly have Jamie run off at the end of the play to lead a fulfilling life in merchant banking, as I've never merchant banked. So I kept the characters always in a world which I know something about, and doing things I know about. Leah was the biggest problem. Where do you take a character that is obsessed with Mama Cass? Luck played a huge part in her journey, flicking through the Mama Cass tape cover I read about Cass Elliot's encounter with a lead pipe and the rest of her story in the play fell into place. Growing up gay in Liverpool in the eighties, the only role models I had on TV and film were very middle or upper class ones. Two public schoolboys punting through Cambridge in cricket whites might have been exciting to watch, but it had very little to do with my personal experience. I suppose I wanted to redress this imbalance. I also wanted to redress the idea that if you are working class and gay that you end up getting kicked out onto the streets and sell your body for two Woodbines and a bar of Caramac. Yes, it happens, prejudice is not a middle class phenomenon, but neither is tolerance, understanding or the ability to embrace. The age of consent is an issue close to my heart, and by choosing to make the boys in the play sixteen and under I hope I've done my bit to fight the status quo. I used to think I hadn't done enough, but when I watched the play on its opening night to a packed house of schoolkids, hen nights and binmen conventions at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and I saw the audience embrace the characters and will things to work out well for them, I realised maybe I had done more than I'd previously given myself credit for. I think the character of Tony is an easy way into the play for many straight people. He's a bit of a laugh, he's trying his best, and once he's made you laugh you're more relaxed and ready to take the other characters on board. I wasn't aware of this at the time of writing, but I sat through the play enough times to recognise the more straitlaced members of the audience who would only relax after Tony's line 'You shouldn't use words like bird.' You could set a clock by their regular sighs of relief at this point. It was as if they were thinking, 'The writer knows there are people like us watching this play.' Well they were very misguided. I wasn't selling out to them in the character of Tony, I wrote him that way because I thought it was a bit of a laugh. As a theatre writer you are always aware of limited resources, and none more so than when I was writing Beautiful Thing. I kept sets and cast to a minimum. It would have been very easy to write scenes between Ste and his Dad, but I prioritised and felt it was enough for Ste to talk about this. Some disagree, some want a bit more darkness, but I'm now glad about this decision to keep Ronnie off stage because the play becomes more of a celebration. I've just finished the screenplay for Channel Four and it has been a joy to write for Ste's Dad and Leah's Mum, and to see Jamie's teachers, but then I expect the screenplay to be a very different experience to seeing the play. I think any writer writes from an obsession at the time of writing. It can be quite cringeworthy to then have to fight for those ideas and obsessions a few years down the line. Still, I'm not cringeing yet at the ideas in Beautiful Thing. I think it's very much a twenty-four year old writer's play, and can at times be twee and naive, but it still manages to move me and I think that theatre should move people. And two years down the line I still have great admiration for the music of Mama Cass, thank God I chose her and not the Nolan Sisters. -Jonathan Harvey
Jonathan Harvey comes from Liverpool and now lives in London. After studying Psychology and Education at Hull University he taught in London for three years. He has written nine stage plays: The Cherry Blossom Tree (Liverpool Playhouse, National Girobank Young Writer of the Year Award 1987), Mohair (Royal Court Young Writers Festival 1988/ International Festival of Young Playwrights, Sydney 1988) Tripping and Falling (Glasshouse Theatre Company), Catch (Spring Street Studio, Hull), Lady Snogs The Blues (Lincoln Theatre Festival), Wildfire (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs), Beautiful Thing (Bush/National tour/ Donmar Warehouse/Duke of York's Theatre, London/winner of the John Whiting Award 1994), Babies (Royal National Theatre Studio/Royal Court Theatre/George Devine Award 1993), and Rupert Street Lonely Hearts Club (for the RNT Studio). His television play West End Girls was shown on Carlton TV in 1993 and he is working on a second, Love Junkie for the BBC. Beautiful Thing is currently being developed as a screenplay for Channel Four with Island World Productions.
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