Playwright Fiona Evans discusses with Viv Hardwick the importance of not giving away the ending to her new play, which opens in Scarborough tonight.

SOMETIMES an arts journalist can be a little too clever for his or her own good… like working out the inspiration for the ending of Fiona Evans’ latest play on the eve of its world premiere at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre tonight.

Her latest work, called The Price of Everything, is a precious commodity because it’s the Wearside writer’s first commission and new SJT artistic director Chris Monks invited her to select her own subject.

Evans reveals that she’d been at work since 3.30am that morning as she raced to ensure her three-handed thriller was as polished as award-winning play Scarborough and based-on-truth Geoff Dead: Disco for Sale – about the deaths at the Deepcut Army barracks.

“I woke up with an anxiety dream that they wouldn’t let me into my Theatre Studies A-level… do you think I’m worried about the play,” she jokes.

Then I helped matters with a question about her plot concerning self-made businessman Eddie Carver (played by Andrew Dunn of Dinnerladies fame), wife Pam (Julie Riley) and daughter Ruby (17-yearold Jodie Comer).

“The difficulty with that (question) concerns the way that the play is structured. The audience doesn’t know what happens until the end so I’m trying to keep all the information like that quiet, otherwise it will ruin the play. If I talk about that part of the subject then everyone will know how the play will end,”

responds Evans, who initially suspects that someone has given me inside information.

“There’s loads of humour in this play (despite it being classed as a thriller) and I intended that, which meant that this work has been really difficult to pigeon- hole. For me it is about looking at what goes on behind the closed doors of a wealthy family who have been striving for this perfect existence or idyllic lifestyle. I suppose it’s okay to say that things go wrong when the family’s pet goes missing,” she explains.

Chris Monks had seen Geoff Dead: Disco For Sale at Newcastle’s Live Theatre after taking over the job at Scarborough “and feeling he really ought to read a play called Scarborough”.

“I think I was probably the first commission that he decided upon and he asked me to come up with some ideas, so I came up with some suggestions and chatted them through which I thought was very brave of him because this is a very difficult play,”

says Evans.

“It’s an amazing offer really and what a writer dreams of. Nobody has ever done that to me before and I’ve always had to fight after coming up with an idea,” says the writer who confesses that she’s three weeks behind with her rent.

“I’ve had to get a welfare grant off the Writers’ Guild. This is the reality of the situation for writers at the moment, but nobody wants to talk about it. I look at the price of everything at the moment, so it isn’t just the title of my play. That’s why I think the theme of the play is really relevant for an audience today,” says Evans, who looked at people like Gerald Ratner and Duncan Bannatyne while creating the role of self-made man Eddie Carver.

“Unless you are Lee Hall or Sir Alan Ayckbourn with that amazing output of plays, the average playwright or those starting out have great difficulty creating the plays they want to write,” adds Evans, who graduated from the BBC writers’ academy in 2007 and has written episodes for Casualty, Doctors, EastEnders and Holby City.

It took her from January 2009 to come up with a script she felt able to supply to SJT because “sometimes you need a breathing space away from it, to see things with a fresh eye”.

Evans is delighted to be working alongside director Noreen Kershaw, who has helmed plays at the Octagon, Bolton, and episodes of Coronation Street, Shameless, Emmerdale and Heartbeat. She played WPC Phyllis Dobbs in BBC’s Life On Mars.

“Thanks to Noreen’s experience with television it means that she’s embraced the video inserts in the play and put her own stamp on that. With the actors I had characters in mind but then you see Andrew, Julie and Jodie at work and they bring another level to it and completely bring these people to life. I know it sounds ridiculous but they really are believable as a family unit,” she says.

“Originally the missing pet was a cocker spaniel but it had to become a golden labrador because they couldn’t find a cocker spaniel that was available in Scarborough,” jokes Evans.

But won’t everyone know the ending of the play after tonight’s world premiere?

“Well, will the reviewers mention that if it’s going to give the end of the play away?”

The subject for another play perhaps.

■ The Price of Everything, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, runs from tonight until November 13. Tickets: £10-£20 (students £7). Box Office: 01723-370541