by Ian Rankin
Ian: God, I remember that experience from Dark Road. As a novelist, once the book is printed and bound, you can’t make any more alterations or improvements – you’re stuck with it. But right up until the previews, with a paying audience seeing that play for the first time, cuts and tweaks were being made. I remember one whole scene being cut by the director (who also happened to be the co-writer) and I thought: really? You can do that? The actors don’t mutiny? But those edits are always there for a purpose – to make the play as cohesive, coherent, and satisfying as possible. Of course, I was aware that you had worked with Roxana before and you really rated her, so that made the whole relationship easier. I recall the three of us enjoying more coffee and biscuits in my living-room, and the occasional brainstorming session over a meal.
Rona: We were challenged weren’t we? Our plot was interrogated with steely determination and we had to find the answers to a lot of probing questions! But I think the story became better for it.
Ian: Of course, we were writing a new Rebus adventure from scratch rather than adapting one of the existing stories. Do you recall how that decision was made? And is it easier than trying to adapt?
Rona: I can answer the second part of that but not the first. As a playwright I think adapting a novel for the stage is straightforward, insofar as the majority of plot- and character-decisions have already been taken for you. However, it is problematic when the form of the narrative needs a lot of wrestling to fit into an evening’s theatre. A very long novel with multiple scenes and flashbacks would, for example, present particular difficulties. I think a meaty short story is actually probably a much easier fit. But to bounce that back to you, why did you decide that we two should concoct a story between us and develop it collaboratively rather than present me with a completed narrative (in short story form, say)?
Ian: Ach, I think I just wanted to hang out with a great contemporary playwright and watch how their mind works, maybe learning some new skills or at least stretching myself along the way. Creative writers are very different in their attitudes, working methods and ways of seeing (and then presenting) the world. The relationship between Rebus and Cafferty is very male working-class, very macho, very Scottish. I wanted to watch how you would approach that. Our lengthy discussions made me think deeply about my own understanding (or lack of it) of these two characters – not forgetting Siobhan Clarke, who also has an important role to play in Long Shadows! As a novelist, of course, I have the lazy privilege of being able to use as many scenes, locations, words and characters as I like. Did you find any problem with retaining the atmosphere of the books within the necessary restrictions of a stage play?
Rona: Well, that was made easier because we did develop the story from scratch rather than try to shoehorn in some pre-existing narrative. It was a lot easier to concentrate the action in time and space. I also feel that a lot of the ‘action’ in your books is actually internal – it is formed of Rebus’s observations of and reactions to events. That’s a good fit for the stage as it can be shown in ways that are very theatrical.
Ian: I certainly enjoyed the journey, Rona.
Rona: Me, too. See you in the theatre!
ROXANA SILBERT, BIRMINGHAM REPERTORY THEATRE’S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
On bringing Rebus to the stage
Were you very aware that this is the first time onstage for a character who’s existed in other mediums, especially books but also more than one TV adaptation, as well as radio? Was that something that was on your mind?
We were really aware, because Ian has been approached quite often, either to adapt his work or to allow his work to be adapted, or to write something for the theatre. And obviously you’re dealing with a very iconic character, who readers absolutely adore. And that part of it is daunting, because you feel you have a real responsibility to not let them down.
How did that impact on your approach?
What mostly happens with things like novel adaptations is that there is a novel that a playwright adapts for the stage. And so, it is an adaptation of a story that already exists. What’s unique about this is that Ian has written a new story for the stage, alongside a playwright. So, it’s not that Rona Munro adapted this story, it’s that Ian has written it, and then they’ve worked very closely together to create the play.
As a result, when sometimes there might be something in the writer’s head that’s not really hitting the page – you often ask those questions of a playwright – in this case, I could ask those questions directly of Ian, who knows those people inside out. So even if something wasn’t clear on the page, it was absolutely vivid in his imagination, and then he was able to describe it in such a way that Rona could make it work for the stage. Novel writing and playwrighting are so different. I always think novels are more like film, in the sense that you can get inside someone’s head and you can work out what they’re thinking, and you don’t have to have a lot of action because you can have a lot of internal monologue. But, with theatre you only really know people by what they say and what they do, and so it’s a much more behavioural writing mode. Adaptations are always very challenging for that reason. So, doing it this way seemed to me the best of both worlds.
Because Rebus is a detective character and the books are crime novels, did you think much about the genre, more than in other plays?
In this particular instance, we thought about it a lot as a thriller. Rona is an avid thriller reader. She knew the Rebus books inside out before she was ever approached to work on them. One of the things we talked about a lot was that Rebus is a detective, so there has to be a crime to be solved. Looking at the evolution of the script, we have been very aware that it’s a detective story. What Ian and Rona have written into this, is that Rebus is a character who has a lot of demons, and those live in his head. One of the things theatre can do is make those manifest, and physicalise them and make them 3-D. So that’s one of the things that theatre has allowed him to do.
I think the other thing that Rona’s done brilliantly is writing a series of really strong and long dialogues. Interestingly, that’s not something you can do on film or in novel writing. In film, you have lots of short scenes, you can’t really sit in a dialogue for twenty minutes. It is a particularly theatrical thing you can do, which has allowed us to stay with these characters that we know really well, like Rebus and Cafferty and Siobhan, and watch the minutiae of their interaction over a sustained period of real-life time. So I think that that’s coinciding with being absolutely honourable to the form that he writes in, to the character and being a detective story, but also asking why are you going to do this on stage, why aren’t you going to do this in a different medium? Because there is Rebus on radio, there is Rebus on television – so why are people going to want to see a play?
We had to think why does this work for the stage and not for the television or a novel? Why is this story better told onstage?’ One of the things Ian had said, which I think is really smart, is he hadn’t wanted to write something until he felt he had a Rebus story that could only be told on the stage. And that was a really good way in for us understanding the story. For example, the way it’s designed is absolutely taking on board the noir thriller genre. It’s designed to feel very much like a thriller. A lot of inspirations have come from the noir thriller cinematic feel.
Theatre is a very collaborative medium but if you have the creator of the Rebus character there, did ownership come into it or was it as purely collaborative as theatre usually is?
It’s been incredibly collaborative – I have to say that Ian has allowed it to be so, he’s been very generous. What is not collaborative is that no one can know those characters better than he knows those characters, but that would be true of any playwright or any primary artist. But in terms of how you turn that story into something that works on stage, he has worked incredibly collaboratively with Rona, and how we, director Robin Lefevre, designer Ti Green and the production team at Birmingham Repertory Theatre, turn what’s on the page into something that’s going
to be onstage.
In reality, what that means is that you’re constantly having a dialogue. We sat down and said who are the people you would like to see onstage playing Rebus; who would you like to see playing Siobhan; this is the world as I imagine it. So, it’s been really necessarily collaborative and I’ve learnt – because of course I’ve read and loved the novels – so much more about Ian’s approach to those characters through having access to him which has been fantastic.
Were there any themes particularly that spoke to you? Is that something that’s important to you, to approach it on that level or are you led by what’s interesting others in the first instance?
It has to strike at your heart – something in you has to be emotionally moved by it. What I found really interesting was the idea that you want to love Rebus for being a maverick and wanting to play outside the rules, but the story also really doesn’t romanticise the consequences of being a maverick. Someone is caught and someone goes to prison for a crime that they did, but someone else doesn’t and actually there is an inference that if you’d gone by the book and done it the right way – and it would have been a bit laborious and a bit boring and a bit administrative – but actually the result might have been a truer result. I think there’s a fascinating tension because it’s about how you choose to live your life, and whether you choose to live your life in the system or out of the system and what the pros and cons are. But it’s quite a dispassionate look at that. It doesn’t really say ‘this is the way to do it, we should all be romantic, outside-the-loop kind of people’. Because there are consequences to that, there are hard lessons to learn from it, and you wonder too ‘do I always want to be inside the system?’
I also think in this particular story Rebus’s relationship to young women – his desire to protect them – the huge cost to these young women of living a life that is slightly on the edges, is of enormous interest to me as well. And there’s just something about the world of the detectives or the high calibre criminal that Cafferty is. It’s not my world and it’s always fascinating. I’m sure it’s true of all arts but sometimes what’s fascinating about theatre is that it reflects a world, an experience that you’re living which it helps you process, but sometimes it’s an introduction to a world that you do not live in. Ian’s writing is so authentic and his knowledge of that world so profound that you feel you are genuinely glimpsing something that is usually behind closed doors.
Finally, I think because Rebus is now retired, and his way of policing – which is really hands-on, going to the bar where the incident happened and tracking someone down by foot – has been superseded by technology because most police work is now done at computers. Of course, there is a sense of nostalgia but there’s also a sense that he’s out of touch. The pros and cons, the benefits and risks of the different types of policing – which is a metaphor for a lot of the way the world is going – is again very intriguing. It’s also so human because he can’t race upstairs like he used to because he’s a man in his sixties! His back’s not great, and he can’t chase or and escape criminals because he’s a bit tired. I love that humanity in it, I love that he has become an older man who is retired, who’s struggling with technology, and who walks into police stations or places where he would have known everybody and knows nobody because there’s a new generation of people there. It’s a very interesting, slightly painful, look at late middle-age and how you’ve shifted and moved on.
And it sort of magnifies the loneliness of being a maverick as well, that he’s left with Cafferty as his closest friend and his biggest enemy – I’ve always found that dynamic between them really fascinating.
Yes, absolutely – the loneliness of deciding to go your own path.
That’s the cost, isn’t it? And that’s why most of us don’t and why we respect these heroes on-screen and on-stage who do.
Because it’s glamorous in your twenties and thirties. It’s less glamorous in your sixties or seventies!
Yes, because you’re left with the bill at the end of all that when you’ve isolated everyone and taken all these turns.
And your family – his daughter is estranged, he doesn’t have a partner, his friendships are tenuous, you mentioned Cafferty. It’s fascinating.
How much did you want to recreate the atmosphere of Edinburgh onstage? Given that it’s such a huge part of the books and on screen – was that a key aspect for you in terms of design and direction?
Edinburgh is another character in those novels. I lived and worked in Edinburgh for five years and met Rona in Edinburgh and our first shows were in Edinburgh – so I have a tremendous emotional connection to Edinburgh, it’s a city I really love.
The challenge in the play is that you’re in lots of different environments – mainly in Rebus’s front room – and so we were looking for a space that would allow us to move fluidly between a pub, to a tower block, to his house. The designer, Ti Green, and I felt that those stairwells – which is the kind of flat that Rebus lives in – are very iconic to Edinburgh and that we wanted something that was really simple and sculptural.
We weren’t trying to be naturalistic in our setting, but so that we were able to move between locations while keeping Edinburgh in the forefront, the stairwells became the focus of how we moved forward in the design. We were really lucky because we are working with a Scottish production manager and so he’s a very good reality test of what we’re doing. And it comes down to things like the paint finish – we can get the shape of the stairwell right but then you have to look at the paint finishes, it’s all in those details. If you have a very abstract sculptural space, then every object you put in becomes significant and has to tell a story. So those are the kind of conversations that we had.
Music has always been such a huge part of the novels. How important is music to this script and the production?
One of the things, of course, is that Rebus has very specific musical tastes and music is key in the detective storytelling of the play, so we have a composer who is going to write a new score for the play but also work quite closely with Ian to identify the right kinds of songs for Rebus to listen to. It’s just a really important part of Rebus’s world, the songs that he listens to. In terms of the questions you asked about genre, obviously music is quite a key part to that – you can tell a lot of story through music – so that’s another really strong component of the design and the storytelling.
Do you have a favourite scene or moment in the script that you think most about?
I think what really drew me was the way that those scenes are like a staircase – they lead up to that final confrontation. I read the play like I would read a thriller, I really wanted to know what happened. That is exciting to me because you need every moment, and it felt like no moment was wasted. And that, I thought, was quite genius.
SET DESIGN BY TI GREEN
Photography (unless otherwise stated): Gil Gillis ARPS
Early white card model of the set design (pub scene)
Early white card model of the set design (forensic lab)
Exploring texture and tone in the model (upper landing and curved staircase)
Exploring texture and tone in the model (whole stage)
Final model (Rebus’s apartment and neutral environment). Credit: Ti Green
Final model (pub). Credit: Ti Green
BIRMINGHAM REPERTORY THEATRE
Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company is one of Britain’s leading producing theatre companies. Its mission is to inspire a lifelong love of theatre in the diverse communities of Birmingham and beyond. As well as presenting over sixty productions on its three stages every year, the theatre tours its productions nationally and internationally, showcasing theatre made in Birmingham.
The commissioning and production of new work lies at the core of The REP’s programme and over the last fifteen years, the company has produced more than 130 new plays. The theatre’s outreach programme engages with over 7,000 young people and adults through its learning and
participation programme, equating to 30,000 individual educational sessions. The REP is also committed to nurturing new talent through its youth theatre groups, and training up and coming writers, directors and artists through its REP Foundry initiative. The REP’s Furnace programme unites established theatre practitioners with Birmingham’s communities to make high quality, unique theatre.
Many of The REP’s productions go on to have lives beyond Birmingham. Recent tours include What Shadows, The Government Inspector, Of Mice And Men, Anita And Me, Back Down, Nativity! The Musical and The King’s Speech. The theatre’s long-running production of The Snowman celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2018 and also its 21st consecutive Christmas season in the West End.
Also by Ian Rankin
The Detective Malcolm Fox Series
The Complaints
The Impossible Dead
The Detective Inspector Rebus Series
Knots & Crosses
Hide & Seek
Tooth & Nail
(previously published
as Wolfman)
Strip Jack
The Black Book
Mortal Causes
Let it Bleed
Black & Blue
The Hanging Garden
Death is Not the End
(a novella)
Dead Souls
Set in Darkness
The Falls
Resurrection Men
A Question of Blood
Fleshmarket Close
The Naming of the Dead
Exit Music
Standing in
Another Man’s Grave
Saints of the Shadow Bible
Even Dogs in the Wild
Rather Be the Devil
Other Novels
