Full Circle

A couple got engaged in the interval of Love, Love, Love in Hull, Mike tells me, grinning from ear-to-ear.

“But that’s why it’s called Love, Love, Love, because first and foremost it’s about love and I hope it gets a whole new audience because of it.”

Which might sound like an obvious thing to say, but the play is being billed as one baby-boomer generation couple’s 40-year journey from initial burst to full bloom, which also perfectly sums up Mike himself.

The former Abingdon School pupil’s love of theatre was given wings at school, but he readily admits it was only through putting on plays and being allowed to fail, that he forged his own career path.

“If a play is bad there’s nothing worse in the world, you want to gnaw off your own arm and get it to stop, you just want it to end,” he laughs. “So it’s either the best feeling in the world or the worst, but it means you learn to only keep in the non-boring bits, because you can never second guess an audience. And the audience is always truthful, which doesn’t mean a play can’t go slowly or quietly, but it’s got to be honest because the audience can’t cope with fakeness.”

But despite a shaky start, Mike, 30, soon realised that his hobby could actually become a full-blown career if he worked hard enough. ”I think it probably all started at school,” he explains, “But it wasn’t until I did work experience at the Oxford Playhouse and saw professional backstage rehearsals in All’s Well That Ends Well that I realised it was what I wanted to do,” he recalls.

Now with an Olivier Award under his belt (the Oscar of playwrights) for Cock, Mike’s humble beginnings have paid off and he’s now lauded as one of the finest young playwrights of his generation.

“The idea of a theatre full of people coming together to be entertained and leaving with something to think about, entranced me,” he says. “And I’ve always loved ideas, and wanted to have a job where I engaged with the world. I thought ‘if i can get my point over I can make a living out of this and I’ll be happy with that’.”

Mike has certainly realised that goal recently. His play Cock won the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in 2010. He then won the Old Vic New Voices award for Artefacts, the Writer’s Guild, Tinniswood and Imison prizes for Not Talking, and was the Pearson Playwright in Residence at the Royal Court Theatre in 2007. His latest play Earthquakes In London premiered at The National.

So where does Mike’s inspiration come from? “I have always loved watching people and their behaviour and the things people do. But that’s the best thing about being in theatre - I can report with truth and honesty but without cynism.”

And Mike wonders whether his father had anything to do with people being his favourite subject matter.

“My dad was a psychologist and my parents were lovely people who made me the thinking, conscientious person I am, who wanted to do something in the world.

“They have a wonderful sense of humour and were very supportive and encouraging in what I wanted to do,” he says.

“But they also taught me that I would have to work hard for it. There was no sense of being born with a gift, which is good because everything I wanted to do takes years of practice, and it took a long time to get good enough.

“I was 26 before I had my first professional play,” he says, as if that’s terribly old, “and that’s as it should be, for the audience to pay for their tickets it’s got to be good enough. And now theatres all over the country are desperate for new plays, which is great.”

Whether that’s true or not, they are all desperate for Mike’s work, and he’s recently been commissioned to write another play for The National.

“I think people get put off from going to the theatre because they think they need to know Pinter or Ibsen to understand a play. But I hope people who haven’t been before come to see this because all they need to know about is what it’s like to be in a family. And although the ending doesn’t tie things up neatly or give you a clear message, it gives you lots to think about because Love, Love, Love is actually about the love of a husband and wife and the relationships within a family. So I take topical issues and write them into something much more universal.”

As for coming to Oxford, Mike definitely feels as if things have come full circle.

“There are memories on every road, corner, and building in Oxford for me,” he reflects. “The landscape of Oxford is 20 years of being there myself, so it will be strange coming back and I’ve got lots of old friends and family coming to see the play. But I will also be really proud and excited at the same time because I never imagined this would happen.”

* Love, Love, Love plays at Oxford Playhouse from Tuesday to Saturday June 11.

Call the box office on 01865 305305 or see oxfordplayhouse.com