Rain

Written and directed by Gregory Motton

"Rain was one of my first plays, of which there is now no existing script, written when I
was 20. It was performed at the Loughborough Hotel, a pub in Brixton. The cast
included Patrick Horne, Sue Jane Tanner (of the Royal Shakespeare Company) and
Penelope Dimond who was to go on to be in my plays for decades afterwards, notably as
Aunty in the Gengis quartet of plays (Cat and Mouse Sheep, Gengis Amongst the
Pygmies, A Holiday in the Sun and The Rape Of Europe).

Actors dropped out every day, and Patrick Horne, whom had only just met me, but
saved my bacon repeatedly, found new ones every evening. Each morning brought a new
cast member, and my ineptitude had got rid of another one by the end of the day.

Patrick Horne was later in a few of my plays, and was a great friend to have. He was
about 40, very good looking and charming and funny. He chain-smoked extra-long
cigarettes, and then when he laughed he would cough until he couldn't breathe. I think it
finally killed him. He taught me the rudiments of how to direct. Why he put up with me I
don't know. His mother lived on Avenue Road in Swiss Cottage, she must have been
super rich. We all went to tea there once. Amazing.

I had no idea about theatre or actors or anything. I remember the strange feeling of
having 60 CVs, mainly from girls, on my floor in Palmers Green, wanting me to cast
them in my play. I have never been so powerful since.
I had no idea what I was doing in rehearsals, and the actors finally had to ask me to look
up from my script. I was hopeless. A school friend, Mark Vaughan (the only person I
have met who claimed to like actual violence and who had already had his teeth kicked
out by Greasers and was a skinhead himself) helped me to carry a bath-tub we removed
from a garden on the way to the theatre. Mark had never been a stage manager but was
very clever and had a great sense of humour, looked at me, and laughed at me, in
amused wonder as we stumbled our way into the theatre world. We also carried a
lighting rig from the Elephant and Castle, aided by its owner Syd Golder, one time bank
robber ("Did you do it Syd?" "Course I fucking did"). Syd helped us to put the show on,
for no good reason, he was the only type of person who would help utter nobodies like us.
He then contrived to transfer our show to the King's Head lunchtime theatre. For me it
was like a West End transfer. Unfortunately I nearly closed that theatre down: there was
a film crew shooting in the bar and I couldn't get into my own rehearsals in the back
room, so I went round the back through the Royal Mail Sorting Office climbed over the
fence and set off Her Majesty's alarm. The King's Head nearly lost its theatre licence as
a result as they depended on the good will of the Post Office to allow them a fire exit
through their land.

Back in Brixton, one of the auditionees was Emma Freud, who demurely told me who
she was related to. I think she was the first of the illuminati I ever met. I didn't give her
the part though. I remember the fire brigade came in during her audition piece, she was
very good about it. Nice girl.

A dog ran across the stage while we were performing that play, a few times. We got used
to him. The critics (yes we had some, oddly enough, more critics than audience, to
witness my modest beginnings as a playwright, the only audience I recall was a girl from
my old school) noted that the washing in the tub wasn't wet. I missed that.

The play was pretty much nonsense, about a post-Chinese-take-over Britain, where a
family who seemed to have stepped out of a John Galsworthy novel and been dropped
into a farce, battled against non-stop rain. Apart from it being a bit surreal, for years I
was embarrassed about the Chinese aspect, it seemed puerile. Little did I know I would
end up, 30 years later, writing political and economic reasons why we have to resist
Chinese imports, and how our failure to do so keeps the working classes of this country
in an economically and politically powerless position. How prescient it was of me!"

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