Richard Milward's APPLES comes to the stage

Written by Jo Cundall, Associate Producer – Apples on 28th May, 2010
Tagged with: middlesbrough, apples

Richard Milward's APPLES comes to the stage

APPLES is a heart-stoppingly brilliant piece of writing. And Richard Milward is heart-stoppingly brilliant to work with. He has a literary voice that is so unique, so honest, so vibrant and so celebratory. He is Middlesbrough born and bred, and probably the best advocate that a small industrial town (with a Mayor who takes Channel 4 to court for defamation) could have.

(Ray Mallon, Mayor of Middlesbrough famously tried to sue the makers of Location, Location, Location who cited the town as the worst place to live).

“Middlesbrough is not the richest town in the world, but it has a wealth of wit and warmth…Growing up round the area, I always had a sneaky suspicion Middlesbrough was unique…What Middlesbrough has that these places lack is a soul – the town is a living, breathing, hilarious, sad microcosm of madness and magnificence” Richard Milward, The Guardian, 05/08/09

When we embarked on this ambitious 40th birthday project there were some projects we were certain we wanted to do, some less certain ideas for conversations we wanted to have, and the desire to have on online space for unexpected things to emerge.

APPLES falls into the bracket of things we knew we wanted to do. A long time in the making –John (Retallack, the adaptor and director) read the book when it first came out in 2007 and knew right there and then that he wanted to turn it into a play. He started working on the script and then asked Northern Stage (as the largest producing theatre in the North East) if we would be involved. And we definitely did. Loads of us at the theatre had read the book and already fallen in love with Richard’s mystical, poetic, gorgeous language.

We did a week work-in-progress in March 2009, before applying to the Arts Council to support the tour (no mean feat, it got to 17 drafts and then I stopped counting!). In December we got the incredible news that we had been given the go ahead, and the planning began in earnest. For more information about the show please the show site here

With all this in our minds, it was obvious we should ask Richard Milward for his own response to the idea of Northerness… and now you can find it here, exclusively for Northern Stages (which is where our online space for unexpected things to emerge came in handy!)