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From This is Derbyshire
30 September 2005
Serial Killers takes knife to soap operas
If you're walking through Derby over the next month, you might spot Joe Mangel from Neighbours.
But don't call him Joe; he's Mark Little and he's an actor, not a gardener.
Even though this month sees Mark return as Joe after 15 years, he'll tell you he's only back because "it's a job" and "to show people that I was acting in the first place".
Since that spell in the soap, Mark Little achieved a different fame on TV's Big Breakfast, but he's also striven hard to be respected as a actor.
Indeed, he won an Olivier Award in 2000 for his one-man show Defending the Caveman, which premiered at the Derby Playhouse and, after a recent tour in the Boy George musical Taboo, he's returning to the Playhouse to star in a production of Serial Killers.
He is a piece of canny casting for a play that according to one acclamatory critic, "skewers everything and everyone connected with a soap opera - in a cheerful and brilliant way".
Mark feels the same - and, of course, he knows what he's talking about. So does the play's author: Mark nods his head in appreciation at the news that James Griffin, the author of Serial Killers, did his time as a soap script- writer. "You can tell from the script," affirms Mark. "It certainly hits a few nails on the head."
Described by Mark as "a contemporary comedy psycho-thriller", Serial Killers takes us behind the scenes of a TV soap.
"If you like, it's a soap within a soap," Mark adds. He plays one of the scriptwriters about to write off the soap's heart-throb, which leads to the actor taking drastic action. Along with the story, Mark promises "a real insight" into the soap opera industry: "You'll discover that people within the industry are as jaded and cynical about soaps as those people outside of the industry who don't like soaps!"
But if you don't like soaps, is this play worth bothering with? "Yes," asserts Mark, "because it's also a play for people who poo-poo soaps but don't really know why. Maybe they're being a bit elitist and arrogant. After all, they should be interested in a global phenomenon that is watched by all classes, colours and creeds."
However, when I then ask if soaps will emerge from this play with a new-found respectability, Mark laughs. He's healthily cynical about soaps, and admits that he treated Neighbours "as a bit of a joke - a joke that backfired when it became famous in 17 countries!
"Fortunately I never got trapped," says Mark. "But there are some actors who have been stuck in a soap for over 10 years, and yet they can be written out at any time, as happens to one of the actors in Serial Killers. The play made me wince in recognition because it shows how much you're at the mercy of the writers. They're vindictive. And they play God."
Although Serial Killers was a successful TV series in New Zealand, it's originally a play and Mark believes it works well on stage: "Unlike a typical soap, this is a clever drama for thinkers. Also, television these days is watered down to the lowest common denominator.
"In this dumbed-down age, theatre is the last bastion of quality adult entertainment, an honest art which gets to the nub of big issues, as this play does. I think audiences will identify with this. It's also got some great twists and it turns quite scary for a comedy. It's deeper than a lot of modern theatre I've seen." | | |