Peter James - why he loves the theatre - video Dailymotion

SussexWorld

The cast has been confirmed for the brand-new stage production Picture You Dead, adapted from the bestselling novel by the UK's number one crime writer Peter James, author of the Brighton-based Roy Grace detective novels.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at the Sussex Newspapers. Always

00:06a massive pleasure, of course, to speak to Peter James now. Such massive success on the

00:12TV screens with Grace, but in the meantime, of course, huge success too on the stage.

00:18And the latest Grace to go onto the stage will be in 2025, Picture You Dead. And it

00:24sounds like, Peter, that was one that you chose because you were wanting a bit of change

00:28of scene to the latest stage adaptation.

00:31Yeah, I think when I first wrote Picture You Dead, I always thought, wow, this would make

00:36a great stage adaptation because it's all about the world. The basic story is a couple

00:42who buy a picture in a car boot sale. And I think all of us who go to car boot sales

00:48are secret dreamers that one day we're going to find a lost masterpiece. And they get this

00:53picture home. It's a horrible picture. They've only bought it because they like the frame

00:56and they discover there's something underneath. And what is underneath turns out that it might

01:02be a long lost Fragonard from 1770 worth maybe 17, 20 million pounds. And that kind of story

01:09goes on from there. And they encounter this master art forger called David Hegarty, who's

01:17actually very tightly based on the real life art forger, Dave Henty, who lives in Brighton

01:23and who was instrumental in helping with the book. And it's a lot of fun. I think the play

01:29has got some great laughs and it's got some great thrills. I think it's, I think the important

01:36thing with theatre is that people have fun. You know, I like to scare people, but I also

01:40like to make people laugh. And I think go to this play and you're going to learn something

01:45about the world of art. You're going to have a few scares and you're going to have a lot

01:49of laughs as well.

01:51For a stage adaptation, do you have to start thinking that the stage is very different

01:56to the TV screen or are they just two sides of the same thing, that it's essentially Grace

02:01whatever at the format?

02:03I think the stage is so different and the whole experience is so different. You know,

02:07when we watch television, there's two or three of us in a room. When we watch a stage play,

02:13there's between 600 and 2000 of us in that room. And so, you know, we become part of

02:19the whole experience of the play as the audience too. And I, you know, obviously it's very,

02:26very different because when I write the book In Picture You're Dead, I can have a cast

02:32of 200 characters. We can have locations all over the place, car crashes, train crashes,

02:39anything I want. On the stage, we're limited to one big set with maybe a few small sets

02:46attached to it, a cast of eight or nine people. So it all has to be, we have to make the audience

02:54do a lot of the imagining and the work.

02:58Well, it's funny too to think of different Graces, but you have a returning Grace. You

03:02have George Rainsford, who was in the previous one, wasn't it? What makes him a good Grace

03:07do you think?

03:08I think one of the characteristics of Grace when I first created him, long before we'd

03:14ever cast him, was that he had to have a great deal of empathy. Empathy is what makes

03:21a good homicide detective. And the important thing with Grace is that I always wanted a

03:28Grace that I would feel that if I ever had a member of my family murdered, he's the detective

03:33I'd want. And John Simmons is just perfect at that. But George has that stage presence

03:39too. George is kind of calm. You believe him. You believe that he's intelligent. You

03:44believe he's going to work it out.

03:46But they're good for the same reasons, then, are they?

03:50Yeah. They're very different actors and they are different Graces, but they both come out

03:54with the essence of what I feel Grace is all about.

03:59Fantastic. Well, Picture You Dead is coming close to us, Southampton and Brighton 2025.

04:04Peter, lovely to speak to you. Thank you.

04:07You too. Thank you.

Peter James - why he loves the theatre

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