00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers, lovely
00:06to speak to Nettie Sheridan, and, well, you are a fangirl for this particular playwright
00:11and you are doing his first play, The Beauty Queen of Lunan. What is so special about this
00:18playwright, Martin, how do we pronounce his surname, Martin McDonagh?
00:22McDonagh, yeah. I think either way.
00:25What is so special about him then, that you love so much about his writing, that you
00:29call yourself a fangirl?
00:31I'm total, I'm total Martin McDonagh fangirl. So, the way that he writes is clever, the
00:39characters are so beautifully, beautifully well written, and they pose quite a lot of
00:46challenge for actors and directors, I think, to be able to stage these and have exactly
00:53the right temperature, feeling, emotion, to gain the exact correct audience impact that
01:04you want. They tend to have a bit of a journey for each character, it doesn't matter how
01:10small it is, they all have their own individual journey, and their own individual impact.
01:19It's a real treasure of mine to be able to take one of these amazing stories.
01:27And you'd been wanting to do one for a while, and your logic was, you ought to start with the
01:31first one.
01:32Yeah, so yeah, the first one, it's part of a trilogy of plays, the first part of a trilogy
01:37of plays, and his first play, which was written in the 90s. I think it was first debuted in 1996.
01:45So, I think that it kind of made sense to go back to Madonna's roots, really. But I was,
01:51I fangirled, really, from In Bruges, the film, and that's when I first started to
01:56investigate Martin McDonagh's work.
01:58So, as a fangirl, does that make it more difficult for you? Does that heap up the
02:03pressure rather than having a bit of a detachment?
02:05Oh, God, yeah. I mean, honestly, obviously he doesn't know me. I'm just some random
02:14from Southwick. But I do feel like, because I've seen things of his on stage, The Pillar
02:21Man, and Very, Very, Very Dark Matter. They're just incredible. The stuff is incredible.
02:28And the plays that he writes, when you read them, just incredible. The films that he makes.
02:33So, obviously, when you take on something like this, there's a huge amount of pressure. I don't
02:37think there's been anything that he's done that has, you know, every director at some point has
02:43to have a flop, right? But I don't think he has anything.
02:47But the other context is the context of Southwick plays. This is something that is actually
02:51genuinely a bit different, isn't it? You were saying you could have chosen a big floor filler,
02:56but you're going to challenge.
02:58Yeah, I know. I'm so grateful that Southwick, because the Barn Theatre, where Southwick
03:04stage everything, Southwick stage and stuff, is an amazing space. And to create this cottage
03:12in the hills of Connemara, to be able to make it feel claustrophobic, and to get the tension
03:23that you need, this stage and their set makers are just out of this world. And you can ask the
03:31most incredible things. I'm not going to say too much, but I've been quite demanding. And it's
03:37always been, yes, yes, yes, we can do that. Well, we can do that. We can do that. Okay.
03:42Brilliant. I mean, they're brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And I feel very, very honoured.
03:47I hope it's a huge success. It's Southwick Players, Beauty Queen of Linan. And it's at
03:53the Barn, as you say, from April the 9th to the 12th. Nettie, lovely to speak to you. Thank you.
03:59Thanks, Phil. Thank you.
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