Henry Naylor speaks to Jane Bradley after receiving his Scotsman Fringe First Award

The Scotsman

Monstering the Rocketman  Pleasance Dome, 4.10pm, until 24 August  What we said: “Henry Naylor’s latest play is brilliantly entertaining and rivetingly well-told monologue about The Sun newspaper of the early 1980’s,and its vicious campaign of vilification against gay rock star Elton John, whom it accused - on very slender evidence - of a series of hideously exploitative relationships with young boys. It’s an ugly story, but one that, exhilaratingly, ends on a far more hopeful note than many at the time expected; and that stands as both a vital historical record and a warning, as new waves of intolerance begin to target groups even more vulnerable than gay men were, back in those days of Section 28, and the early years of the AIDS epidemic.”

Transcript

00:01Fringe First winner Henry Naylor with his show Monstering the Rocket Manatee with me now. Hi, Henry.

00:06Hello. It's so exciting. Yeah, to get this, it's just wonderful.

00:11I mean, the Scotsmen have been very supportive over the years doing the Fringe First,

00:17and sort of the team picking these must have seen thousands and thousands of shows,

00:24and so it's very humbling to get it. I mean, sort of particularly, you know, the core team,

00:27and people like Joyce, you know, we were working out that she must have seen more Fringe shows

00:34than anybody on the planet, you know, during her career.

00:38So for her to select a show, it's a big deal. So I'm really humbled by it.

00:44Absolutely. And can you tell me a little bit about your show?

00:45I know you said in the event that, you know, you had to cut it down quite a lot

00:49just in the last couple of weeks that was still, you know, still in production.

00:51Yeah, well, it's been something I've been obsessed with for about a decade,

00:54and I've got, I've got, I went so far down the rabbit hole researching it,

01:00I can tell you sort of like the name of the night editor, the Daily Mirror,

01:03you know, and all these sort of things. I got so into the details,

01:07and it was a huge show until very recently. It was about two hours,

01:11and we had to sort of refine it down to just an hour, obviously.

01:15And I think it's, you know, because there was potentially two different stories to tell.

01:22There's the story of Alton John and his search for his identity,

01:25because at the time he was going through a divorce,

01:29and he'd been famously married to his engineer,

01:34and he was basically coming out at this point.

01:36And the son was pushing him relentlessly at the time,

01:40and sort of, you know, they were telling him who he was

01:43rather than him choosing for himself.

01:45So there's a story about identity,

01:47but also there's a story about media values,

01:50and sort of like, should the press be allowed to harass people for profit?

01:55So, you know, so there's no two stories we were telling,

01:59and we kind of just, we sort of refine it just to talking about

02:02the media and its responsibilities.

02:05Sounds like a really interesting show, and it's on here at the Pleasance.

02:08Yes, it is. It's on at 4.10 in the afternoon,

02:11and it's been, you know, great to do.

02:14I mean, it's a solo piece,

02:16so I'm playing, I think, about 12 different characters.

02:20But, you know, with the best one in the world,

02:22I'm not a particularly good voice artist or actor,

02:26so some of the voices, you know, sort of change a bit.

02:29Some of the characters go from being Cockney

02:32suddenly through to Yorkshire, and then back to Cockney.

02:36Oh, that's great.

02:37Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

02:39Yeah, it's a great weekend. Thank you very much.

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