TOM KING talks to playwright Michael Wilcox about his work, cricket and police officers

In 1992 the playwright Michael Wilcox caused a certain flurry in Southend.

The Palace Theatre, Westcliff, was celebrating its 80th anniversary and it commissioned Mr Wilcox to provide a play for the occasion.

Michael Wilcox lives in Northumberland, and his play Time Windows was set in the landscape that he could see out of his study window.

So the Southend anniversary play duly opened with a scene set on the bleak moors of the Border country, about as far from Southend as it was possible to get spiritually and scenically without encountering wildebeest.

Yet Michael Wilcox is actually as Southend as an estuary whelk. He was born there to an established Southend family and was practically raised on the Pier. He may no longer live here, but he has sort of made up for the fact by, at last, setting a play here.

The play, Rock 'n' Roll and Barbirolli, is about three men who return to Southend after spending decades inside secure hospitals.

"Each," we are told, "tries to find salvation and absolution in an alien society." So while the setting may be Southend, knees-up stuff it ain't.

Despite a self-chosen exile that has lasted for almost three decades, Michael Wilcox has followed the fortunes of Southend, especially its football team, from afar.

In the play he makes vivid use of memories such as "what the alleyway down to the New Vic cinema smelled like."

Just like the characters in the play, Michael Wilcox has physically returned to Southend for the premiere at the Palace. Also like them, he finds Southend an alien place.

"The closing down of the Palace is typical of the general malaise that has gripped this poor town by the throat," he declares. "What you see here is the legacy of Thatcherism run riot.

"It's what happens when you believe, like Thatcher, that there is no such thing as society. This was once a vibrant, colourful, optimistic place.

"Too many people brought Thatcherism lock, stock and barrel. Now Southend's just a clapped-out series of junk shops - a disgrace, a scandal."

Michael contrasts Southend unfavourably with his own home in the North East: "Our unemployment rate is much worse, people are poorer, and yet its an immensely proud, optimistic place.

"It's no co-incidence that Sunderland has got itself a fab football team while Southend can barely pull itself out of the third division."

The 56-year-old Michael is, you will gather, a rebel with a cause or two or ten. "The actors were a bit puzzled when they met me," he says. "From the script, they'd expected some angry young man about 25 years old."

On he rails, sounding just exactly that: "There has been a deliberate attempt to shut down theatres which attack the Thatcherite ethos," he continues.

"They are deliberately trying to stifle the artistic process. At least," he concludes, "if the Palace has to shut down, I'm glad it is closing with a play like this. It's one in the eye for those who think of theatre as just a genteel place."

Michael's own background was about as genteel and establishment as you can get. His father, D R Wilcox, was founder and headmaster of Allen Court School and, even more imposingly, captain of the county cricket team.

Much of what Michael has done has represented an open rebellion against the values which go with cricket and private schools.

As a young man he loaded his Triumph Herald with his possessions and drove north, shaking the Southend seaweed from his feet. Never did anybody leave town with more conviction and more finality.

Up north, he found a cottage for £2.50, and a job at the local school. Then, in 1974, he changed the job description on his passport and set out to become a full-time playwright.

Writing plays has been his work for the past 25 years, eked out financially with contributions to TV series such as Dr Finlay's Casebook and Inspector Morse.

His plays and opera librettos have been performed in countless theatres and provincial arts centres around the country. They are not easy to bracket, though he likes to use the phrase "raw energy" when he describes them.

"Somebody says 'I want to commission a play for five characters' and I'll go off and work on it and type them out an idea," he says, in the true spirit of a pro. With Rock 'n' Roll and Barbirolli, the process took seconds.

Of the latest play he says: "The characters are more important than any 'statement', political or otherwise. They have an unusual perspective which can tell us something different about the world in which we live."

If he does have a label, it is probably 'gay playwright'. His most celebrated work is almost certainly Rents (1976), about boys who do.

The depiction of homosexual prostitution was considered quite shocking in the innocent days of 1976. "The gay label was quite pioneering then," says Michael, who also edited the Methuen series Gay Plays.

Yet for all his determination to buck conventional, buttoned-up middle class life, something of the old Southend is still in his system. "The first play I ever saw was at the Palace, in the 40s," he recalls. "It was Sinbad the Sailor, and very good it was too. I discovered then that theatres are magic places."

Something else has lingered, too. Michael Wilcox is a first-rate cricketer. When he talks about his work, he sounds earnest and often grim.

When he talks about cricket, the light of true joy comes into his eyes: "I can score a lot of runs if I get in early enough and have the chance to get my eye in," he says. "If I survive the first three to four overs then I can be dangerous."

He tells the story of the night that the Northumbrian police knocked on his door at 10pm. "I thought, 'Oh God! What have I done?' "In fact, the burly and decidedly hetero coppers wanted him for their team to play against the Midlothian vice squad.

Alienated or not, Michael Wilcox is able to laugh out long and loud at the memory. "I spent several nights in a boarding-house, in the same bedroom as six officers," he chortles.

"It was a sitcom situation. Imagine Julian Clary being picked up by the local rugby team because he's the best winger in the land and you get something of the picture.

"Still, a lot of barriers got broken down."

Michael Wilcox's play Rock 'n' Roll and Barbirolli is tonight and tomorrow at the Palace Theatre, London Road, Westcliff, and in Chemsford next week.

Rebel with a cause - Young Michael Wilcox packed up his car and left Southend far behind him. Now he's back, after nearly 30 years, with his play Rock 'n' Roll and Barbirolli debuting at the Palace Theatre tonight

Picture: STEVE O'CONNELL

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