New throwback experience is a work which mixes nostalgia with danger

And so, composer, musician, and actor David Paul Jones (DPJ) reflects on Grid Iron’s artistic director Ben Harrison’s own description of their collaboration Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me directed by multi-award-winning director Scott Johnston.

Harrison began by explaining how it began and could have ended with a frosty stare: “When singer-songwriter Amy Duncan and I toured Undertow Overflow, we found ourselves listening to 80s music.

“When DPJ did a concert of original music and covers of classic songs, I asked could you do a cover of Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me? He looked a bit frosty and said, that’s not really how I work, just slinging something together the week before. As an encore, he did it. It was just absolutely stunning.”

(Image: Supplied)

Harrison then emailed DPJ to suggest a collaboration on songs set in the 1980s, completely reworked, “and with stories much more time-limited from my life”.

That approach arrived as DPJ “just so happened to be in Gran Canaria in a bar where there was an 80s theme night; it was a very easy task!”

The task was made easier as DPJ has “worked with Ben for years, and covers have always found their way into Grid Iron shows” due to Ben’s ability to “create a whole scene out of a song that was already crafted.”.

They needed a director, and Harrison knew who to call … “Scott was a DJ in the 1980s, he explained. “He was delighted to be asked.”

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It was an easy collaboration, Johnston says, because “DPJ’s music is astonishing. The way that Ben has put the music with the stories and intertwined them is fascinating, sad, funny, heartbreaking and risky. I love being in a room where everybody can take a risk.”

That risk delivered, according to DPJ.

“The show is unashamedly about love. It’s romantic, joyful, deeply moving and disturbing and funny – really hilarious.”

The show is about them in the 80s, as teenagers, being emotional when, as Johnston highlighted, “as we know, emotions change minute by minute, day by day!”

“Yes, it’s reminiscence,” Harrison pointed out. “But we have put a lot of the stories into the present tense. The key? Are you being them then or being them now? It’s important because though it is episodic there is a flow. Frustrations are prevalent.

“It does go to some very dark and dramatic places. It was a time when things were a little bit more black and white, we were not as informed as we are now, watching a genocide livestreamed on our televisions.”

Johnston continued: “The change is obviously social media. Knowledge then came from the news or the newspapers, that was it.”

They are, however, alive to how things have changed as “there is a danger,” according to Harrison, “that we romanticise the 1980s. There are cruel things that happen in the play. One of the themes is homophobia and that was a massive part of the 1980s.”

Johnston took up the theme: “The good thing about now is that young people have begun to take it on. It is still there, don’t get me wrong, but it’s much better.”

“When you are that age, no matter where you are, you have the same needs, desires, aspirations to be heard, to be wanted,” Harrison added.

“You are immortal; you are never going to die. Then it comes to our age, and you are concerned with mortality, yourself and the world around you. It must be a take from now of what we feel was then.”

Then, a caution from Harrison: “The danger is that you begin to objectify women. I am going back to when I was 14. We must handle that very carefully.”

But change has been enthusiastically grasped too, as Ben explained: “It is important that every show is being signed by Emery Hunter, a performer, so we have signing as part of the performance.”

As for DPJ’s music, it is “unashamedly, utterly drenched in reverb, emotion and absolute tragedy.”

DPJ was keen to describe the addition of “exquisite” cellist Justyna Jablonska: “We have taken a very left-field approach. My own natural style is rooted in contemporary classical music. It has a very contemporary digital cinematic sound but with this very classical-esque counterpoint of cello running all the way through.

“It’s created a really haunting world that brings this other layer of expression.”

Johnston agreed: “The way that the music works with these stories is extraordinary. They just fit in a really beautiful way.”

As for 80s technology, there are no sudden appearances of Walkmans. “It’s all in our heads,” said Harrison – don’t expect dodgy signing of pencils rewinding cassette tapes.

Youthful anger and angst surfaced as Harrison “applied for the money to develop it to the now expiring Open Fund”. It’s a fund Ben knows well, as “half my work over the last four years has been through the Open Fund”.

The news this fund was to close was described by Johnston as “the cruellest, most insidious of cuts that could be made; a fundamentally dangerous thing for the economic culture of this country”. It has since been confirmed applications for it will be re-open, in First Minister John Swinney’s Programme for Government.

At the time of the cut, Harrison went further, describing the First Minister as “like a deputy head pushing the STEM agenda, wanting to cut art and music, and we have a Culture Minister who stands publicly with the Israeli deputy ambassador in the middle of a genocide. It is connected – this fish is rotten from its head.”

Johnston further warned that: “It is all very well shouting that we have a rich culture, which we do, but there is no support for culture if this happens.”

If you do not sow, you cannot reap.

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It began with a frosty look but ended in joy for DPJ in rehearsal.

“Ben hilariously interviewed me as a 16-year-old and overnight wrote this short story. I get to do this and it’s like 16-year-old joy. And okay, in that story there are some uncomfortable moments but on the whole, there’s a lot of humour there and joy.”

That’s how they work – carefully putting something together the night before, as an encore. Sheer joy.

Their collective theatrical experience, Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me by Ben Harrison, with music by David Paul Jones and directed by Scott Johnston opens at the Tron on September 19 and plays Summerhall, in Edinburgh on the 23rd to 25th of September.