Richard Bean interview

In The Telegraph, Dominic Cavendish talks to playwright Richard Bean.

His new play, The English Game, concerns an amateur London cricket team and certain ideological fault-lines that open up during one hot Sunday afternoon match. A former part-time stand-up comedian, Bean has threaded - as ever - plenty of jokes into the all-male badinage. It's bound to knock audiences for six. But will it have a further life after Leeds and Salford - the places that pioneering theatre company Headlong is taking it to? Unlikely.
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"I've learnt not to raise my hopes," says Bean. "One review of Under the Whaleback [his Royal Court play about Hull trawler-men] said: 'This play will run forever in the West End.' Being naive, I thought, 'Excellent!', but there was nothing, not a phone call.

"These days, I suppose producers think audiences expect a West End play to mean witty lines delivered by Ralph Fiennes - they don't want five tattooed Hull trawler-men dying."