Interview: Chloë Moss on Adapting THE GUILTY at Donmar Warehouse

The Guilty, written by Chloë Moss, is making its world premiere at The Donmar Warehouse this month. The show, based on the screenplay Den Skyldige by Gustav Möller and Emil Nygaard Albertsen, follows a police officer, Joe [Russell Tovey], who receives a troubling 999 call while on the night shift. Recently, we had the chance to speak with Moss about adapting The Guilty for the stage. We discussed what made her want to work on the project, what it has been like working with Felix Barrett and the creative process for writing for one person on stage.

How did you first get started in the world of theatre?

I've written since I was a kid! And then when I went to Manchester Metropolitan, part of the course was playwriting. I wrote a really terrible play as part of that course that's never seen the light of day, thankfully! [Laughs] Not long after that, I moved to London, and I started on the Royal Court Young Writers Programme. I did ten weeks of evening sessions with the writer Simon Stephens, and at the end of that, there was the biannual Young Writers Festival. So I submitted the play that I'd written during that, and then it was produced, and that was in 2002 - quite a long time ago now! So my first play was on there, and then through that, Simon put me in touch with his agent, the brilliant Mel Kenyon, so it all came together. That was the realisation that I could actually do it for a living,

And what made you want to work on The Guilty?

I had a call from my agent two and a half years ago now, and she had had conversations with the producers and Felix Barrett, who was already attached to it. I really loved Punchdrunk’s and Felix's work, and it was really intriguing. I'm always intrigued by stuff that feels outside of my comfort zone. And I had a chat with them, and really got on with them. I watched the film [Den Skyldige] really early on, and haven’t watched it since then! But part of the reason that I really wanted to do it was that I felt a bit terrified about trying to adapt it for the stage, but then that was the challenge - how to make this piece feel really theatrical. There's no point adapting something if it just exists perfectly. How do we make this feel like a real theatrical event? And the conversations that I had with Felix got me really excited about that. And then the opportunity to make it feel like my own. The story is an adaptation, so those things are in place, but then I thought, “I'm going to not refer to the film again and just try and create this piece that is a clear adaptation, but try and make it my own and make it feel really theatrical,” which is what we've achieved, hopefully!

For those who might be unfamiliar with the original work, can you tell us a bit about The Guilty?

Absolutely! It is a thriller - a proper edge-of-your-seat, old-fashioned thriller. That was another thing that really drew me to it, because I love the idea of putting a real proper thriller in a theatre. That form is fairly unusual in theater. The fact that it's a real-time thriller is something that is really attractive to me. And then also the story, without giving too much away, is the story of a police officer called Joe, who is working at the emergency call centre. He's got a lot of stuff going on in his private life, and we get the sense of something that is impending for him. We know he's been taken off active duty, but we're not sure why. And then he takes a call from a woman called Emily, who's been kidnapped. And then the rest of the play is a real-time “against the clock” of Joe trying to say to Emily. 

Can you tell us a bit about your creative process for writing The Guilty?

Sure! So I watched the original, then I put that away. I really dug into what it was about these characters that I wanted to subvert. There is Joe, but this is also about the character of Emily and her story off-stage. I found that really fascinating, and wanted to develop that and create really solid worlds of who these people are, what they've been through, what they are off-stage. We get a lot of phone calls, so we're getting information, and it was really important to me to then flesh out who each of these people are, and that's what has been really great in rehearsal. There's something like seventeen off-stage characters, other police officers or people that are phoning up with their own emergencies, to really create those worlds and to think about who this new character is, who Joe is in this incarnation of the play and who Emily is. So there was a lot of creating this huge world, because it's set in the call centre. Joe's at his desk, taking these calls, but hopefully, it doesn't feel static. And a lot of that is to do with the realisation of these characters and who they are, getting a sense of them. It feels bigger than the sum of its parts - a lot of the work and my creative process was around ensuring that.

What is it like to be writing for only one person on the stage?

Really interesting and challenging! Now it's in rehearsals. Felix and Russell [Tovey] have been working a lot on the physicality - how to get him up from the desk, how to get him moving around - because it's so high-voltage, the adrenaline is up. But it's an action thriller confined to a very small space. Where does that action go? Where is the physicality of that? Thinking a lot about how to keep that interesting, how to keep that character moving around. Where do they go? What's their body language like? Because it's in the Donmar, and the Donmar is so intimate. With Gareth Fry, who's doing the sound design, and Anna Watson, who's doing the lighting design, everything is thrillingly, carefully attuned. Joe drops an Alka-Seltzer, and you can hear that fizz because of Gareth's brilliant sound design, and the lighting comes in on Joe because of Anna's work. It all feels very tense, and that butts against that idea that it's not just someone sat on a chair. There's a lot of stuff that your eye is going to be drawn to - you're going to be noticing little details.

And what has it been like working with Felix Barrett as the director?

Oh, amazing! We just got on really well from day one, and it's a really ongoing process. There's a lot of visual stuff, making those little tweaks and making those changes. And the amazing thing about Felix and Russell is they're really up for those changes, because that's quite terrifying as well - making changes quite late into the process! But the nature of the piece demands it, because you're actually in that moment now. Maybe it's trimming this line, maybe we don't need to say so much here. So it's been a very collaborative and brilliant process all around, and the story is quite intense and hard-hitting, but it's been very joyful, which is good.

What is it like working on an adaptation of something versus an original work as a writer?

It can be an odd experience! I've adapted stuff before, and, like I said earlier, the first thing for me when considering adapting something is, why would you do that? Some of my favourite books or films, I wouldn't want to touch because they exist perfectly. So for me, that was the very first challenging thing - how could this be a theatre piece? And then thinking about it and having conversations around how to make it theatrical suddenly made sense. But if I don't recognise that, or I think that something is perfect as a novel, a film or a short story, then that is problematic in terms of adapting something better. So I need to get that thing of, what is it saying? What's that big philosophical question that we're putting out there? It suits being a theatre piece as well, because this was like a Hollywood thriller, but it's also got elements of Greek tragedy as well. It feels like it really fits to be on the stage, and you can really heighten that. Now, I can't believe I ever questioned whether it would be good for adapting to stage! So it's looking for the reasons why this should be a different form than the one that it’s being adapted from.

What do you hope audiences take away from The Guilty?

Well, first of all, I just think it’s a real rip-roaring, edge-of-your-seat, thrilling experience. It's quite short, so it whips along - there's no room to breathe. You get pulled into it, and then you're in the driving seat with Joe, this character. On a purely entertaining level, it's just a really thrilling theatrical event. It poses a lot of questions around assumptions that we make around power structures. There is something around this, particularly in this age of social media, and a feeling of powerlessness that we all get from seeing events unfold on our screens and making assumptions about those, creating narratives for things that may not necessarily be the case. So, hopefully, that will resonate with audiences as well. Alongside the fact that this is a great theatrical experience and a good night out, there are bigger questions around big institutions and power structures - who holds power and how we buy into narratives around that.

And finally, how would you describe The Guilty in one word?

Rollercoaster!