Ian Wheeler is the head of The Battered Suitcase Theatre Company, perhaps best known for their stagings of original Doctor Who adventures. Battered Suitcase have more strings to their bow than, that, though, with recent productions including a revisionary Sherlock Holmes, a new adaptation of the Vincent Price classic Theatre of Blood and Tales from the Jungle Book. They also make short films and distribute them for free online! Garbled caught up with Ian as he prepares for his next presentation, Crash Morgan and The Curse of the Lost Totem, which premieres in May 2004 (Click here for your chance to win free tickets).
GC: Which has been Battered Suitcase's most successful project so far?
IW: That depends how you define success, really. In terms of audience appreciation and numbers it’d have to be the Doctor Who shows – people seem to like Vox Dei particularly. I’ve got a personal soft spot for Hellblossom and I think our Sherlock Holmes play The Devil’s Tallyman was ambitious and original. They all have their merits. With one possible exception. Which leads us to your next question…
GC: And the least successful?
IW: That is soooo easy. To The Hangman And To Hell, an Edgar Allan Poe themed one nighter I did to give a couple of my cast members from
GC: You seem incredibly prolific, especially in the amount of writing you do. Does it come easily?
IW: I’m always working ideas, scenes and dialogue in my head – I have to do something at work, after all. Sitting down and forcing myself to actually put the words on paper is hard work, though…
GC: What prompted you to undertake a series of original Doctor Who productions?
IW: Well … I've always been a sort of fan of the series, within reasonable limits, and before Battered Suitcase was formed I was involved in another Doctor Who play (Doctor Who and the Planet of Storms, written and directed by and starring Nick Scovell) as an actor and as Costume/Props Designer. That wasn't a satisfactory experience for me, partly for personal reasons and mostly because Planet of Storms seemed to me to celebrate the worst aspects of the tv show, with lots of camp running around and bad plotting, so I thought about what I have done instead and started writing...
GC: Are you going to do any more?
IW: It’s always a possibility. I have the title of the next one – Ultra Vires (It’s Latin, and means “Beyond authority”) - and most of the plot and characters. Three’s a nice round number, though, and there’s unlikely to be much of a place for small scale stage shows like this once the Doctor’s back on the telly.
GC: The actor playing The Doctor changed for each play. Was that by accident or design?
IW: A bit of both. By the time we did Hellblossom my personal relationship with Mark Wright, my first Doctor and with whom I both shared a house and a writing partnership, had started to deteriorate, only to fall apart completely when we did Crash Morgan versus the Spider Warlords of Mars later that year. Basically, I got fed up doing all the work and just getting tantrums in return … That meant a new Doctor, the excellent David Huntington, with whom I’d worked on The Picture of Dorian Gray previously. Writing with him in mind meant I was able to create a much fuller, more individual Doctor. When it came time for Warsmith I’d decided that I liked having a different Doctor each time as it guaranteed a different sort of show and story, with the companion Karnak instead acting as the link between them all. Mike O’Doherty’s Doctor was more genial, more affable, and it meant I got a good mix of different styles. Having said that, Ultra Vires (if it happens) will reprise Mike again. I can’t keep replacing the Doctor…
GC: If you were Russell T Davies, how would you be approaching the programme's revival?
IW: I’d just do whatever I personally wanted to do, which is what I did with the stage shows. You’re NEVER going to please all the fans so you might as well just start with yourself and hope for the best. At least then someone’s going to be happy.
GC: The Battered Suitcase website features some original short films. How important are these within the context of the company's work as a whole?
IW: I just do what I like to do, and I like making films. It’s what I wanted to do originally before getting co-opted into the theatre scene instead.
GC: The films available are both noticeably genre pieces. Do you feel that they address a gap left by mainstream British TV and film?
IW: They address the fact that ultimately I’m a sci-fi and pulp nerd, albeit one with an unlikely Shakespeare fetish. Go figure. If there is a gap (which is a whole discussion on its own) I hardly think those thirty five minutes of combined footage are going to go a long way to plugging it. I’m an egotist but I’m not insane.
GC: Some of the computer effects are highly impressive. How do you achieve them?
IW: By swearing at the PC, screaming “Why won’t you work? Why? Why?” You think I’m joking, don’t you?
GC: Crash Morgan is another character you visit regularly. What was the genesis of his creation, and to what extent is he is a spoof of Flash Gordon?
IW: One day my writing partner at the time Mark Wright said, “Hey, why don’t we do a Flash Gordon stage show?” I thought about it and went away and wrote the first scenes set on Earth, fleshing it out and making Crash more of an Everyman hero – I introduced the idea of Crash being the Human Rocket on Earth and mixing in all the republic serials we could think of – Dick Tracy, King of the Rocket Men, Spy Smasher et al. So, we got writing. The original draft. Crash Morgan versus the Spider Warlords of Mars was to have been the first of two plays and ended on a cliff-hanger, but by that point the possibility of me ever finishing it with Mark was remote as our personal relationship had soured beyond repair. I later then dusted the play down and moved the whole thing to radio format, re-edited it and wrote an ending and performed it as Crash Morgan and the Conquest of the Spider Warlords of Mars. The new prequel, Crash Morgan and the Curse of the Lost Totem, vaguely incorporates a play I wrote when I was eighteen. Seventeen years in the making!
GC: You seem to have built up a complex fictional literary history for Crash. Is it your feeling that there is a lot of mileage in the concept?
IW: I do, actually. People coming to see us will see a stage reproduction of a 1940s radio show, complete with ads. They can enjoy it on several levels – as an adventure story or as a theatrical recreation. And I can spin Crash off in any direction I see fit, so he’s a great vehicle. The original, for instance, started off with action-adventure and turned into sci-fi. This time I’m doing spy stories and horror. But Crash can be retooled for anything.
GC: What else can audiences of the new play expect?
IW: To laugh. It’s pastiche, rather than parody, so you don’t have to be familiar with the originals to get the gags. Think of it as a comedy League of Extraordinary Gentlemen…
GC: Your taking the show to London as well as you regular haunt of Portsmouth. Is that to make your work more accessible to Sci-Fi fans across the country or are there other reasons behind it?
IW: Portsmouth is way out of the way and we’ve got a fairly small theatre-going audience. I just wanted to move out, expand. London’s more central and a better draw for audiences.
GC: What does the future hold for Battered Suitcase?
IW: In the absolute short term, a nice cup of coffee and some biscuits. After that? I’m currently trying to sort out a venue for a production of The Tempest, and I’m keen on a stage version of Quatermass and the Pit, if I can get the permission. More films. Maybe some more Who. I’ve had some time off and I’m nicely rested, so we’ll wait and see what else there is out there for Battered Suitcase to be getting up to.
Interview by Chris Denton.
LINKS
Enter our competion to win free Crash Morgan tickets.
Read our reviews of Doctor Who:Vox Dei and Sherlock Holmes and the Devil's Tallyman.
Visit the Battered Suitcase website.
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