Can you give us a brief summary of Folly to be Wise and the central themes it explores?
Of course! The play is set over one night around two ex-best friends, boys who grew up together but have drifted apart in recent years, adulthood being what it is. Johnny has reached out to Ben to reconnect, and everything seems swell, but it turns out there’s a little more to Johnny’s olive branch than meets the eye. In fact, once Lottie and Bella get involved and our quartet is complete, things get really rather messy, and the play delves deep into the big questions of friendship and morality, and how people react to (and judge) difficult decisions and events.
Charlie Dunne’s writing has a unique voice—how do you feel his script captures the themes of friendship and the challenges of adulthood?
He’s a brilliant writer, with a knack for balancing beautiful, intricate human moments, and great sweeping stories than keep you riveted from the first word to the final blackout. Every scene is packed full of questions, like hidden parcels of intrigue that pop in and out of the broader conversations. Digging into one of Charlie’s plays is like taking a lesson in psychology, taught by a clown, the perfect blend of sincere and genuinely hilarious.
What Charlie does so well in Folly to be Wise, is to present friendships that aren’t perfect, that aren’t enviable; he’s not interested in the ideal, or the romanticised – he’s asking really tough questions, questions that I honestly hope I never have to face, but the excitement and fascination comes from asking yourself, what would you do in these situations?
The dynamic between Ben and Johnny seems central to the story. How did you approach developing these characters and their relationship for the production?
They are indeed a dynamic duo, old pals who are meeting up after a good few years of drifting apart, it’s a sad situation, but it’s all-too-common, especially in big cities where communities are sparse, and geography interrupts relationships.
What we really wanted to get into with these two is that nuanced, and imperceptible moment where a situation balances on a knife’s edge, where you look back and say ‘how did we get here?’ Years down the line you might be able to tease out the web of events that constitute a friendship, but in the thick of it, especially when you’re young, those moments are hard to grasp, they flip and fold over each other and get knotted up with other relationships, other friendships, and the intricacies of our complex lives.
Approaching these two has been a fascinating study in masculinity, brotherhood, love, lies, and what draws people together, through thick and thin. All four of the actors have brought insane amounts of energy and verve to the rehearsal room, filling their characters with depth and complexity, it’s honestly a masterclass just watching them work.
As a co-founder of Scallywag Studios, what do you hope audiences take away from this production, especially regarding the idea of “folly” versus wisdom?
As a company we’ve built a name on delivering work that makes you laugh and think, which is not as simple it sounds. We tread that line between comedy and tragedy, dipping into one, then the other, letting them collide together, and the results become a perfect storm of surprising, exciting, curious, confusing, and thought-provoking. For this production we’re keen to make a piece that starts conversations. We want our audience to walk out of the theatre brimming with questions and opinions, to disagree with each other, feel contradictory, and to enjoy the feeling of having watched, not just a series of events, but a play that cuts into what live theatre is all about: presenting a difficult conversation, and encouraging the audience to get involved. We want to embrace hypocrisy, that’s how we learn, and how folly becomes growth, how ignorance becomes wisdom.
After two sell-out runs, what do you think resonates most with audiences about your work, and how do you plan to keep that momentum going with this new show?
We want to push ourselves, always, to make the work sharper, more tense, more exciting, and every production is a huge lesson both artistically, as writers and directors, and logistically, as producers and production managers. With Folly to be Wise we really want to raise our standards, to showcase just how brilliant fringe theatre can be, to be ambitious in the quality of the work, and of course to give our audience’s what they’ve learnt to expect from us: entertainment. You might not like the characters, you might not agree with their choices, but we know Scallywag shows are unforgettable.
On a more general note: more and more, audiences heading to the theatre are looking for an experience that makes them feel alive. There’s plenty of on-demand digital work that can make you laugh, or cry, and there’s a space for that, but it doesn’t quite tickle the brain in the same way as good live art. That buzz down the back of your neck when the lights go down, the anticipation of that first spoken word, the sound of the actor’s breath, the palpable feeling in a room full of people all intently listening, you can’t beat it.
We don’t just want to make ‘good work’, we make work that has the live experience at its heart, and our audiences appreciate that immediacy, be it in roaring laughter or pin-drop silence.
Beyond that we care about the community that we’re a part of, and we’re involved in projects beyond our own productions, helping encourage and support new writing. We’re collaborating with Medium Rare on 2025’s edition of FreshFest, and we’ve a series of Theatre-Making workshops in the pipeline. There are a lot of people out there with great ideas, and we love being a part of making those ideas a reality.
Folly to be Wise will run at the Hen & Chickens Theatre, December 3rd-7th.