A Youngish Perspective holds this exclusive conversation with Anya Viller, the director of Ordinary Madness at Riverside Studios from 8 Feb to 9 March 2025.

What drew you to adapt the works of Charles Bukowski for the stage, and how did you decide which stories to include in Ordinary Madness?

 Ordinary Madness could have included many other stories from Bukowski’s works, and it could have included many stories from our everyday life – all of it ordinary madness! However, I focused on these six stories because at that moment in time the philosophical thoughts expressed and problems explored were very close to me, it was a year and a half ago. Now, I may make different choices, but a lot of things happen intuitively. Humour is born out of despair, through pain, it helps you to cope with difficulties. Charles Bukowski treated his own pain and the pain of his generation in his works, and it still resonates with our contemporaries, which is why choosing this author was an easy choice. Also, Bukowski’s works are incredibly theatrical and very enjoyable for actors to perform.

The production blends Bukowski’s dark humour and provocative imagery with a contemporary twist. How did you approach balancing authenticity to his writing with modern relevance?

Many people know Charles Bukowski as an alcoholic who wrote stories in a dirty, repulsive style, and many classify him as “underground” and a “beatnik”. And he really is, because Bukowski, unlike many 20th-century intellectuals, was the closest thing to the ordinary American man. He understood those average guys interrupted by dreary, tedious, dull jobs. In our time, we still have the same problems in society, we still have the same gap between social strata, the audience recognises every character on stage, laughing and crying with them. Despite the naturalism shocking some people, his books are full of lyricism, and I would even say, some sentimentality, but understanding the direct, rough, and in some places even dirty style of Bukowski is not guaranteed for everyone. Bukowski’s style is beautiful in its realism, simplicity, truthfulness, openness and romanticism, a special romanticism that is only found in his works. Therefore, the audience leaves the performance in a romantic mood. In a way, this is the perfect play for a date and for celebrating Valentine’s Day. This is the kind of writer about whom you should form your own opinion, without preconceived notions, which is why so much debate is sparked in the bar at Riverside Studios after the play.

“Bukowski is Virgil, who guides us through his personal Hell, and we are Dante, who seeks his Beatrice there.”

Our team have been walking along this path for a year and a half now, and the project is growing and growing!

The themes explored in Ordinary Madness, such as loneliness, superficiality, and societal failure, feel particularly resonant today. What parallels do you see between Bukowski’s America and modern-day London?

Bukowski brought to literary speech the ability to talk about complex things in very simple words. His realist aesthetic is as inexhaustible as life itself. His poetic language is contemporary.

Bukowski’s works are immortal classics that stir the souls of people in any historical time in any city. Of course, the loneliness of the insignificant person in a big city is something that we Londoners are very concerned about in 2025, and you can find it in every Bukowski story.

Although it is very interesting that in the last years of his life Charles’ face lit up with such fame that he was welcomed in stadiums, to standing ovations, like a rock star. He recited his poetry magnificently. Calm, poised, without raising his voice. Adequate to how and what they expressed.

Paul McCartney at one time liked this intonation so much that he offered to record Charles Bukowski an album where he would read his poems to the music of The Beatles, as Jim Morrison once did with the classic lineup of The Doors…. But Bukowski declined out of modesty. 

You mentioned the idea of “being weak but pretending to be strong” as a central theme. How did you work with your cast to bring that emotional vulnerability to life on stage?

Yes, you are right, as a central rule, all men in Bukowski’s works are unconvincingly macho and resemble a small child standing in a boxing ring in tears – a sight both pathetic and charming. Being weak but pretending to be strong is very human in general. 

There are movements going on in society right now where being weak and vulnerable is normal, being imperfect is an objective reality. I work with modern actors who are close to these ideas and who are interested in playing living people with all their oddities, none of the actors strive to look irresistible or particularly heroic, we are all on the same page – we play living people.

It’s great fun to play this game, to show our vulnerabilities without regret. 

Bukowski’s heroes resist the “American dream” with its cult of success, because he himself, like many other “ordinary people”, do not need recognition and wealth and is are not going to achieve anything. Because it is normal to be an ordinary person who’s a bit mad.

Art Theatre London often adapts literature for the stage. What excites you most about reimagining classic texts for contemporary audiences, and what do you hope audiences will take away from this production?

The scenery and costumes of human drama change over the years, but the motives that drive people, the feelings that drive them, and the actions they perform do not. You only have to watch the news to be convinced of this. 

However, I am also interested in language, style, humour, I am interested in HOW the story is told, I am very happy to work with a good text. It seems to me that individuality is best expressed when there is a conscious reference to “origins”. Since I am a contemporary artist, what I do is in any case a reinterpretation of the classics from the perspective of someone who has lived more than a quarter of the 21st century. The Golden Ratio is the proportion of beauty, which was noticed in ancient times by the Egyptians, and we still perceive the world according to these parameters. I hope viewers will also find much beauty, romance and humour in our work made from Bukowski’s dirty realism.

For info and tickets, please visit https://riversidestudios.co.uk/see-and-do/ordinary-madness-150676/