I don’t like people from the media he tells our photographer

“I don’t like people from the media,” he tells our photographer. “Tell them, if they don’t like the pictures, I was being an obstructive bastard.”But on the day we meet, a fortnight before the photoshoot, he is civility personified A little gaunter in the face than expected. A bit hyped- up, perhaps, from too much coffee and the cigarettes that he chainsmokes as we talk, but not the bruiser of reputation. He’s keen to set straight a few misconceptions about the play.”Let me make it very clear. I do not have any personal vendetta against individuals in the media I’m not involved in that world That’s not what I’m about.

I am very concerned about the globalisation of the media, the way that, as someone says in the play, decisions are taken, ‘from a building high in the sky on another continent’. There will be certain areas of the media that feel they are under attack, but I don’t even want the play to be simply limited to the media. What I’m trying to do is say something about the way we work now. These days people feel that their working lives are out of control I feel very deeply that that is bad for people. When anybody asks me what this play is about, I say it’s about bullying.”In the past, he admits, he has caricatured specific individuals in his work (“I’ve lost a few friends that way”).

In what he calls this “public play”, Lucie is more interested in creating composites with a universal appeal. “On any night in the theatre, I think, there’ll be a whole spread of the reading public there. I wanted to make characters broad enough so that everyone in the audience can say, ‘Ah, I recognise that.’”Anyway, the characters inevitably assume a life of their own once they reach the stage. The Scottish editor in the script, Lucie points out, has become an Irishman (played by Tony Doyle) in Robin Lefevre’s production. “One of the reasons it is not set in the offices of a newspaper is that – and I don’t mean this as a terrible criticism – is that journalists tend to be terribly literal in this situation, and the last thing I want is an audience of journalists pointing at the stage and complaining that there aren’t enough paperclips there.” Quite the contrary, it seems.