Interview: Writer Alex Unwin on turning Simon Parkes' Brixton Academy memoir into a play
07/06/2025
Interview: Writer Alex Unwin talks about how political speechwriting compares with playwriting, how he turned a biography into a play, and the theatrical experience that sparked the idea.
Your background is writing speeches for political leaders; what sparked your interest in writing plays, and how does that style of writing compare?
Writing has always been a very big part of my life. My first entry into it was journalism when I was at university. I left university and went into government and speechwriting for various political leaders.
And I've really got the co-founder of Kick It Anywhere and the producer of Brixton Calling [John Dinneen] to thank for getting me into playwriting.
I loved the theatre; it was a big part of my life growing up. I used to come down from where I lived in the Midlands to London for matinees with my parents.
But it was only when I was living in Brixton during the lockdown with John, who is a writer himself, and he said: 'We've got to do something with all of this time that we've got, why don't we write a play together?
And we've been writing together for five or six years now.
It's very different [to speechwriting] in a lot of ways, but I do think there are some core similarities that have been very useful when applied to playwriting.
There's something about the fact that when you are writing for someone who is performing the words, whether it's a politician presenting to an audience or an actor who's in the theatre.
You can't avoid the scrutiny of listening to someone read words that you've written and really hearing every single word and the rhythm of the sentence, and things that work and things that don't work.
Doing that first in a political speech writing context has been very helpful, as I've started transferring it to theatre.
Your play Brixton Calling is inspired by Simon Parkes' memoir Live at the Brixton Academy. How did you come across the book, and decide to turn it into a play?
In the same way that theatre was a big part of my life growing up, music was as well. My dad used to be an amateur DJ, so when we were crisscrossing the country, going to various sporting events or football matches, we'd always be listening to music.
He introduced me to The Clash and The Jam and that era of music.
When I moved to London, I was in Brixton, very near to the Brixton Academy and a very good friend of mine who works in the music industry said: I've just read this book, you have to read it, I think you'd love it. I devoured it in a couple of days; it's an incredible story.
At the same time, with another friend, I had just seen Cruise in the West End, which I'd totally fallen in love with.
My brain started fizzing with this idea that that type of theatre, which is very musical, could really work for the type of story that Simon Parkes had told in Live at the Brixton Academy.
That's probably three or four years ago now, and we started a very, very long process of first writing the script and then getting Simon on board to let us bring it to the stage.
What's been the biggest challenge of turning someone else's reality into an 80-minute play?
It's such a raucous, chaotic story; he was a 23-year-old arriving in Brixton from quite a posh, privileged background in the early 1980s. And he bought this derelict cinema for a pound and said, 'I think that could be an amazing music venue'.
Over 10 years, against all of the odds - local politics, national politics, the politics of the music industry - he fought it all and built this venue.
Every page in the book is so dramatic. It's jumping around, different characters, different things going wrong, that probably the biggest challenge has been trying to draw that together into a coherent narrative with a very clear dramatic progression.
Then, of course, further down the line, just practical things like getting the rights to the music we want to be a part of the soundtrack has been an ongoing challenge.
How did music inform the the play? Did you have a wish list?
I'm really very excited that we have a lot of the team that did Cruise working on the play. We've got Bronagh Lagan, the director, and we've got Cruise's sound and set designers.
The initial idea was one actor telling the story, multi-rolling and then a musician on stage sound-tracking. And then we got to the workshop stage earlier this year with two absolutely brilliant actor-musicians - Max Runham, who plays Simon and Tendai Sitima, who plays Johnny Lawes. They both play a bunch of other people as well.
But we thought it was such an opportunity to do something really interesting, where they both tell the story as their characters but then, throughout the play, come out of character to perform the great songs of the time.
We want it to feel like you're at a gig, like you're in the Academy at moments through the play. We had a wish list [of songs]. The tracklist has changed a lot just by virtue of what we are and aren't allowed to play.
But it's an amazing soundtrack that tells 10 years of quite rapid musical evolution. We start with reggae, calypso and ska, and we move through punk and The Clash, who were the big breakout moment for Simon and the Academy, and then into rock and roll as the Bruce Springsteens were coming down.
Then it finishes with the big rave and acid house explosion and bands or artists like the Prodigy. So there's a little bit of everything.
What's the best gig that you've been to, and what's the best theatre that you've seen?
I definitely have to give a shout-out to the Brixton Academy. The best Brixton gig I've been to so far is a band called Honne. It felt very intimate. And that's the brilliant thing about the venue: it's 5,000 people, but it feels very intimate.
And I'm very excited about the LCD Sound System residency coming next month.
Beyond that, though, I'd have to be quite cliché and say it was the first time I went to Glastonbury and The Killer's headline set when they brought out the Pet Shop Boys and Johnny Marr. It was just amazing.
I try and see as many different types of theatre as possible from musicals to work above pubs. I'll always remember the first time I saw Hamilton and the buzz and spectacle that justified all of the hype.
And I love the idea of seeing new work and new writing and people at the very start of their creative journeys, which is always exciting.
But just because it's been such an inspiration for this project and because it's such a joy to be working with a number of the folks who worked on it, I'd have to say Cruise. Particularly given we were coming out of lockdown, it was the return of theatre in many ways.
To see a performer supported brilliantly by a musician. A performer in Jack Holden so in command of a story and a space as an individual playing 20-25 parts over 90 minutes in a big West End theatre. It was really remarkable.
You can watch this interview here, and Alex's play Brixton Calling opens at the Southwark Playhouse on 23 July. I'll be reviewing Brixton Calling when it opens.
More interviews with theatre creatives:
Director Scott Le Crass - 'comedy is truth'
Writer Laura Horton on Edinburgh stress
Theatre director Madelaine Moore on making female-focused theatre