It started on a holiday cruise.
asserted
It → start → cruise
You know the type: a picture postcard journey, drifting through islands, sunsets and dinner buffets.
asserted
You → know → islands
Everyone is there to socialise, but do you really take a cruise to make friends?
asserted
you → socialise → friends
On just such a cruise, a couple – friends of Moffat and his wife, producer Sue Vertue – encountered a “charismatic and charming American lady, who seemed to be friends with everyone on board,” Moffat says.
asserted
Moffat → encounter → board
“They reluctantly exchanged email addresses, as we Brits always do, and she [subsequently] invited herself to stay.
asserted
she → exchange → herself
At the very last minute, the couple Googled her unusual name and discovered she was a murderess, whose crimes had drawn headlines long before she’d embarked on her European holiday.
asserted
she → google → holiday
To protect her anonymity, and the cruising couple’s safety, we will spare you the garish details of what actually transpired.
asserted
what → protect → details
“She was on the loose and making friends with people,” Moffat says.
asserted
Moffat → make → people
In real life, they emailed her, made their excuses, and the holidaymaker murderess was never heard from again.
asserted
murderess → email → excuses
But when the story was related to Moffat, he said: “Oh please, can I have that, and can I just change one thing?
asserted
I → relate → thing
Can she arrive before you managed to send the email?”
asserted
you → arrive → email
The Unfriend is Moffat’s first play and is now showing at Roslyn Packer Theatre for the Sydney Theatre Company.
asserted
Unfriend → show → Company
It seems almost strange Moffat had not written for the stage before, but writing for television kept him busy: Press Gang, Coupling, Sherlock, Dracula and Doctor Who are among his long list of credits.
asserted
Gang → seem → credits
To ice the cake, the play turned into a hit of its own.
asserted
play → ice → own
It has been mounted in London’s West End, in the United States – heaven help us all if the holidaymaker murderer ever sees it – and across Europe.
asserted
murderer → mount → Europe
In that sense, she’s akin to Beverly Moss, the status-obsessed dinner party hostess of Abigail’s Party.
asserted
she → ’ → Party
She’s not as detached as Mrs Danvers in Rebecca, nor as wretched as Madame Thénardier in Les Misérables, but the more you stare at her, you realise she’s cut from the same hideous (also: fabulous) cloth.
asserted
she → ’ → cloth
“She’s a really awful person, she kills people, but, you can’t write someone that way,” Moffat says.
asserted
Moffat → ’ → someone
“It’s that horrifying thing, the worst person you know is right sometimes, and Elsa is right sometimes.
asserted
Elsa → ’ → ?
Her final monologue is relatively persuasive, you know ... edit humanity a little bit, who says you can’t kill the occasional person?
asserted
you → know → person
“You can’t write as a judgment,” Moffat adds.
asserted
Moffat → write → judgment
“You can’t decide this is an awful person; therefore they will only say awful things and be wrong all the time.
asserted
they → decide → things
That is what all liberals like me want to do; we always want to make the people who don’t agree with us evil all the time, [and] well, that’s just not true.
asserted
that → want → us
Everybody’s right sometimes.”
asserted
Everybody → ’ → ?
In that sense, it’s easy to overlay a modern-day context to The Unfriend and go searching for hints of the modern political divide: meeting a new neighbour, workmate or, indeed, a woman on a cruise, and discovering she wears different political colours and the friendship is instantly poisoned.
asserted
friendship → ’ → colours
Where do we all go from there?
asserted
we → go → ?
The decade has changed, Moffat agrees, but the question is the same.
asserted
question → change → ?
“Go away, transplant yourself back in time and tell me what the lovely decade was,” he says.
asserted
he → go → me
“What are you missing?
asserted
you → miss → What
They say it’s uniquely divisive now, I just don’t know when it wasn’t.”
asserted
it → say → ?
The difference, he thinks, is survival.
asserted
he → think → ?
“We’ve survived the past; therefore we think it’s all tame and nice.
asserted
it → survive → past
We haven’t survived the present yet.”
asserted
We → survive → present
Since its creation in 2020, the script has had to deal with tense changes – Donald Trump’s presidency, for example, went from present tense to past and then back again to present.
asserted
presidency → have → present
And in the US production, which was staged in Florida, he was excised entirely.
asserted
he → stag → Florida
“Because, they said, whichever side of that divide you’re on, no one’s finding it funny,” Moffat recalls.
asserted
Moffat → say → divide
Having added playwright to an already long bow, it is also true that Moffat may never quite escape his own filmography.
uncertain
Moffat → add → filmography
His iconic children’s series Press Gang is remembered – alongside Grange Hill, The Kids of Degrassi Street and Degrassi Junior High – for ambitious storytelling and sharp social commentary.
asserted
series → remember → storytelling
So, where’s this generation’s Press Gang?
asserted
Gang → ’ → ?
The answer, he says, is complicated.
asserted
he → say → ?
…and 25 more, not listed.
The Aporia
