Former EastEnders actor Stuart Laing tells Laura Davis about appearing in Neil LaBute’s Trilogy

‘DISTURBING and controversial” and “a brilliant black comedy” were two of the verdicts on Neil LaBute’s 1997 film, In the Company of Men. Declared everything on the critical spectrum, including “cynical” and “misogynistic”, it won the Filmmaker’s Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as a stack of other awards.

The French-Canadian film and theatre scriptwriter has the power to divide audiences. So what will they make of his trilogy of short plays, including a world premiere, at Liverpool’s Unity next week?

“They’re quite dark pieces in that the characters can react in extreme ways,” says former EastEnders actor Stuart Laing, who is performing in two of the works.

“When I first read them, I didn’t expect them to kick off in different directions like they do. They’re quite bonkers but there’s a lot of poignancy in them as well, a lot of loss and regret.”

Laing, who played Rob Minter, cheating husband of Walford’s baby-snatching GP, in the TV soap, takes on two parts in the trilogy.

In The Furies, LaBute’s new work, he is a young man taking his sister to meet his gay partner.

“He’s quite a neurotic character who goes everywhere with his sister and they have a very strange, almost incestuous, relationship,” reveals the 40-year-old.

“His partner has been married with kids and he’s come out and it’s destroyed his family. He’s torn about his sexuality and having second thoughts.”

Each play lasts 20-40 minutes and charts the trajectories of a couple responding to sudden, drastic changes in their lives brought on by a revelation.

In Land of the Dead, set in New York, a couple part. He (Laing) goes to an office, she (Frances Grey), to a clinic.

“He comes across at first as not the most sensitive sort of guy,” says the London-born actor of his character.

“He wants to go out with his mates and get drunk, and doesn’t take his girlfriend very seriously. Then as it goes on you realise there’s more to him than that and he does actually care for this woman, but he’s not very articulate in expressing his love for her, which is part of the tragedy of the story.”

He welcomes the challenge of playing two very diverse characters.

“They’re so extremely different, which has been great,” he says.

“The first one’s so wired and unpredictable and extreme in his behaviour, and the other one has much more weight to him.

“You come off from one and it’s a bit mad having to jump into a different character.”

Dialogue Productions performed the Land of the Dead and the third piece, Helter Skelter, about a husband and wife meeting in a chic New York restaurant after Christmas shopping, for a sell-out run at London’s Bush Theatre.

After The Furies’ debut at the Unity, all three will tour to 12 venues across the UK.

An earlier trilogy of LaBute’s, Bash: Latter-Day Plays, an off-Broadway show starring Calista Flockhart, resulted in his being disfellowed from the Mormon Church.

While his 2002 play, The Mercy Seat, a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks starring Liev Schreiber and Sigourney Weaver, was a critical success, his remake of the cult horror flick, The Wicker Man, was a box office flop.

“He divides a lot of people, which is quite interesting,” says Laing, “and I think he does enjoy shocking people.

“But he manages to be very provocative without necessarily littering the piece with loads of bad language.

“I’m a big fan of his film Your Friends & Neighbors with Catherine Keener and Ben Stiller, which I saw about 10 years ago but didn’t know he wrote it. I thought it was such an unconventionally dark American film.

“I like that he goes out on such a limb not to necessarily make you like his characters but to paint them in a complex way.

“And his dialogue feels really actor-friendly.

“There’s a lot of subtlety in the language, a lot of broken sentences and weird emphasises.

“He obviously really observes people because it’s very clever.” Laing has spent the majority of his career in film and TV work, as well as averaging a theatrical production a year, but welcomes the change.

“It’s so challenging and it’s such a different process,” he says.

“The theatre gives you the chance to play away from yourself a lot and to take more risks.

“You’re generally cast in TV to use your own physicality and your own voice. That can be quite limiting.”

While he enjoyed his EastEnders experience, he was ready to leave the soap when his character bowed out.

“EastEnders was challenging in a different way, and it was great to have some regular money because most of the time actors don’t know where the next pay check is coming from,” he says.

“You film so fast and you often do things in one or two takes and you often have 20-odd pages of dialogue to do a day, so there’s not a lot of rehearsing or sitting around discussing what your character is.

“You sometimes have about 50 writers writing your character and often there isn’t a continuity which can be a bit frustrating.

“I was there for about a year and it was the right time to leave.”

A TRILOGY, by Neil LaBute, is at the Unity on February 2-3. Tickets £9 (concs £7), 0844 873 2888.

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