Having won the audience vote as a shorter version, a new, full-length script of ‘First Impressions’ is being knocked into shape ahead of its production at Margate’s Theatre Royal in September. Writer Tim Stimpson gives us a sneak peak of what may be in store.
Obviously I was delighted when the audience at the Theatre Royal gave my play a big thumbs-up. However, it did present me with a bit of challenge. How to extend a play that was originally intended to be seen in a swift, tight, compact form? Fortunately I have no qualms about nicking good ideas. Having taken the short version to a writer’s group back home in Brum, a producer friend suggested that I create a parallel strand, dramatising Turner’s life and his links to Margate.
The original play dealt with a Margate councillor who pretends to be someone else in order to acquire a lost Turner masterpiece for the town. Amazingly, Turner also led double and even triple lives. Although Turner never got married, most people believe that Sarah Danby’s two daughters, Eveline and Georgina, were actually his. However, there is some speculation that Turner’s children were actually mothered by Hannah Danby, his housekeeper and Sarah’s sister. It’s certainly very intriguing. What is known is that in later life Turner also started conducting an affair with Mrs Sophia Booth, his landlady in Margate. Eventually she moved in with him in a house in Chelsea, where he went by the pseudonym Mr Booth, or even Admiral Puggy Booth. The relationship was so secret that for years Hannah (still keeping his gallery near Harley Street) knew nothing about it. When she hadn’t seen Turner for weeks she finally found an address in a coat pocket and went to visit. However, she was too afraid to knock and instead enquired at the ginger-beer shop next door where she was told that ‘two, quiet, respectable people’ lived there. Hannah returned home and Turner died a little while later. She never saw him again. Well, with material like that you just have to use it.
So the new version of ‘First Impression’ has these two strands, one set in the 1830s and the other set in the present day. It imagines the early days of Turner’s relationship with Mrs Booth, whilst still exploring Margate’s relationship with art and whether culture really can regenerate this wonderful, but very much faded, seaside town. Oh – and I’m hoping it’ll still be very funny as well!
