Interview: Stefan Golaszewski - 'It's been mental'

Published on Friday 24 July 2009 13:58

WHEN A LITTLE PLAY WITH AN improbably long title became the sleeper hit of last year's Edinburgh Fringe, no one could have been more surprised than Stefan Golaszewski.

Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About A Girl He Once Loved, which he wrote, was performed in a sweaty attic at the Pleasance, and went on to win a Scotsman Fringe First award. It was his first play, and his acting debut, but went on to have a run Off-Broadway and could now be made into a film.

"Mental," he says, quietly, when I meet him almost a year later in London. "The idea that people would even like the show was completely unexpected. It was just me and the director doing the show we always hoped we'd get to watch. I hold the Fringe Firsts in awe, they're for proper theatre people, I couldn't believe it."

His unassuming monologue about two teenagers falling in love in a pub in Walthamstow captured the hearts of audience and critics alike. This year, he returns to the Fringe with the sequel, Stefan Golaszewski Is A Widower, but this time he's at the Traverse, the prestigious home of new writing. "How very daunting," he grimaces.

Golaszewski, 28, whose background is in sketch comedy, has had a very busy year. As well as working with comedy sketch group Cowards, he has written a sitcom pilot for the BBC and the screenplay for Stefan Golaszewski Speaks… which director Steve Bendelack (Mr Bean's Holiday, Little Britain) has pledged to direct, with Golaszewski as the lead. "If I can get away with looking like an 18-year-old," he grins. "I might. I'm quite wide-eyed." He was recently featured in Esquire magazine's 60 Brilliant Brits.

Until last year, Golaszewski's writing and performance experience was mainly with Cowards, the comedy sketch group he formed with Tom Basden, Tim Key and Lloyd Woolf after leaving Cambridge. After success on the Edinburgh Fringe three years ago, they went on to make two series for Radio Four and three programmes for BBC4.

Golaszewski directed Tom Basden in Won't Say Anything at the Fringe in 2007, which won the if.comedy Best Newcomer Award, and realised he was at risk of becoming known as a director. "That's not really what I want to do so I decided to do a show, but what I wanted to do wasn't comedy, it was a play. Calling it theatre allowed us to push it in a certain direction. And I suddenly started thinking, 'Wow, I could write pieces called theatre.' "

He did a little acting at university but stopped after a crisis of confidence. He was astonished when Stefan Golaszewski Speaks… was shortlisted for the Stage Award for Acting Excellence: "Another shock in a very shocking month."

"My experience of theatre, stereotypically, is that sometimes it can get too carried away in its own cleverness and isn't necessarily entertaining the audience. I come from the world of comedy where, if you aren't making people's brains fizz, what are you doing on the stage?"

He grins sheepishly when he explains that West Side Story is a major influence: "I imagine that's deeply unfashionable. But it is mind-blowing, extraordinary in terms of its emotional power.

"I like when I watch things like that, films that make me want to laugh and cry. I'm less keen on things with a big thing to say. I don't have any opinions I'm trying to give the world, I want to make people have a brilliant hour."

He believes that, by using his own name, he makes it easier for the audience to empathise with his character. "I could have made up a name, but that would be suggesting that I as a performer was above this character. That's counter to everything we're trying to do; we're trying to say this bloke is just like you, just like me. We're all on the same level, all flawed human beings just struggling to get by and getting knocked over by things like love and fate." How like you is he? "Very. But I'm a lot nicer in real life."

Stefan Golaszewski Is A Widower is a much more ambitious exercise in imagination. This time, Golaszewski projects himself forward to 2056 where his 76-year-old self has been a widower for two years, looking back on his life and the woman who shared it (whom he met in 2012).

"It's definitely darker, though hopefully it still has things that people might find amusing. It's very much him trying to understand everything that's happened to him, and some quite awful things have happened to him."

With a good sprinkling of self-deprecation he says the Golaszewski of the future is a national treasure, having been a stalwart actor in The Bill for 20 years, and is "quite fluorescent with words". He is, the writer admits, a little arrogant, something from which his younger namesake is remarkably free.

As if rehearsing three shows for the Fringe isn't enough – he is also directing Jonny Sweet in Mostly About Arthur and Nick Mohammed in Apollo 21 – he's been asked to re-write his sitcom pilot, Young, Unemployed and Lazy, which promises to feature actor Russell Tovey (Being Human, The History Boys) by August.

I feel another show coming on. "Stefan Golaszewski Is A Very Busy Man".

&#149 Stefan Golaszewski Is A Widower is at the Traverse, Edinburgh, 6-30 August