Staging a rebellion

If you're familiar with the Dogme manifesto of filmmaking, you'll appreciate the magnitude of the task David Eldridge faced in adapting Thomas Vinterberg's Festen, the first Dogme film, for the stage.

'Oh, I was in tears at the end of the first draft, believe me,' says Eldridge, whose stage version, starring Jonny Lee Miller and Sian Phillips, previews from Thursday at the Almeida. 'But I'm in tears at the end of the first draft of my own plays, so that was nothing new. And by the end of the second, the script had become part of me.'

Vinterberg's Festen takes off when Christian calmly reveals to the guests at his father's 60th birthday party that their host sexually abused him and his twin sister (who recently committed suicide) when they were children.

At first the guests pretend they haven't heard. Then the party disintegrates into acrimony and violence. As Christian's sanity is plunged into doubt, the hand-held camera dodges in and out of the action, recording the chaos with unflinching scrutiny.

Eldridge loved the film the first time he saw it, but only realised its theatrical potential when the Almeida came calling. 'Most people think of Dogme in terms of its production rules,' he says of the manifesto which set out to restore truth to cinema and initially rejected such conventions as artificial lighting and sets. 'But the least known rule within the Dogme credo is the one that refers to writing.

It's about getting away from the formulaic three-act structure that dominates a lot of Hollywood filmmaking and returning to a more organic narrative, which you tend to find more in theatre anyway. The trick was to find a language for the stage that would remain absolutely true to Christian's emotional journey.'

Eldridge is no stranger to artistic manifestos. Now 30, he and other young playwrights such as Roy Williams and Moira Buffini form a casual collective who call themselves the Monsterists. 'Actually, the Monsterists reject all rules,' says Eldridge.

'It's a way of asking theatres to be bolder with what they programme. Because of the economic climate of recent years, writers are finding themselves pressured to write plays that require small casts, because these plays are cheaper to produce. You can't write a play about a rugby team for example; you'd need too many actors, which is a problem. We want theatre managers to invest more money in ambition.'

Not that Eldridge has had much trouble finding a home for his work. His first play, Serving It Up, was produced at the Bush Theatre while he was still at Exeter University. The three plays that followed were staged at the Donmar, Hampstead and Royal Court Theatres.

'It was a struggle,' Eldridge admits. 'All my university friends were getting proper jobs while I was in Essex writing. I still felt like a student. There were times when I thought: I'm 25 and I'm at home all day on my own.'