Alien star David Jonsson on bringing his debut play Paldem to the Edinburgh Fringe: 'Theatre is everything'
One of Britain’s brightest young film stars tells David Pollock why he’s bringing his debut play to the Edinburgh Fringe
“I've been using this term, and I kind of wish I’d never said it, but I'm saying it now,” explains David Jonsson. “This is an anti-romantic comedy. It's one hundred percent meant to be funny, and there’s definitely a great element of romance in there, but the anti part comes from all the bits that are knotty and taboo. I guess people will be confused by that description, but you have to come and see it to get it.”
As an actor, 31-year-old Londoner Jonsson is one of the hottest young talents in Britain at the moment – from his breakout role as hotshot financier Gus Sackey in the first two series of the BBC/HBO banking drama Industry, to recent film roles in Rye Lane and Alien: Romulus – and he has the BAFTA Rising Star Award to prove it. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has already played a part in his story, and this year he’s returning with Paldem, his full-length playwriting debut. It’s a grown-up comedy about sex, friendship and modern online life.
“I did a National Youth Theatre show called Pidgeon English a very long time ago in Edinburgh, just before I went to drama school,” remembers Jonsson, referring to an adaptation of Stephen Kelman’s novel - “a very long time ago” means 2013, emphasising his youth. “It was my first show, I was 18 at the time and I got my agent from there. It was absolutely the making of me, I've got a real special place for Edinburgh because of that. There’s no place like it.”
Jonsson verbally kicks himself here, noting this all happened in the same year and at the same venue that Fleabag premiered. Offered the chance to see it for free, he decided he wasn’t a big fan of one-person plays and politely declined: “And it ended up becoming f***ing Fleabag! That’s why Edinburgh’s an electric place, you never know if the next thing you see is the next big thing. I love it, I still come up frequently to visit and have a drink with mates.”
Jonsson says he’s “always been writing. I’ve been waiting for the right time to express myself, but sometimes it's out of your reach, isn't it? It’s like the chicken and the egg, you need one thing (acting success) for the other (interest in his writing) to happen. I've always felt an affinity to telling stories I know to be true or that say something about the world, but timing is everything and now feels like the right time for this one.”
Which brings us onto Paldem, a play which Jonsson doesn’t actually summarise. “I can’t put it into a blurb, I'm sorry,” he smiles, but he says the gist I’ve picked up from press releases is correct. It’s about two old friends, Kevin and Megan, who find themselves in an unexpected one-night stand which is inadvertently caught on camera, leading them to consider the world of amateur online porn. According to the blurb, it “crosses the murky lines of interracial dating, fetishisms and hook-ups in the digital age”.
“Essentially it's a play about relationships, and how do we love the people that we love?” says Jonsson. “I've always been really interested in people, in when we get it right, when we get it wrong and how we navigate someone in their whole entire self, as opposed to what we think is them. It's a tricky thing, especially today, where I think we have the most empathy we've ever had, yet we can put our foot in it quite a bit. This play is funny and silly and a bit offbeat, and you probably shouldn't be laughing, but you do. Then underneath it all you have something that feels extremely raw, that's what I'm really interested in.”
Jonsson is on a Zoom link from a rehearsal room near London Bridge, on a break from first day’s rehearsal. He’s flanked by the play’s actors Tash Cowley and Michael Workeye and its director Zi Alikhan, who he worked with on Industry, and although he’s the star name attached, there’s a real sense of collaboration in the air as the quartet figure the play out.
“If somebody's looking at Kevin and Megan’s value system from a generation above, they’ll be like, ‘I do not understand the way they make decisions’,” says Workeye, who met Jonsson at an audition for an as-yet-unreleased short film directed by the latter. “But what's interesting is, we're of that generation and even as the actor I'm going, ‘I don't understand these decisions!’ There's something about these two people that teeters on the edge of amorality, and this process for me is about understanding their communicative style and how much easier it is for them to lead with their bodies than their words.”
“There are really interesting moments between them, where they move from emotional intimacy to physical intimacy and back again,” says Cowley, who met Jonsson in drama school. “These people live in each other's pockets, but you question how much they really see and hear each other. They’re best friends, but it always feels that there’s something teetering on the edge. They both end up in a very different place to where they started, and that's fundamental with friendships, with any relationships – you either grow together through the movement of your life, or you grow apart.”
“I keep thinking about the difference between shock and taboo,” says Alikhan. “When we see something with shock value, the experience feels so far away. You think, ‘oh, I would never do that, that would never happen to me’. What's titillating about something taboo is it’s about what we don't want people to see that we do, and what makes this play special is, it really penetrates everybody. It’s about our sexuality, our identity, everything, and it manages to really make you feel a delightful discomfort, then to get on the other side of that and have new ideas about it.”
The ingredients are all there for a Fringe hit, not least the sheer enthusiasm and engagement from all involved. Yet in the nicest possible way, I wonder, why is Jonsson doing this now and what does he want from it, just as his acting career is beginning to explode?
“I’ll do my best to answer that, because I guess I'm still figuring it out,” he smiles. “I think about Gary Oldman, who I love and idolise, having an amazing screen career and then making Nil By Mouth because he just had to. It was something he had to say about the world at the time, and maybe there's an echo of that here. Theatre is everything to me, the Fringe was literally one of my first experiences of finding community, and you have to be able to pull back into that, but only if you've got something worthwhile to say. I'd like to think maybe I do. We'll see.”
Paldem is at Summerhall, Edinburgh, from 31 July until 25 August, see paldemtheplay.com and festival.summerhallarts.co.uk
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