Nick Lane: This time it's personal as sequel takes shape

GEORGE Lucas does it. JK Rowling does it. Yet, strangely, few playwrights do it: create sequels.

While Harry Potter's story rolled on and on and George Lucas may yet give us even more adventures in space, the theatre world is devoid of plays which pick up where a previous story left off.

How intriguing to know if Malvolio ever took his revenge? Did the Capulets and Montagues go on to heal their rifts and commit acts of benevolence in the names of their deceased children?

While it might not provoke such intrigue, anyone who saw Nick Lane's play My Favourite Summer, can only be delighted to hear that the writer has picked up the story of Dave to deliver a sequel.

Dave was the hero of My Favourite Summer, an intensely biographical piece from Lane which debuted at Hull in 2007. It is based on a real-life experience of the writer and director's. In the play Dave is in love with his flatmate Sarah. He decides to take her on holiday, where he will declare his love. But in order to take her on holiday, he needs a job, and that means working in a factory with only the psychotic Melvin for company.

The play earned first-time playwright Lane huge praise, so much so that a sequel seemed obvious – except for the fact that theatre doesn't appear to "do" sequels.

Appointed an associate at Hull Truck Theatre the year before the company moved to its impressive new premises, Lane continued to develop scripts and direct for the theatre. The Hull Truck children's Christmas show has been Lane's territory for the past decade and 2009 was no exception. He was at the helm of a new version of Pinocchio as both writer and director. Now his full attention is back with Dave.

Following the success of My Favourite Summer, which also toured last year, Lane decided to write another play based on autobiographical events. He knew the story he wanted to tell, but was not convinced that he wanted to turn to the same characters.

"It has become My Favourite Summer part two, which isn't what it began as," says Lane. "It was another play written from my point of view, but I was actually trying to create something different from My Favourite Summer. I spoke to John Godber and he said 'if you're telling another story that's autobiographical, why shy away from it?' He convinced me to embrace it and make a virtue of the fact that it's the same character."

Lane has worked closely with Godber throughout his career, having met the playwright through his mother, an actress, when he was younger and pursuing an acting career himself.

Godber took Lane under his wing and now the pair, along with Gareth Tudor-Price, run Hull Truck. The close relationship helps when it comes to Lane writing and directing such personal stories for the stage.

Lane's new play, opening at the end of this month, is Me and Me Dad. In his first autobiographical play, Lane mined a rich seam of a personal story of unrequited love, his latest play tackles an even more difficult and personal subject.

"The story goes that when my mum died in 1998, I moved back in with my dad, gave up work and lived with him for a month," says Lane.

"My mum and dad had this system, my mum loved to cook – it wasn't something that was put upon her, she loved it – and was good at it. So apart from washing up and making cups of tea, she did everything in the kitchen.

"That meant that my dad's skill in the kitchen extended to jam sandwiches and eating biscuits from a tin. He's by no means stupid, but when it came to cooking he definitely lacked imagination. He also had a fear of getting it wrong."

So Lane moved in with his father for a month to teach him how to cook.

"Really, we were actually coping with our loss and learning how we were going to fend for ourselves" says Lane.

"In as much as My Favourite Summer was about me working with a nutcase, but was actually about me learning life lessons about girls, this play is about teaching my dad to cook, but it's also about losing someone, losing some of your identity when a parent dies and how we become parents to our parents."

If Me and Me Dad becomes the success that Lane's previous efforts suggest it might be, could it herald a new dawn for theatre with sequels becoming the norm?

"I suppose it could become a series – but I'll have to keep doing interesting things with my life for material."

Me and Me Dad is at Hull Truck Theatre Jan 28 to Feb 20.