Sanjeev Bhaskar, Dexter Fletcher and Emma Cunliffe sat down for a chat with Will Gore, to discuss their roles in the Rose Theatre’s revival of Dumb Show, Joe Penhall’s darkly comic look at our celebrity-obsessed times.

Will Gore: Tell us about the play.

Emma Cunliffe: Dexter and I play a couple of bankers very interested in this comedian, Barry, and we propose some enticing banking deals to him but then we get on to a more personal tack.

Sanjeev Bhaskar: It’s actually really a sting and they are journalists out to honey trap my character – this TV celebrity.

Dexter Fletcher: No! Don’t give it away!

WG: Is it interesting to be in a show based on a media world of which you all have experience?

DF: Yes and this interview is very helpful to us, it’s research.

WG: Sanjeev, on whom from the wide world of entertainment have you modelled Barry?

SB: No one I have known, met or would want to know.

DF: He’s a bit John Inman like!

SB: Yeah, he’s a cross between John Inman, Russell Harty and Sylvester Stallone! Seriously, though, he’s a popular Saturday night TV guy and there is not one person he is based on. You draw on the character and whatever personal experience you have – the things I have seen and the people I have met – but a lot of it is about trying to access emotional responses from yourself. The difficulty with basing it on someone is it can become an impression.

DF: If it was just an impression it would detract from the bigger issues of the play.

WG: Which are?

EC: The obsession with fame and celebrity and the question of, once someone is famous, what can they get away with?

DF: And the lengths that someone like yourself will go to to get a story!

SB: It is also about the co-dependence between celebrities of a certain kind and tabloids – they need each other. It is like a morality play set in hell. No one has really got a moral high ground but everyone is looking for it – because it justifies their existence.

WG: The play was written in 2004 – has society’s celebrity obsession grown since then?

DF: It seems like celebrity has become a bigger and bigger thing – how people pursue it and what it actually means. It also seems to be celebrity for celebrity’s sake – Barry actually had something to offer the world and that is part of his tragedy. He’s not a vacuous, publicity-seeking wannabe.

EC: It also deals with how damaging these kind of tabloid stories can be.

SB: The counter argument is the public buy into what they have presented to them as the truth. Whether you are a politician or an actor, you are presenting the public with a certain facet of who you are. So the argument is that if that ‘truth’ is discovered not to be the case, then the public have a right to point it out.

WG: What is Joe’s take on that argument?

SB: He hasn’t made a moral judgment on either side. He allows that to be part of the discussion of the play. The arguments are laid out entertainingly for the audience and that allows them to then go off and have that discussion.

DF: He’s also writing the human drama of it that we, as actors, get to play around with. He writes this detailed, sharp language and the arguments within it are, as Sanj says, for the audience to go off and discuss – what we do is tell the story of it.

Dumb Show, Rose Theatre, Kingston, April 1-17, for information or tickets, see rosetheatrekingston.org