Consent, difficult women, and intimacy coaches... Vicky Jones and Tuppence Middleton on new conversations in theatre

It’s only been four years since Vicky Jones’ play The One was first performed. Yet, in those four years, the global, sexual and political landscape has changed dramatically, and the questions asked in the play are now being asked across the world, of our world leaders and policy makers, employers, colleagues, teachers, partners and friends.

What does consent mean? What is rape? Can we always differentiate between sexual violence and sexual negotiation? Should we?

When Jones wrote the play, it was in part, a response to a sexual encounter in her own life – but she explains that it’s reassuring to see that the personal has now also become political: “It’s a great relief to have this conversation opened out in the way that it has been, the dialogue around those blurred lines and what is and isn’t consent. I wrote [The One] to try and work out what I thought about these issues because of something that happened to me. It was very shocking and confusing at the time, and I didn’t understand why I felt so angry.”

The play feels timely, even urgent, but it can be extremely difficult to watch. It focuses on the toxic romantic relationship between Jo, a woman in her late twenties, and her boyfriend Harry (played by John Hopkins), her old university lecturer, who is 10 years her senior. Their relationship is thrown into sharp relief by Kerry, Harry’s colleague, who seeks to split them up – ostensibly for their own good, although she also has designs on Harry...

However, Jo and Harry can’t be divided – they’re trapped by their own poisonous symbiosis, dependent on each other while hurting each other in the worst ways that humans can.

Still, it is also a comedy – albeit a pitch-black one that had me giggling guiltily at various provocative lines. Jones originally wrote the play for her friend and colleague Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and fans of Fleabag, the most famous Jones-Waller-Bridge collaboration (Jones worked on the programme as a script editor) will recognise the tone of the comedy.

“I wrote Jo for Phoebe knowing she’d be fun for Phoebe to play” says Jones. “The auditions that were coming through [for her] were for sweet and likeable women, or women who, if they ever behaved badly, were doing it because they were hurt for noble reasons, [like] abuse. I had a lot of fun writing a real badass who couldn’t be explained all the time, who wasn’t always traceable.”

It’s exhilarating to watch Jo, who is thrillingly and almost violently without filter. But this time, Jo is played by Tuppence Middleton, an actress who has come to be associated with very different roles – largely thanks to an accident of scheduling.

While her work in TV and film has been extensive following her breakout in 2009’s Tormented, most of us picture her as the princess in the period piece, after she almost simultaneously starred as Miss Havisham in Dickensian, then Helene Kuragina in Andrew Davies’ adaptation of War And Peace in 2016.

However, she’s proved to Jones that she’s more than adept when it comes to handling her very contemporary play. “With Tuppence, I had that incredible feeling you sometimes have with an actor. I felt that she would make it her own. She’s amazing.”

Middleton herself explains that after a long period of screen work, the power of the script drew her to the project and to the theatre: “I needed something that I felt passionately about and challenged by. It’s a gut-punch reading it and I thought that’s something I can’t not do.”

But she adds that it’s difficult not to absorb some of the darkness of the work: “It’s quite hard not to take it home with you, it creeps up on you. A week and a half into rehearsal I found myself overwhelmed. I was dreaming about it.

“Because it’s funny, you don’t realise how dark it is straight away. What makes a lot of the dialogue even more brutal is the fact that it’s delivered with this throwaway energy.”

Middleton reveals that she has been self-medicating with RuPaul’s Drag Race, but more seriously points out that it’s only been possible to so fully commit to performing Jo due to a lot of on-set support.

“The director Steve [Marmion, who also directed the play when it was first performed] has been so careful about checking in with us, making sure we’re OK, asking if we’re uncomfortable about any moments,” she says.

Middleton has also been working with an intimacy coach for the very first time, and this has made a big difference.

“There are combat moments in the play, and our fight director is also trained as an intimacy coach, so he choreographed all of the sexual contact moments in the way you would a fight. All of the awkwardness and fear of those moments was over really quickly. I couldn’t believe it’s never happened before. I’m hoping the [#MeToo] movement is going to encourage that.”

Jones adds that sex scenes can come with a sense of jeopardy, and so – just as in a fight – you need to choreograph with care. In the end, having an intimacy director “made everybody freer.”

“In art and in the theatre, conversations keep coming up about how you can’t always legislate [these things], that sometimes there will be intimacy that you can’t make rules for. But if you watch an intimacy coach in action, you realise you absolutely can,” she insists.

While Jones’ play is startling and compelling because it explores the dark and difficult parts of real life intimacy, it’s heartening to hear that there are absolutely no grey areas in her workplace.

Although it’s clear that Middleton’s Jo will be very different from Waller-Bridge’s, the originator’s presence will be felt in the production.

“Phoebe will definitely be watching, she wouldn’t miss it!” says Jones. “We live together at the moment, so she’s been hearing all about it. It will be interesting to see what she thinks, I think she’ll get a real kick out of it. Phoebe is really enthusiastic about newness. It’s exciting to do things afresh, and see if the language will stand up to it.”

And their creative partnership continues: Jones and Waller-Bridge are currently working together on a pilot for HBO, a romantic comedy thriller called Run.

“It’s a romance, but it’s a serious dark premise about motherhood and the unfair expectations that can be impressed upon women to give up their dreams and ambitions,” she explains.

Jones’ own ambitions are evident, not just in her considerable success, but in the way that she seems determined to reshape the landscape and create paths for complex, difficult women. And how better to encourage us to understand the darkest parts of ourselves, than by inviting us to laugh at them?

‘The One’ is at the Soho Theatre until 25 August (sohotheatre.com)