When we were working on An Inspector Calls I'd wake him up at 4am saying You're wrong
When we were working on An Inspector Calls, I'd wake him up at 4am saying, "You're wrong, you're so wrong. I can't believe how wrong you are".We always say in public that our ideas merge, that we can't remember who thought of what, but in fact it's remarkably clear who came up with what We don't become one when we work together. Some people would find that claustrophobic, but I find it remarkable, exciting. When you work with someone you are also in love with the imaginative process becomes your whole life. Living and working with Ian means that intellectually and aesthetically and emotionally the challenge is always there.
Then I began the constant process of badgering him to fall in love with me It took quite a long time, I seem to remember He was so reticent, so untrusting. But I used guerrilla tactics: the more unsure he was, the more certain I became until, eventually, he fell for me.We could have settled in Manchester, I suppose, but I had this glamour need I needed the bright lights I suggested moving to London, and that's what we did. We lived right on top of each other in this bedsit in Camberwell, the size of a postage stamp and utterly squalid. It was a fantastic way to become intimate.When we first worked together it was very difficult, but I don't use "difficult" in a pejorative sense The difficulty was the very thing that became fascinating. I felt that there was enough there for me to make a leap.So when I came back from America I literally turned up at his door and said, "I'm going to live with you" He was rather surprised. Not that we immediately bonded: he was prickly, quite cold and removed.
I thought, "He'll be hard work", and that appealed.We next met in Manchester He came to see a show I was doing I was surprised that he turned up. I'd called him before I came down and had promised to organise something, but I hadn't got around to it, and anyway I was with somebody else that night I think he was rather perturbed. We met a couple of times after that, and had a good time together.Then I went to America and while I was there I made a decision that I was going to go for this. I don't really know why: we'd had a few nights together, we'd spent a great weekend together, he had introduced me to a right-on, political gay scene which I'd never been involved with before He was interesting and sexy and obsessive about his work. We started by checking out what, and who, the other liked and didn't like professionally. We were wary of each other, but in the end we both liked the same people I knew straight away that I'd see him again. I thought it was some sort of homage to punk, but it turned out to be some sort of gay tagging, one of these little clues that gay men give each other.
I didn't recognise the signals at all; I constantly fail on that one.We spent the whole show together We were quite cruisey, but cautious, too. He studied at Croydon College of Art before taking up theatre design in Manchester. His many award-winning stage designs include the hugely successful An Inspector Calls, his first collaboration with Stephen Daldry. The couple live together in west London. Stephen Daldry: It was 1988 and I was on my way to walk Hadrian's Wall when I stopped off in Lancaster to see a play directed by a friend of mine. It was one of those big, outdoor events where the audience follows the cast around a park I was introduced to Ian just before the show began.
