TERRY JONES | INTERVIEW
More famous for dressing in drag and clacking coconut shells than writing popular and thoughtful books Monty Python star, Terry Jones, speaks to Heather Arnold as his first children’s book is brought to life in the walls of Cardiff Castle.
With a reunion of one of the most influential comedy groups in the world just around the corner, Monty Python star Terry Jones is nothing if not a busy man. Having recently announced that the five remaining Pythons are reuniting, Terry Jones takes time out to talk about his project here in Wales, Silly Kings.
Though he is more famous for donning an exploding fat suit and screeching several legendary lines (including what is perhaps one of Monty Python’s most famous: “He’s not the messiah! He’s a very naughty boy!”), Jones has dipped his toe in many areas of creativity.
He has directing, screenwriting, producing and documentary making are all under his belt and you can even hear his voice as ‘Uncouth Revolting Peasant #1’ in the Sega video game Blazing Dragons (also based on the TV show that he created and produced). It is Jones’s writing, however, that has captured the imagination of National Theatre Wales.
Jones has become the author of many novels and short stories, but it is his first children’s book Fairy Tales that is being given the theatre treatment. The collection of stories includes tales about fairies that can only cast one spell, a magical glass cupboard and a very silly king.
“I didn’t want my little five-year-old
to go to sleep thinking
‘I’m so glad they tortured that old woman’.”
“I wrote them for my daughter,” explains Jones; “when she was five years old I said ‘whoopee! I can read her fairy tales now! I think she’s old enough for them.’ So I went out and bought the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales. “I was reading Snow White to her, and in the original Grimm version the wicked step-mother is made to put on red hot iron slippers and dance until she falls down dead. I couldn’t read that to my daughter! I didn’t want my little five-year-old to go to sleep thinking ‘I’m so glad they tortured that old woman’. So I decided there and then to write my own fairy tales and I began the next morning.”
Published over 30 years ago, Terry Jones’ Fairy Tales is still in the hearts and mind of fairytale fans, with children’s laureate Michael Rosen naming it one of his top five children’s stories of all time in 2009.
When it was published in 1981 the book created an atmosphere of overjoyed reviewers: “It got wonderfully reviewed when it came out,” recounts Jones. “The New Statesman said ‘book of the year/decade/century is Fairy Tales by Terry Jones’, and the Daily Mail wrote ‘Terry Jones, of Monty Python, has written with a golden scalpel.’ Another one read, ‘The fairy tale is alive and well, and is living vigorously in Terry Jones’s imagination of modern madness and surrealist humour,’ and the Financial Times said, ‘Here is an author setting out to rival the classic fairytales and making an exciting job of it’.” Pondering on what it was about his children’s tales that appealed to people so strongly Jones explains: “They’re new stories, they’re not based on any other stories. I think maybe the freshness appeals to them.”
The production of Silly Kings brings together several of Jones’ tall tales into to one charming story about King Herbert XII. This wise and well-respected ruler has reigned over the lands for many years but, as he approaches old age, his mind starts to get a little silly. All his subjects, however, are far too polite to point this out, and even after the king ties two dogs to his legs and dresses up as a parsnip they are still silent. Much silliness is sure to ensue as the show takes place in a big and, thankfully, heated Spiegeltent in Cardiff Castle; the perfect setting for a writer who has a heartfelt interest in history and the Middle Ages. “It originally came from my reading of Chaucer,” state Jones “I wrote a book soon after we made The Holy Grail. It’s called Chaucer’s Knight: The Medieval Mercenary and they use it universities now. “That sparked my interest in the Middle Ages, I thought I had something to say about the knight, the parfait gentle knight, who’s really a mercenary and not a good man at all. Everybody was saying, all the scholars say ‘he’s such a wonderful parfait gentle knight,’ but I think Chaucer was being ironic.”
From Chaucer to Tchaikovsky, it appears that Jones isn’t satisfied with just having a stage adaptation of his tales and re-collaborating with old Pythons, as he also has a new musical production in the works. “I’ve got another project which I’ve written with Jim Steinman, who did the Meat Loaf albums.” explains Jones “He’s written lyrics to the Tchaikovsky tune, it’s a new musical version of The Nutcracker Suite. Jim’s written lyrics to the Tchaikovsky tunes and The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy is now heavy metal.”
Silly Kings, National Theatre Wales, Cardiff Castle, Thurs 19 Dec-Sat 4 Jan. Tickets: £12.50-£17.50. Info: 029 2063 6464 (Wales Millennium Centre) / www.nationaltheatrewales.org