The chemistry department of a fictional English university and a sun battery provide the winning ingredients for a new play. Chris Johnston speaks to its writer and director Stephen Poliakoff
The man with a mess of unkempt black hair, a beard in need of trimming, glasses, black jeans and scruffy grey jacket watches the video monitor intently as the group of costumed actors goes for another take in a warehouse near London's St Pancras station early one Saturday afternoon.
Stephen Poliakoff is trying to wrap up the scene on his latest film, Food of Love, as quickly as possible, as the break for lunch was due more than an hour ago. He has something of the air of a mad professor about him, an impression that is only reinforced when the writer and film director, whose career began when his first play was produced in 1974, finally has time to speak - albeit while eating lunch.
Poliakoff would not look out of place wandering down university corridors and it seems appropriate that his most recent play, Blinded by the Sun (in rep until the New Year at the National Theatre in London), is set in the chemistry department of a fictional English university. Revolving around the thorny issue of scientific fraud, he says it is the most scientific of a trilogy that began in 1984 with Breaking the Silence, based on the experiences of Poliakoff's Russian inventor grandfather, and continued five years later with Playing With Trains.
Reaction to the second play was one source of inspiration for Blinded by the Sun. He says Department of Trade and Industry civil servants who wrote to him believed that scientists had lost their ability to "reduce to practice". As Elinor says in the play, scientists are thought of as a different species, but Poliakoff contends that they have not been immune to the all-pervasive "downmarket sweep". The shift from freedom to minute accountability for researchers also interested the playwright, whose father was a physicist and brother-in-law is a professor of chemistry at Nottingham University.
However, it was the startling "cold fusion" announcement made in March 1989 by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann of the University of Utah that most fascinated Poliakoff. He was intrigued by the scandal that ensued when their findings could not be replicated.
In Blinded by the Sun, Al - a lacklustre scientist but born administrator - is made head of department over the rising star Christopher and Elinor, whose early success gave her guaranteed funding and independence. Instead of using a journal article to reveal his "sun battery", which uses sunlight and a catalyst to generate hydrogen from water, Christopher makes the announcement at a media conference.
Al has nagging doubts about the discovery and, after finding evidence to confirm his suspicions, confides in Elinor, his former mentor, who is unwilling to blow the whistle. Al, though, has no such reservations and makes his own announcement.
The second half of Blinded by the Sun picks up the pieces four years later, after Al has become a pop science celebrity on the resulting wave of publicity. Times have changed and Al decides to close down the department - and Elinor's lab. Although he probably would have done it anyway, her reluctance to expose Christopher gives Al another reason to end her long-term pure research project - her life's work - a year away from its conclusion.
This is what can happen when "incompetents" are able to control their more esteemed colleagues, Poliakoff says. He attributes blame for misguided actions, such as Al's, to the "completely bogus science" of market research. "That has had a devastating effect on everything - on our politics, on our science ... you now have to prove that there's an end in sight that might be of use to somebody," Poliakoff explains.
Although scientists such as Elinor and Christopher more often than not want to concentrate on their research rather than run a department, they still want to be given the chance to say no. The motivation is never fully explained, but the power Al has over his future is one reason Christopher goes public before the sun battery is perfected. Poliakoff says the general inability to adapt to change, as well as the "long tunnel of uncertainty" that this type of research produces, also plays a part.
"His behaviour is analysed in the play several times by people who try to sum it up ... just as in life when people do extraordinary things, you can't completely explain them," he says. "The play doesn't give easy answers. I get impatient with people who say 'that couldn't happen' or 'that doesn't happen like that', because that is a stupid statement. Things happen differently ... there is no one way."
Despite his interest in science, Poliakoff remains highly sceptical about the benefits of new technology. He says it is reducing our attention span and making us "more stupid". The next generation's ability to think for themselves is also in question.
Poliakoff is pleased that Blinded by the Sun has proved popular with the public despite its unlikely setting. After directing two films back to back, he is hungry to write another drama. Switching constantly between the stage and screen, both big and small, might be unusual, but it also explains why Poliakoff's work is nothing if not stimulating.
"If you vary your life and you're doing things like film-making with a lot of people then playwriting becomes easier and not more difficult."