Yes, because he’s a historical figure, what’s great is that you can actually go and find out about the person.  I tend to spend quite a lot of time just researching around a period.  

Before rehearsal’s started I went to the museum at the London Hospital and had a look at the artefacts that they have relating to Treves and the case of Merrick.  I found this great book called London 100 Years Ago, which is a book of photographs.  I found some fantastic stuff, for example the London Hospital itself, from the period and the street in front of it and you get a real sense of what it was like to be there at that particular time.  Directly opposite the hospital entrance was the place where Treves actually went and saw Merrick for the first time; the place is still there it’s now a sari shop!   It’s great to see it in that context. 

Treves’ account of his time with the Elephant Man was actually written years after the fact, so it’s a bit of a romanticised version of what happened, but you do get a sense of the man, the way that he writes.  Treves was quite a prodigious writer, after the whole Elephant Man episode he gave up working at the London and travelled around the world and wrote books of his travels. 

The research is really important, in placing yourself in the world.  But what’s really important to realize is that Pomeance has not written an absolute historical play.  He’s got a take on the world and he’s using the story to tell his tale.

It’s constantly changing.  That’s the great thing about rehearsal processes; you start from a certain viewpoint and through the course of it because you’re working with a group of people, your view point changes and becomes more defined.  It becomes something that is developed through the group, through the process.

What’s interesting as well is that when you look at the play you are looking at it as a twenty first century human being.  So for Treves, in particular, there is a lots of stuff that he does, that you think “God you are being such an arrogant bastard.  How can you put these particular social codes on Merrick, on this character? “.  But what I am discovering at the moment is that rather than playing within the scene that I’m really putting Merrick in his place and making him understand that there is a social hierarchy and he needs to be exactly in the right place; that actually what Treves is doing is being altruistic as far as Merrick’s concerned.  Treves is trying to be benevolent as possible, so he doesn’t realise what he’s doing in those early scenes.  It’s for the audience to watch and pick up on it in the same way as you do when you first read the play from a twenty first century stand point.  It is only towards the end of the play when Treves’ really understands what it is that he and his society have done to Merrick, and that lots of other people don’t fit into the boxes that we want society, or that we perceive society, to operate in.

I think it’s a mix.  It’s interesting.  I’ve discovered through the rehearsal process that maybe Pomerance is suggesting that it wasn’t Treves’ choice to keep Merrick at the hospital.  There’s a line in the play where Carr Gomm (Treves’ boss) says “we’ve raised the funds and I wouldn’t normally do this but for you Frederick I’m going to allow it, he can stay here”.  Treves is then presented with the moral dilemma of “I have this man, he’s going to live for an indefinite period of time and I have to deal with him”.   Most Doctors are used to finding a patient, diagnosing, getting them better and then moving onto the next thing. 

In terms of Treves’s ambition: I think to begin with Treves shows himself to be as much of a showman in that moment as say Ross is displaying one of these exhibits.   When Treves first takes Merrick to the London Pathological Society and exhibited him, he wasn’t supposed to be taking Merrick there, he was supposedly delivering another paper on something else.  But Treves turns up and goes “I was going to show you this, but here you go, have a look at this freak of nature instead”.  He does it through the medium of the scientific, but it is still about him going “I’ve got this thing” and displaying it raises Treves up in the society in which he wants to become the top.  The change comes when they get the money to ensure Merrick can stay at the hospital. 

I think that Merrick opens Treves up.  Merrick is a very… not childlike, but he’s very open, if he has something to say he says it - which in the Victorian society is incredibly disarming.  The whole point of Treves’ journey seems to be that a man who is so buttoned up and closeted in that Victorian world meets this creature that has been on the periphery of that society and then comes slap bang into the middle of it and goes “what you are and who you are is a lie and you need to find who you are”.  In some respects it feels like Merrick is the smarter human being. 

In that final scene of the play, when Carr Gomm is writing the letter to The Times, Treves comes in and is asked who Merrick was to him.  Treves says “he is this; he is that, he is the other, he’s highly intelligent”, and then he says “no maybe none of that”.  Treves then leaves, but then returns and tries to fall back to his previous position.  Maybe that was all rubbish, but at the end of the day Treves has to stand up for the man who changed him.  He has to say “Merrick was an extraordinary human being and my life has changed through him”. 

That’s the thing about all of us that actually we defy being put into boxes eventually.  We defy obituaries because they can say a little bit about us, but hopefully, we much bigger people than that.  We are more complex, we are a mass of contradictions that we love and hate and that’s being a human being, and that’s fully accepting Merrick as a human being.