Adoring Joe Locke

WONDERLAND MAGAZINE – As the rising stars prepare for the final stretch of their West End debut in Samuel D. Hunter’s Clarkston, they sit down with Wonderland for tea – and a few cuddles.

Joe Locke and Ruaridh Mollica are making a cup of tea in the middle of an afternoon of rehearsals in the West End. For the past three months, the two rising stars have been living in each other’s pockets – with co-star Sophie Melville (The Way, Iphigenia in Splott), they have been bringing to the evenings of Trafalgar Theatre a new production of director Jack Serio and writer Samuel D. Hunter’s Clarkston. But rather than just a brilliant creative partnership that shines on stage night after night – and continues to reaffirm both actors’ places as some of the most exciting new voices in UK cinema and theatre – they’ve found, within the cast, a space for deep, meaningful bonds. And, as they’ll tell you, an almost ridiculous amount of love.

In Clarkston, Locke plays Jake, a young gay man journeying west to the Pacific in a bid to rediscover himself after being diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. Following the trail of his distant ancestor William Clark through the explorers’ journals, Jake’s travels stall when the illness begins to take hold. It’s in the small town of Clarkston, Washington – named after the very man whose footsteps he’s tracing – that he meets Mollica’s Chris, a local working night shifts at Costco. What unfolds is a story of identity-searching, familial struggles (Melville plays Chris’s mother, Trisha, in a brilliant portrayal of the cyclical hardships of overcoming addiction), and the quiet, transformative power of love. And that, it seems, carries offstage too.

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