Films & Plays
William has been working as a script writer with film producers and writers since his LA days in the 1990s. He is currently working on a TV series project, set in the environment finance world, with former banker turned producer Martin Newson.
William and his long term screenwriting partner Tony Macnabb have several TV dramas and film projects in development. These include a McMafia-style TV drama set in Africa, London and the Far East, and a TV drama set in the 1930s motor racing world.
Tony has taught at the British Film and Television School and translates Scandinavian crime dramas for British TV (for the producer of Wallander etc). He has written for various hit TV shows including Bergerac.
William has also worked in partnership with the late TV writer and producer Ranald Graham, who was a TV writer for The Professionals and was the creator, producer and writer ('showrunner') of the hit ITV oddball cop TV series Dempsey & Makepeace. Graham directed and produced William's play The Green Room, and they then teamed up together as writing partners on a number of projects.
The Green Room
William Cash's provocative debut play is a dark sexual comedy about the the life and controversial 'death' of the philandering British linguistic philosopher A.J Ayer. The play had its world premiere at the Cockpit Theatre in London before playing at the Edinburgh Festival 2000 where it was selected as Critics' Choice by The Observer.
The play was directed by the late Ranald Graham, after recently returning from directing off Broadway. Graham's many credits include such hit TV shows as The Sweeney, Dempsey & Makepeace and The Professionals.
The Play
In May 1998, Sir Alfred 'Freddie' Ayer 'died' for four minutes in London University Hospital after a slice of smoked salmon was caught in his throat. Afterwards the famous atheist and author of Language, Truth and Logic, wrote a celebrated Sunday newspaper article - 'What I Saw When I was Dead' a bout his bizarre visit to the 'other side'. The play is a dramatisation of this strange tale , which imagines a career determinist and famous womaniser fighting a lonely battle at the end of his life with his adulterous past.
The Green Room is a darkly comic blend of fact, fantasy and fiction inspired by true events and extensive research in the BBC archives. Cash also conducted interviews with Ayer's American wife Dee Wells and members of his family and his doctor.
When Ayer's heart stops in hospital, various scenes of Ayer's life flash before him as he is confronted by the 'choices' in his life. The action moves to Oxford in the 1930's, a London restaurant during the Blitz, the Gargoyle night-club in the 1950's, Ayer's Mayfair digs, a Fourth of June Eton picnic, a 'Brains Trust' 1960s television studio debate, John Osborne's London flat and a Paris philosophy conference. Ayer's nightmare odyssey into his past also returns to a BBC hospitality Green Room where he was once locked up with a worldly Jesuit priest called Father Frederick Copleston and a sexually tempting young female BBC assistant before a delayed BBC studio debate of 'free will'.
As the two debating opponents sit waiting, ad drinking, before going on air, exchanging stories and secrets about their lives, the arguments about to be debated become severely tested.'Does 'free will' really exist ? Can we control sexual desire? Are our loves, adulteries and betrayals any more than a series of meaningless accidents. In the play, The Green Room becomes the back-stage door into the theatre of memory and Ayer's subconscious hopes and fears.
Ayer was played by Adrian Jubb whose work included several acclaimed roles at the Royal National Theatre and Young Vic. Ayer's mistress Jocelyn Rickards was played by Isabella King.
The Daily Mail wrote that the play was 'Even bluer than The Blue Room. Move over Jerry Hall. There is a rival attraction on the stage. Isabella King in The Green Room'.