Some 24 years ago, at the height of Thatcherism and in an era of riots and inequalities, a young director brought a crop of young Scottish actors to London in a landmark play that captured a sense of division and disillusionment.
The 1988 cast included Alan Cumming, now a fixture in LA and appearing every Thursday in More4's The Good Wife, and Ewen Bremner who came to wider acclaim in Trainspotting before establishing himself as a TV and film regular.
In the intervening years, the director - Stephen Unwin - often thought about the play and how it helped shape a number of careers, including his own, which has seen him launch the English Touring Theatre in 1993 and win the Sam Wanamaker Award in 2003.
Now, the political landscape is not dissimilar to those Thatcherite years, with social division, the haves, the have nots and the dispossessed youth, and he feels it is right to introduce a new generation to its startling energy and poetry of this modern classic.
"The play has become very relevant and resonant again," he said. "Back then we had an all-Scottish cast but now we have a young, multi-ethnic cast including one actor who was born about the time of the first production."
Unwin's relationship with the play and its German playwright Manfred Karge began a year before The Conquest Of The South Pole.
He had directed an old Cambridge University friend, and another up-and-comer, in Karge's Man To Man.
That pal was Tilda Swinton and the play was a critical and popular hit, taking Unwin on a journey from Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, where he was associate director, to the Royal Court.
Unwin was encouraged to investigate the writer's work further, unearthing his 1986 piece The Conquest Of The South Pole, which he took on a similar journey from Scotland to Sloane Square.
"Karge came from a Brechtian background," said Unwin, "and the play is very sensual and poetic. The title is slightly misleading, it's not a story about the conquering of the South Pole so I don't want people to think that is what they're going to see."
Instead, the story is this: Out of work and on the dole, four men find themselves faced with a reality of jobcentre visits, dirty laundry and too much time on their hands.
They find escape through the epic journeys of the imagination, recreating Amundsen's 1911 attempt on the South Pole.
"There is collaboration and division and fragmentation. The leader is a bit of a bastard who gets them together and faces rebellion and has to force them on - one step for every step that Amundsen took. It is funny and touching.
"They fight over whether they want to retrace the footsteps of Amundsen who succeeded or Shackleton who failed. Ultimately they want hope."
Some aspects of the play have been updated from the German's 1986 original and its translation by Tinch Minter and Anthony Vivis but Unwin said this was mere tinkering.
It is the often brutal word play, he said, that made the play such a "jolt of energy, like a rock concert or a rave".
Unwin, his enthusiasm clearly undimmed by the intervening decades, talks excitedly about his reunion with the work and extols its virtues as a piece of writing and as an "anarchic, bracing shot of energy".
"It's a rich soup, full of variation, like a fast, tough Shakespeare with poetry, dreams and brutal confrontations."
"Good plays often become more relevant as the years go by. This feels up to date.
"There's a classical feel to the work. It stands as a social documentary and speaks for a generation."
Stephen Unwin is the artistic director of the Rose Theatre in Kingston, (taking over from Sir Peter Hall) where this production moves to in June.
The Kingston space is vast, he says, while the new space at the Arcola is testing of his ingenuity, the intimacy providing challenges for the veteran director who says he is "thrilled" to be returning to a play with which he has had such a long relationship.
"I often thought about it in the intervening years," he said. "Now I think it's the right time to bring it to another young audience."
■ Until May 26, Arcola Theatre, £18 (£12 concs) and Pay What You Can Tuesdays arcolatheatre.com.
© First published in The Wharf, May 2012
