The creator of a play about the broadcaster and serial sex attacker Jimmy Savile has written a new work about cheating in athletics.
Jonathan Maitland was inspired to write Deny, Deny, Deny in part by Sunday Times investigations into blood doping in athletics and the use of performance-enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong.
Maitland, a former BBC journalist who cast Alistair McGowan in An Audience with Jimmy Savile last year, has set his new play a decade in the future. He believes that by then cheats will be altering their DNA to obtain an unfair advantage over rivals.
The central characters are two British female sprinters, one black and one mixed race, and their eastern European coach who persuades one to undergo gene editing. The second micro-doses herself with banned drugs.
“Sport is a surprisingly underused dramatic arena,” said Maitland, who interviewed scientists, coaches, athletes and lawyers during his research. “My play is part about the science and the development of gene editing, but it is more about the relationship between a coach and his athletes.”
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Experts say the play, to be staged in November at the Park Theatre in north London, is not far-fetched.
“Gene editing is not unrealistic or in the realm of fantasy,” said Chris Cooper, professor of biochemistry at the University of Essex .