Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Acclaimed actor known for classical stage roles and his award-winning performance in the musical Miss Saigon.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:10How amazed are you to find yourself the award-winning star of a musical? Does the idea still give you a thrill?
I suppose it would sound terribly immodest of me if I said I'm not surprised, but I'm not, and I don't see it as different from what I normally do in any acting role. Except just uh this time I happen to be singing it.
Presenter asks
10:50So were you on the point of giving up [at RADA]?
I I wanted to give up. I made left I said to them then I was going to give up, and I left the room. But I was followed out of the room by a Man who'd been directing at Ridicul, John Harrison, who ran Leeds Theatre for Number of years. And he caught me in the corridor, put me on one side, and said, You mustn't give up. You are right, they are wrong. You were saved for the nation. So thanks, John.
Presenter asks
11:41But were you – are you a political animal?
I think that during that period it was the politicising of me. Yes.
The luxury
As it's a desert island, I... You wouldn't give me all the ingredients to make rum punch nightly, would you? So I could sit under the stars and...
Presenter asks
Do you enjoy the power to make the audience both laugh and cry [in Miss Saigon]?
I I do very much. I mean, it's why I wanted to do a musical. This sort of instant appeal music has for an audience and the ease wi if it's done correctly, the ease with which you can manipulate an audience to laugh and cry. I think the laughter's slightly more difficult than the crying, but it uh and that's always the case.
Presenter asks
17:38Tell me about your Hamlet – you played the ghost, too. How did that come about?
This was a production I did with Richard Eyre at the Royal Court. And It was after my father died. And um Reading the play again, I began to see of similarities between my experience and my father's death … My initial reaction when he'd been attacked was to go in on myself … After he died there were times when I had uh I'd seen him and sort of almost conjured up images of him. And they were always good images … But I did feel as if I was uh it was like a wish fulfilment that I saw him. So putting those two things together, but Hamlet This in action of Hamlet said he hadn't revenged his father's death immediately and that this ghost had appeared to him. Taking it upon myself to be my father's voice as well, to conjuring up my father's voice from within me, was a kind of wish fulfilment that I think Hamlet could possibly have gone through. And uh that's what I did. And it worked very well.
Presenter asks
29:47If you could only do musicals for the rest of your career, or only classical theatre, which would you choose?
I think um musicals.
“I knew that this is what I want to do.”
“It was suggested that I didn't return.”
“Send him to my room.”
“I think that during that period it was the politicising of me.”
“I have tended to play people who have that element of danger within them and it would be wrong of me not to recognize that within myself at the same time.”
“I don't want to be left alone.”