I'm in the post-show glow/blues (take your pick) of a successful run as Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady. Frankly, it was a blast, every bit as much fun as I thought it would be when I signed on. It was, I reflected, likely to be in my top five parts - if only I could agree on the other four and which order they would be in.
So I had a trawl back through my theatrical history and worked out what they would be. The unlucky sixth was poor Captain Stanhope, but rather than ignore him I thought I'd give him some time in this intro; although I now seem to thrive playing oddballs, misfits, eccentrics and - in one case at least - a psychopath, it was the psychologically damaged but otherwise pretty-damned-straight Captain that set me on the path to the roles I treasure.
My list will also be unkind to the King of the Faeries himself. I've played Oberon twice and adore doing it, but if I'm honest the productions - a surprisingly cool VI Form effort when I was 17 and a far less cool foresty frolic in 2009 where I was forced to dress as a genie - don't really merit that much reminiscing. My list has forcibly ignored external pleasures and pains - I don't want to talk about fellow cast mates and the influence they had offstage, although inevitably that's always part of the fun (or otherwise), as I'd inevitably forget someone important and - despite the likelihood that no-one will read this - they'd get marginally miffed.
So, Stanhope. Until Journey's End, I'd mostly been cast as hilarious wacky buffoons, such as Dr Pinch in Comedy of Errors, or soppy idiots, like Cléante in The Miser. This was largely my own fault, since I had a long history of wanting to be funny. I was always on the look-out for any onstage silliness that I could get involved in, and for all that they say comedy is harder to get right than drama, it's also comforting and reassuring, because you can tell if you were doing it right.
Then a slightly histrionic turn* as Edmund the Bastard in King Lear, agreed to as a rare concession to being in a theatre group rather than an itinerant thesp (they needed men, I was one) got me an at least theoretical Shakespeare role, but most importantly drew me to the attention of Andy, who would eventually direct Journey's End. He contacted me months before he got anywhere near it, getting his (masculine) ducks in a row to make sure he could actually deliver on his promises to the group of putting on a play that needed several men, and good men at that. For some reason he'd decided (in the absence of any evidence that I was aware of) that I would be a good fit for Denis Stanhope, a broken 23 year old (I was 36) army captain in the front lines of the Great War, who was just about functioning in the face of constant death and violence.
Within the space of weeks I had to unlearn all my bad habits - silly voices, even sillier faces - and try to understand what would engage an audience without my usual box of schticks. I'm looking back 11 years, so forgive me if I'm foggy on the details, but I recall trying to use my style in reverse: pick a voice, stick to it, pick a face, keep it as a mask that only cracks when things are bad. I remember nicking Nickolas Grace's posh, drawn out accent as a basis, largely because no-one (including me) can ever work out where it comes from and because it works quite well for patronising people (it came in useful again for Don Juan) and bossing them around. Keeping my face still had added benefits - I was 36 playing 23, and nothing gives away the wrinkles (and flakes the stage make-up) like a good old facial expression. Presumably I delved a little deeper than that into this shell-shocked character, able to live with what he’d become until confronted by an unspoilt vision of his old self, but I’d be retro-engineering the part if I tried to explain anything here. I was a bit lost without laughs, hoping that whatever I was doing would turn out to be sufficient to match the skills of the other actors and – a stand out star here – the magnificent set that Incognito Theatre’s John Savage had created, with its tons of gravel and cleverly self-collapsing structure for the devastating final scene.There are funny characters in Journey's End (2nd Lieutenant Trotter, for example, and Private Mason, the blueprint for the version of Baldrick seen in Blackadder Goes Forth), but - although he was once played by Noel Coward - Stanhope is not amongst them, especially once he finally loses his self-control in the face of innocent young school friend Raleigh who arrives having asked to be assigned to Stanhope. Stanhope's disintegration, made worse when he is effectively forced to sacrifice his men in a hopeless cause, was short on hilarity and therefore on the instant gratification of the audience reaction (apart from the few audience members who couldn't cope with the constant fog of senior service cigarettes that we were somehow allowed to puff away at for the whole two hours, and who reacted with impressively persistent hacking coughs).
Despite this, despite the fact that when required to break down in tears at the death of my right-hand man and best pal "Uncle" I had to turn my back on the audience so they couldn't see my resolutely unmoist visage, and despite having to drink so much fake whisky (peach ice tea) that I was in danger of bursting, I realised that laughs weren't everything.
* although I did enjoy the round of applause I got one night (I suspect I woke up the audience after King Lear’s lengthy opening scene) my Director proudly told me it attracted one comment from acting stalwart: “I thought Stephen overdid it a bit”. She was delighted to tell me this, because “I told him I asked you to play it that way.” I think she thought I’d be happy about this story.
