Confession time: I have nothing to say today! And, just as shocking, I didn’t go to the theatre last night. So, in fact, the two might be related.
I’m not usually, as regular readers will know, lost for words, and there’s invariably something happening, somewhere, that I can turn into a column. But life - or what passes for my life, in the form of the theatre - hasn’t delivered today. Hopefully normal service will be resumed after the bank holiday. But I’m probably also grinding to a halt in anticipation of that weekend, which I’ve actually started already by coming up to Manchester for a couple of nights.
But if there are no plays, it is not all play: I am interviewing Stephen Tompkinson at lunchtime today, since he is doing the next play at the Royal Exchange here - which, in an odd bit of double programming, is The Revenger’s Tragedy, beginning performances in Manchester on May 28 - the day after the National begin their own production, with Rory Kinnear.
And I’m heading home tomorrow in time to see Maria Friedman’s wonderful show at the Menier Chocolate Factory again before it ends its run on Sunday - I interviewed her before she began her run there, and there was such an honesty and vivacity to the story she told of how she dealt with her diagnosis of breast cancer when she had just begun performances for the Broadway transfer of The Woman in White that it filled me with a real appreciation of her as a human being and not just a fine singer.
And on Sunday I am going to the Jerry Herman tribute show at the London Palladium, hosted by Angela Lansbury - whom I also interviewed recently, for the second time, to coincide with this concert (and which you can read in this week’s copy of The Stage). I first spoke to her was for a feature when she made her long overdue return to the Broadway stage last year in Deuce, and I remember literally shaking as I picked up the phone to call her! I conduct many interviews in this job, of course, and I’m usually unphased by doing so, but she’s a legend. She couldn’t have been nicer. So this time, when she actually called me, I was far calmer!
Then on Monday I am going to see Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea at the Arcola - starring Lia Williams, whom I interviewed just on Wednesday, for a feature for this weekend’s Sunday Express. So, even if I am having trouble finding things to say today, at least my subjects don’t have that problem.
In fact I am in the middle of a very busy schedule on that front: in the last two weeks, I have also interviewed Lesley Sharp (for a piece that ran in last weekend’s Sunday Express), comedians-turned-actors Robert Webb and Reece Shearsmith (ahead of their respective appearances in Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig at the Trafalgar Studios and The Common Pursuit at the Menier), and director Matthew Warchus (on the phone to New York, where he is currently directing the Broadway transfer of Boeing-Boeing that opens there this Sunday) and playwright Tim Firth, both regarding the new production of Our House that they respectively directed and scripted and are now reviving for a tour, being launched at Birmingham Rep later this month.
It’s an interesting business being a critic as well as interviewer: though some think it is dangerous for critics to become too close to the art that we scrutinise, I find that my love and knowledge of it is immeasurably enhanced by the human contact of interacting with some of its artists. And it has helped me to after all have something to say today!
When is your interview with Reece Shearsmith going to published - was it for 'The Stage'. I'll be seeing 'The Common Pursuit' in next few weeks...