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Interviews
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David Haig - an archetypal English actor Philip Fisher talks to the actor and playwright. David Haig is one of those archetypal English actors who seem particularly well suited to comedy and self-effacing dramatic parts. Amongst many starring roles, his screen credits include appearances in Dr Who, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Thin Blue Line. On stage in the last couple of years, he has also sought - or at least found - great variety. After playing Osborne, the "placid, benign almost saintly man, a middle-aged teacher who went to the First World War" a true hero who was "inconspicuously brave", in David Grindley's revival of Journey's End, he has appeared in Mary Poppins, Donkey's Years by Michael Frayn and is now starring in a pair of comedies that launch the inaugural season of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket Company under artistic director Jonathan Kent. This father of five children has been giving his all, at serious risk to his voice, playing Pinchwife in William Wycherley's The Country Wife. He therefore apologetically conducted the interview sotto voce, in order to ensure that he could perform later on that evening. It isn't just his voice. One of his colleagues in the cast was so concerned about the raising of his blood pressure every night that he enquired as to whether "you are going to make it" to a happy retirement. Haig is unconcerned enough to quip "maybe there's a coronary round the corner?" "These performances do actually cost more than people assume. Actually I don't go out clubbing and eating and drinking. In fact, I didn't go to the company do last night because I wanted to get back because we're doing two shows tomorrow - Saturday. "There's something about investing that much into a comic performance that is hugely challenging and fulfilling ultimately. I like disappearing into that world where you actually are beyond thinking articulately about what you're doing. You start surfing almost. That's very exciting. I get that out of a certain neurosis, angst, energy, fury in comedy". Haig is currently enjoying playing his part in what, paraphrasing one critic, he talks of as "'the only decent drama in the English language written exclusively about sex', which is probably true because the whole thing centres on where, why, how you achieve sex and therein lies the whole plot". Reflecting on its selection to herald the arrival of a new company he says, "It is a very funny play but is also an unpredictable play for the West End - it's not normal West End fare at all and this is the great gamble that Jonathan Kent has taken which must be applauded". He is one of a number of big names in the company that also includes Toby Stephens and Patricia Hodge who "brings imperious lustiness to her role, both of them very sexy people anyway". He sounds resigned to his own fate in playing Pinchwife: "it's my character who doesn't exude sexuality, just a sort of envy and frustration at everyone else having a good time". Haig could hardly be more enthusiastic about the second play in the season, Edward Bond's The Sea, in which he also plays a major part. He knows it of old. "I actually played this character for three nights at LAMDA and I still remember it as one of the most satisfying things I ever did". It belies Bond's reputation as a shocking playwright who takes no prisoners in his efforts to portray the seamy side of life. "It's a play I've loved for thirty years. There is a strand of the play that's very dark, which is my strand.... Eileen Atkins' strand is genuinely really funny. There's a funeral which I think is one of the funniest scenes ever written, let alone by Edward Bond. If we can just make it palatable for a West End audience by blending those two themes in the play then I think we've got a chance". The actor is excited by the creation of the Theatre Royal Company and what it might do for the West End. "If we can not only survive within that vicious commercial world but bring to people interesting plays we may be on to something. We have to do it well and hopefully we are and will come up with stuff which people still want to travel on their coaches down to see and enjoy". What he really hopes comes out of this experiment is "what the West End needs - the sort of depth of casting that really only the subsidised companies have a tradition for". Haig is very much enjoying his first Haymarket experience and in particular, his luxurious dressing room which is more like a hotel suite than the standard cubby-hole that so many theatres offer, even to their stars. Another topic dear to David Haig's heart is My Boy Jack, his own play that originally appeared very successfully at Hampstead thirteen years ago. It explores "Rudyard Kipling's inadvertent complicity in his own son's death". Having recognized that he and Kipling looked alike, the writer/actor then discovered other parallels. "What fascinated me was how similar Kipling was to my own father who was in the Army for twenty years before running the Hayward Gallery for the first ten years of its existence. "It became a very personal journey writing it because they both share this paradoxical combination of tyranny and magical inventiveness. They've got that same combination of artistic sensitivity with old Victorian values". The play, which was first commissioned as a film eleven years ago, has at long last been made after an elephantine 22 year gestation period from the first germ of an idea. Haig describes this as "a dream come true". The two hour-long primetime drama will appear on ITV 1 on Remembrance Sunday with Daniel Radcliffe (or Harry Potter as he is better known) "who is absolutely perfect for the part" playing John Kipling opposite Haig himself as the famous writer, with Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall in the role of Kipling's American-born wife. Talking of his future ambitions, this talented actor and playwright is candid enough to suggest that "in ten years time, if anybody respects me at all as an actor, I'd love to try King Lear, even if it's somewhere utterly obscure. I've also always wanted to play Iago, the charming villain. There's something about his malign influence on that play that comes from a very accessible, charming surface veneer and I'd like to get to the bottom of that". Without suggesting that he has any degree of that malignity, it is very easy to picture David Haig digging the metaphorical knife into Othello and one can only hope that some director reading this article will agree. If not, we will just have to enjoy the usual mix of manic comedy eccentrics, happy musical chappies and low key dramatic characters at all of which this fine actor excels.
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