CityLife

Interview: David Schofield

David Schofield plays music hall survivor Archie Rice

DAVID Schofield and I are sitting in the Royal Exchange during a break in rehearsals for The Entertainer, reminiscing about the last time he played in the theatre, taking the lead in Blues For Mr Charlie.

“Someone asked me the other day ‘when were you last here?’,” he says, looking around the auditorium, “and I said ‘oh, it must have been eight or nine years’. In fact, it’s more like 17 years!

“American plays are the forte of Greg Hersov, who’s also directing The Entertainer, of course, and he was passionate about that play,” he recalls.

“I have to say it was tremendous to work on, playing this redneck, racist pig! But an absolutely beautiful play and a wonderful character to play – a man absolutely driven, as a lot of scary people are, by fear.

“Archie Rice in The Entertainer’s a bit like that, don’t you think? When people are up against it, they attack.”

David is back to play the clapped-out, up-against-it music hall survivor Archie Rice in John Osborne’s caustic classic The Entertainer, first performed in 1957. What was it about the part, most famously played by John Gielgud and recently revived with Robert Lindsay, that had tempted him?

“The chance to work in this place again with Greg,” he offers.

“I’ve been lucky enough to have had a few enquiries since the last time I was here, but circumstances – and, luckily for me, other work – have always meant I haven’t been able to take those ideas up.

“Greg rang me about this a few months ago and I think, from what he’s told me, that people had been wanting him to do this play for a while, since the success of Look Back In Anger.

'Real challenge'

“But he told me he could never really work out why he would want to do it in this particular theatre and how and why it would work in the round.

“Then, or at least this is my understanding, some sort of veil lifted, making it clear to him why it should be done at this point in time and at this theatre.

“When he spoke to me, the ideas he had and the passion he obviously felt made it clear to me that I should be part of it.

“There are certain parts that an actor will store up and want to play at some point. I’m sure you hear that all the time.

“Now, I’m a jobbing actor and I’ve never had any great passion to play any role really. I just like to play good parts – I like new plays and I like the classics too.

“But Archie Rice in The Entertainer was always something I had a bit of a sense-memory about.

“I must have seen the film way back but I don’t remember much about it beyond feeling that there was just something about this person and his predicament.

“So Greg rang me up and said, ‘I think you’ve got just what this character needs’, and I immediately thought, as actors will, ‘how flattering!’.

“Then I thought, ‘so he’s a second-rate has been, over the hill, past it, bitter, misogynistic drunk!’ I thought that pretty well summed me up, so I was enthused enough to want to take on what is a real challenge.”

Playing any classic role “makes you nervous up to a point, of course,” he admits. “But John Gielgud was playing this character, which everyone seems to think is the yardstick, in the year that I was born!

'Universal'

“What I’ve done is to not look at the film again at all and I’ve never seen a stage production of it, even the recent 50th anniversary one with Robert Lindsay – admittedly because I was too bitter!

“Other people may bring their preconceptions to this role but I don’t have any.

“What I’m doing is reading John Osborne’s play and finding it absolutely extraordinary, coruscating and sad.

“I know people say it’s a metaphor for the death of England, the Empire and all that but I can’t really engage myself with any message the play might have. I can see all that but all I can do as an actor is to make the play believable, truthful, honest and real.

“So I’m looking at a play that is about the disintegration of a family. I have to say that Archie has been in my home, in some manifestations, during my life and I think he’s been in a lot of people’s homes.

“People under pressure, frightened people, people who don’t know where to go or what’s going to happen. Many people today will find themselves in that situation.

“Of course some of the things that happen in the play between the characters are way beyond anything that I’ve ever experienced.

“But many of the other things, such as the bickering, the fighting for sympathy, the familiarity breeding contempt, the fear of being lost and passed over, the fear about what it means to be a family man, a father, a breadwinner and failing at it, those things are universal.

“Right now especially, a lot of people are losing their jobs and feeling trepidation about what’s going to happen.

“A lot of people are feeling angry about what’s happened too, just as Archie is.”

The Entertainer is now previewing at the Royal Exchange and runs until December 5 (2009).