The following appeared on the
Whatsonstage.com web page on the 24th February 2003. Michael Pennington
was talking to Mark Shenton.
Actor Michael
Pennington who’s currently starring in ETT’s revival of ‘John Gabriel Borkman’
& also reprising his solo show ‘Anton Chekhov’ explains his urge to become
better acquainted with the Russian dramatist.
Despite never having trained as one, Michael Pennington has become one of the leading stage actors of his generation, renowned in particular for his classical roles.
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In the 1960s and
1970s, Pennington spent many years with the Royal Shakespeare Company as well
as several seasons at the Royal Court and the National Theatre. With director
Michael Bogdanov, he co-founded the English Shakespeare Company in 1986, taking
still more leading Shakespearean roles in productions toured around the UK and
the world over some seven years.
In more recent
years, Pennington has performed alongside Judi Dench and Elaine Paige as part
of Peter Hall’s repertory company at the West End’s Old Vic and Piccadilly
theatres, in productions of ‘The
Misanthrope’, ‘Major
Barbara’, ‘Filumena’ and others.
Other recent West End credits have included ‘The Guardsman’, ‘An Ideal
Husband’, and ‘Gross
Indecency’. ‘Waste’, ‘Taking Sides’ and ‘The Entertainer’.
Amongst Pennington’s
regional theatre credits of late are ‘The
Shawl’ at Sheffield Crucible, ‘The
Front Page’ at Chichester Festival and a UK-wide tour of Joe Orton’s ‘What the Butler Saw’,
co-starring Jane Asher. He’s currently starring – with Gillian Barge and Linda
Bassett – in English Touring Theatre’s production of Ibsen’s ‘John Gabriel Borkman’ which
is paired with a new mounting of his celebrated one-man show ‘Anton Chekhov’.
The latter – which
Pennington both wrote and performs – premiered at the National Theatre in 1984
and has since toured around the world. Pennington’s book about the experience
of researching and delivering the piece, ‘Are You
There Crocodile? Inventing Anton Chekhov’ has just been published in
hardback by Oberon Books.
Born in Cambridge
in 1943
North London. I’ve
lived in the country for a while, but I’m a mountain person rather than a
valley person, and I’ve always gone back to north London, which is where I was
brought up.
I didn’t train as
an actor. I’m one of those Oxbridge upstarts who read English (but not much of
it!) at Cambridge in the early 1960s in a generation that included Trevor Nunn
and Richard Eyre, and thought I could start right away as an actor afterwards,
having treated university like a repertory theatre!
I got what looked
like a big break in 1967, when I’d been out as an actor for about three years
and landed a part in a John Mortimer play, ‘The
Judge’, with Patience Collier and Patrick Wymark. But it only ran for three
months. That’s probably an optimal time if you get noticed, because then you’re
free to capitalise on your success. And though I’d been to Stratford before,
going back in 1974 to play leading roles was a formative moment.
I’m obviously very
pleased to have played the big roles like Hamlet for the RSC; but my own
personal preferences are more esoteric, and ‘Strider’
at the National in 1984 is probably the production I’m the proudest of ever. It
only had a short run at the Cottesloe – and is probably forgotten by many – in
which it was my role to play a horse and human being simultaneously. It was
based on an old Tolstoy short story that is a barely disguised parable of 19th-century
Russian life, and was the equivalent of being a ballet dancer. It was a
tremendous physical challenge and was unusual territory for an actor to be in.
Everything we did
with the English Shakespeare Company, which I formed
with Michael Bogdanov in 1986 and we ran together for six or seven years. I had
as direct input into the style of productions as co-artistic director, which
even leading actors don’t normally have. It was my actor-manager phase and I’ve
very proud of it. We did the entire cycle of Shakespeare’s History Plays, and
toured worldwide. Another favourite is my solo Chekhov show, ‘Anton Chekhov’, which I’m still doing
after twenty years; and ‘Crime
and Punishment’ at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1983, directed by then-defecting
Russian director Yuri Lyubimov, at the time he first left for the West.
I’ve worked with
Judi Dench three times – in ‘The
Way of the World’, Peter Shaffer’s ‘The Gift of the Gorgan’,
and ‘Filumena’. I also greatly
enjoyed working with Elaine Paige on ‘The Misanthrope’, and with
Felicity Kendal on ‘Waste’ at the Old Vic;
and with Theresa Banham, one of the finest, most underrated actresses we have,
as part of a David Mamet double-bill in which we performed ‘The Shawl’, at the Sheffield Crucible.
Lyubimov, Peter
Hall, Stephen Unwin with whom I’m working at the moment. And, of course,
Michael Bogdanov, because of the scope of what we did with the English Shakespeare Company, and the fact that we
managed to stay friends throughout the years while controlling artistic policy
together.
Chekhov and
Shakespeare of course. I loved doing Mamet, and I very much liked doing Ben
Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s play ‘The
Front Page’, at Chichester last year.
Lear and Prospero
from Shakespeare, but I don’t really have a shopping list. I’m an actor who
likes to be taken by surprise – like a girl who likes to be asked to dance.
I loved Stoppard’s
‘The Coast of Utopia’ trilogy at the National for its scope and its scale. I
miss a lot, I’m afraid, but the things that have stuck with me over the years
include Robert Lepage’s ‘Dragon’s Trilogy’, for its astounding virtuoso
directing of a great ensemble, and ‘A Doll’s House’ with Janet McTeer a few
years ago.
What advice would you give the government to secure the future of British theatre?
I’ve spent most of
my adult life complaining, but over the last two or three years there’s been a
cash injection, particularly into regional theatre, that I can’t quarrel with,
so they’ve done well just at the moment. So I would say, Keep up the good work,
and keep it coming!
If you could swap places with one person (living or dead), who would it be?
Chekhov – the book
I’ve written is trying to do just that. He remains the one famous person I
would most like to spend a day with.
Italy – for its
style, its food, its climate, the unbelievable richness of its culture. It’s
easier to visit than to live in, but I would cheerfully spend two holidays a
year there.
A great book by
Alberto Manguel, ‘A History of Reading’, tells in the most entertaining and
scholarly way everything you need to know about books and literature; followed
by Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’ and Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement.’
For all its ups and
downs, Joe Allen’s is still a favourite. And the Groucho, selectively but not
too often, I’m of an age when it’s unseemly to go to too many after-show
haunts!
My father wanted me
to be a lawyer, but I didn’t have the stamina. It would probably have been
something to do with literature, but I’m very, very grateful for how things
turned out. Doing anything other than what I’ve done would have been a poor
second. Some get tired of it, but I like the job more and more as the years go
by, not less.
Why did you want to accept your part in ETT’s production of ‘John Gabriel Borkman’?
I very much like
Stephen Unwin’s company. It’s related to what I used to do myself with English
Shakespeare Company, touring the classics around the country. Also, I’ve never
done Ibsen before, which surprises me, but has meant that I managed to avoid
all the clergymen and intolerant husbands and am now doing what is almost a
self-portrait of Ibsen himself. It’s less well known than his other plays, but
I can’t imagine why – it seems just as good. Also, it has three parts for
people in their fifties, and I’m astoundingly lucky to have Gillian Barge and
Linda Bassett with me. They’re the definition of quality as far as I’m
concerned.
How did your one-man show ‘Anton Chekhov’ -and your new book about the experience – come about?
I was travelling on
the Trans-Siberian Express in 1975. I was coming back from Japan and fancied
travelling across Russia by train, when I met an American poet and scholar
Lucien Stryk, who pointed out something that I didn’t know about Chekhov: that
he had trudged across Siberia in 1890 to do a survey on the west coast of
Russia in Sakhalin. My immature view of Chekhov was of a man who sat in a
deckchair writing his melancholic plays, but her was a very determined and
progressive social reformer.
Lucien suggested I
write a solo show, and for the next ten years, he would ring me about it,
asking how I was progressing, and I would say it’s too awkward and he’s too
loved a figure. But by the 11th year, I had done it. The National
Theatre put it on for me in 1984, it went into the repertoire for a time and I
toured it to festivals, and I’ve been doing it off and on ever since. So I’ve
had the odd experience of having done the same material written by myself for
20 years, though I’m a different person now to what I was then. Above all it’s
not about Chekhov the playwright or his relationship with the theatre, but
about the sort of man he was based on, a guess of what he would like to talk
about if you had his company for two hours. So it’s more about fishing,
neckties, literature, gossip and how you write good short stories than the
familiar anecdotes about the theatre, and it’s intended to make the audience
feel as if they’re in a room with the man and are having an almost two-sided
conversation with him.
When I revived
‘Anton Chekhov’ at the Old Vic in 1997, I had this idea to write a book about
the time I’d spent with him, and it turned into a kind of autobiography, though
I wouldn’t have ventured to do one otherwise.
They’re totally
different – it’s a matter of contrast rather than similarity.
What’s the funniest/oddest/most notable thing that has happened in rehearsals or the run to date of either?
We have a snow
machine that is supposed to snow outside the drawing room, but during a
technical rehearsal turned me into a snowman as it snowed inside it!
I am going to direct
‘A Midsummer Night’s
Dream’ at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park in June, which is an
awesome responsibility.