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Out
of the Limelight
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Actor
Roger Allam is one of Britain's
most successful actors,
but he proves the point that nobody
now can be a star
without a television career. Rhoda
Koenig interviewed him
Roger Allam, photographed
backstage at the Royal National
Theatre by Steve Pyke
(click
on picture for enlargement) |
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| He has been
called the best ever Jack Worthing
(in The Importance of Being Earnest)
and the definitive Brutus. In
1985 he impressed critics as the original
Javert in Les Misérables, and
eight years later did so again as
the Bogart-like private eye in City
of Angels. But, to most theatre-goers,
Roger Allam's last name is still "'Who?"'.
The reason says a lot about the current
state of the theatre: it is no longer
possible for an actor to become a
star by appearing only on the stage. |
| In all the
parts mentioned, as well as his highly
praised Benedick opposite the late
Susan Fleetwood, Allam portrayed what
has become his speciality: the honourable
man alone in a corrupt and confusing
society who will not be turned from
his ideal by the threat of death or
ridicule. "He would have fitted on
the stage in the Twenties quite well,"
says Irving Wardle, éminence grise
of theatre critics. "He's the upstanding
English gent. He's very good at conveying
an exasperated incredulity at people
not understanding the truth of what
he's saying." But Allam doesn't simply
play the balked idealist for laughs;
beneath his comic frustration, there
is the melancholy of the outsider
who sees other people breaking the
rules but having more fun. |
| The National
Theatre has been collaborating in
the general conspiracy to keep Allam
well-known and well-liked but only
within the business. Ten days ago
The Way of the World, in which
he plays Mirabell, opened with little
to no advance publicity, thanks to
a director and two co-stars who would
not give interviews. "That play is
a bag of eels," says Allam. "You think
you've got hold of an idea, and it
slips out of your grasp." Allam has
to hold the audience's interest through
Congreve's elegant 17th-century
periphrases and a notoriously static
and convoluted plot - not that this
is too difficult for an actor who,
in ten years with the Royal Shakespeare
Company, was considered one of their
finest speakers of verse. The director
Bill Alexander says, "Roger is a master
of complex classical language. He
can get at the thoughts underlying
it with great clarity." Mirabell is
not one of Allam's virtuous characters,
but he is the least corrupt man in
a corrupt society. "Mirabell has in
the past been something of a rake,"
says Allam. "But the reason he is
obsessed with Millamant is that he
believes marriage will bring out the
best qualities in both of them." |
| In person
Allam, 41, is rather restrained, perhaps
more so than usual during a week that
is not only the last one of rehearsals
but one in which Fleetwood and another
actor friend have died. He is attentively
well-mannered, so old-fashioned he
even smokes. The quality of "sexy
imperturbability" that one reviewer
noted in his acting has its counterpart
in a physical stoicism. One night,
in the middle of Importance, he ruptured
a calf muscle, but, says Barbara Leigh-Hunt,
"altered his movements slightly, so
that very few people in the audience
knew anything was wrong", and then
continued, since he had no understudy,
to play every performance. |
| The son
of a London vicar, Allam went to Christ's
Hospital school in Sussex, "an Oxbridge
forcing house for the lower middle
classes", founded by Edward VI. "We
still wore 16th-century uniforms -
long cloaks and clerical bands and
knee-high yellow socks to keep away
the plague. Oh, it was very camp."
He first became interested in the
theatre on hearing a recording of
Paul Scofield as King Lear and soon
became a regular at the Old Vic -
"You could see Olivier then for 15p."
After leaving school, he went on to
Manchester University and did a stint
at the city's Contact Theatre - "I
was quite good as Angelo. I was crap
as Macbeth but I was getting experience."
Allam's first job was as one of two
men in the Monstrous Regiment. The
feminist company, which performed
new plays by Caryl Churchill and Claire
Luckham, was an education not only
in theatre but in fortitude ("There
were times when the audiences didn't
get the irony") and consciousness-raising.
"I'm amazed when I see all the things
accomplished by someone with a lot
of energy, like Kenneth Branagh. It's
as much as I can do to get my washing
done," says Allam, who lives in north
London "with my lover" (female). |
| Theatre
in England, Allam feels, has become
less important to the public for several
reasons. "There was a lot of rhetoric
at the time the National Theatre and
the Royal Shakespeare Company were
founded about making the theatre more
democratic. The Barbican and South
Bank theatres may have been constructed
so that everyone has a better view
of the stage, but neither is a beautiful
acoustic instrument, like the Old
Vic. And though the people in the
cheap seats can now see better, those
seats are so much more expensive than
they used to be that a lot of people
can't go at all." Deteriorating educational
standards, Allam says, have made classical
language unfamiliar to players and
audiences: the former have difficulty
delivering archaic words and subordinate
clauses with conviction; the latter
"lose the ability to hear what is
being said". |
| Television,
though another cause of passive listening,
is necessary these days to the serious
star. The last classical actor to
become a star without having a hit
in TV or films was Ian McKellen, 15
years older than Allam. The careers
of Michael Gambon and Derek Jacobi
have shown that screen success is
more important than sex appeal. Programmes
such as The Singing Detective
and I Claudius respectively
represented a commitment to drama
that - witness the BBC's recent cheap
and silly adaptations of The Buccaneers
and Pride and Prejudice -
is slipping away. "You can see how
the BBC has been changing its allegiance
from theatre to film just in the names
of the programmes," Allam says. "For
instance, there used to be Play
for Today. Now it's Screen
2." |
| Allam is
certainly aware of these problems
and of the limits imposed by his dignified
style. "I don't think Théâtre de Complicité
are going to call me up." But he does
not share the indignation of some
other people in the theatre world
that he is not a star. He has the
best sort of life an actor can possibly
have," says Michael Blakemore, who
directed City of Angels. "He's
always in demand, and he doesn't restrict
himself the way some actors do who
become stars and start saying, 'This
is not right for me'." |
| Allam raises
his voice only once, when talking
about the tension involved in playing
in a talky comedy several times a
week (The Way of the World
is his fourth in a row, after
City of Angels, Tom Stoppard's
Arcadia, and Importance).
"You tend to amalgamate all the audiences,
the ones who laugh in some places
and the ones who laugh in others,
into one ideal. When they don't laugh
when I expect it, I suffer frustration,
neurosis, anxiety, rage, and deep
embarrassment. |
| He smiles.
"So I'd like to drop comedy for
a while." The job he'd like best would
be good frustration therapy. "I think
something like Titus Andronicus.
I'd like to just get on that stage
and chop away." |
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| The Sunday
Telegraph Magazine |
October 1995 |
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