‘All good art is autobiographical’
Julian Wadham chats to JEFFREY DAVIES about why ‘robots’ will never write scripts and what it’s like starring with old schoolfriend Rupert Everett in A Voyage Round My Father at Theatre Royal Bath
Anew production of John Mortimer’s celebrated autobiographical play, A Voyage Round My Father, opens at the Theatre Royal Bath next week ahead of a UK tour. Star of stage and screen Rupert everett leads the cast, which includes Julian wadham, eleanor David, Jack Bardoe, Allegra Marland, John Dougall and Heather Bleasdale.
Growing up in the shadow of a brilliant and eccentric barrister, a man whose teatime conversation could take in music hall, adultery, evolution, the ridiculous inconvenience of sex, Shakespeare, and the importance of avoiding anything heroic in wartime, the son continually yearns for his father’s love and respect.
In shining a light on this delicate relationship between a young man and his father who adored his garden and hated visitors, and whose blindness was never mentioned, novelist, playwright and barrister John Mortimer, the creator of Rumpole of the The Bailey, introduces audiences to a world of hilarious eccentrics, bumbling headmasters and exasperated relatives.
“A delicate relationship between a young man and his father,” says the blurb. In what way, I asked Julian wadham, who plays five characters in this production.
“I think his father had an accident in his middle years which made him blind. A gardening accident but which, nevertheless, he was in denial of. He was irascible at times, always contentious and provocative and outwardly, at least, in many ways extremely difficult and tiresome. But he nevertheless was never less than interesting and stimulating and moving. And I think, therefore, as a sort of memoir of a father written by a son it has all his nuances. He clearly is a difficult character,” the most engaging actor told me.
“He was a King’s Counsel and yet for most of his life as a King’s Counsel he was a leading authority on probate. He was
blind, as I said, and he appeared in court completely blind and yet at home he was in denial of his blindness so nobody ever alluded to it at all socially or anything. So that made him an ambivalent character.”
Many plays today are described as celebrated plays like this one. But does the adjective absolutely fit this autobiographical masterpiece?
“It must do to a degree because I have a French friend who I grew up with as a child who has become really quite a celebrated author in France and he’s just written a book himself translated into english called A Journey Round My Childhood. And so many people of my age remember it [A Voyage Round My Father] well because John Mortimer was deeply loved because of the Rumpole of The Bailey series. But also his writings in general. I think of all his works A Voyage Round My Father, other than the Rumpole series, are the best known,” the Hertfordshire-born actor, 65, said.
would it be fair to describe the play as a moving and kindly reflective one? “Yes, but ultimately it’s a loving one. I don’t know about you, Jeffrey, but I deeply loved my own father and when he died more than 15 years ago now what I hadn’t anticipated was that I would think about him nearly every day and talk about him. And I think about him with such love. I had no idea that the loss of a parent can actually be such a nurturing thing. That you can draw so much from loving memories of someone. Both Rupert [everett] and Richard [eyre] the director have written marvellous memoirs of their lives. Rupert deeply loved his mother and was deeply fond of his father and was inspired by both. And Richard wrote a very moving memoir of his own father, which I think is a wonderful bit of literature.”
Julian plays five characters in this play – the headmaster, Bousted, Sparks, the second judge and the doctor.
“The best of them I suppose
is the headmaster of the prep school where John Mortimer was educated. His role unfolds in three soliloquies which I find cryptic and eccentric but also touching. He’s a kind man who must be incomprehensible for the children he’s teaching though,” Julian said.
“Quite honestly I think prep schools when John Mortimer was being educated before the Second world war and prep schools when I was being educated in the early Sixties haven’t changed at all. They were still filled with the warwounded; in Mortimer’s case the war-wounded of world war
I and in my case world war II. Dusters went flying and teachers would suddenly start machine gunning you or hurling Mills bombs at you rather bizarrely,” Julian recalled with a smile.
Has Ampleforth Collegeeducated Julian learnt anything more about John Mortimer during his time rehearsing this play than is already generally known?
“Yes, I think I have. One of the main insights that the play offers us is that the father he’s writing about disapproved of his own son. early on in the play the son makes the point that the one thing he totally disagrees with
When you hear somebody’s narrative, a story from somebody’s life, it leaps off the page because you know it must have happened. They’re authentic and real Julian Wadham
his father about is the value of sex. And John Mortimer clearly valued sex highly and sought it endlessly throughout his life. He was unfaithful in a way we don’t know the father was. The father in the play is much more supportive of his daughter-inlaw against the son because he clearly disapproves of his son’s view of sex.”
Is there a message within A Voyage Round My Father that John Mortimer wanted audiences to think about on leaving the theatre?
“Yes, but I think the message I take away from the play is that however tortuous and difficult one’s relations sometimes can be with one’s parents, if they have inspirational qualities as the father does in this, it doesn’t matter because throughout your life you will carry a sort of internalised model of them and of the difficulties. You will spend your life processing it and finding occasional value and certainly the last line of the play says it all. When his father has finally gone, the overriding thing he feels is being lonely. Therefore I think it’s better in life sometimes to suffer the brickbats, the difficulties of tiresome parenting. There are very powerful messages within the play,” Julian answered.
Of course Julian is a very wellknown face on stage, television and film. His credits in each genre of his profession are highly impressive. He starred alongside his current A Voyage Round My Father co-star Rupert Everett, Kenneth Branagh, Daniel Day Lewis and Colin Firth in the original West End cast of Another Country in 1983. His many other theatre credits include In Praise of Love, The English Patient, The Madness of George III, Tartuffe, Much Ado About Nothing and When We Are Married.
On the big screen Julian has appeared in The English Patient, The Madness of King George, War Horse, Victoria & Abdul and Churchill among many other films.
Julian’s extensive television credits include leading roles in The Gold, The Outcast, Downton Abbey, Middlemarch and Outlander, as well as guest appearances in many of our favourite TV dramas.
Does Julian have a favourite genre of the three?
“No, I don’t really because I’m a great one for Shakespeare’s ‘the play’s the thing’. Like Hamlet the play is the thing. It doesn’t matter whether the play is a film script or a television script or a radio script or a theatre piece. It is in the quality of the writing. Coming back to A Voyage Round My Father, a lot of the themes of the play are approached in a cryptic rather oblique way that people of that period approached things.”
Would it be possible for Julian to select a highlight from his impressive list of acting credits?
“Yes, funnily enough I do. I have several. You might think that I would immediately leap to The English Patient, which was certainly the most exciting, thrilling and glamorous film project that I have been involved in. But the film that comes immediately to mind was when Richard E Grant, who is a personal friend of mine, asked me to be in his autobiographical film Wah Wah, which is about his growing up in Swaziland. The intensity of his own very difficult, painful and powerful life story was so beautifully told, with such deftness and skill that I’ve managed to watch it again and again and again and I never tire of it,” he answered.
As a highly acclaimed and much sought-after actor Julian receives many scripts for consideration. Does he have a particular routine for rooting out which roles to reject and which to accept?
“Yes, I do. The common theme, as we are talking about A Voyage Around My Father, is in fact autobiography. I think that the reason why robots won’t end up writing scripts in the future is because they lack autobiographies. I’ll never forget when I was in the Lake District and saw the actual lane that Jemima Puddle-duck flew down and seeing the daffodils around Lake Coniston’s waters that all good art is autobiographical. And when you hear somebody’s narrative, a story from somebody’s life, it leaps off the page because you know it must have happened. They’re authentic and real. And that thrills me. So I think autobiography really,” Julian said.
Looking back, does Julian feel blessed to have had such a glittering and acclaimed acting career?
“Yes, I do. I feel very blessed, Jeffrey. And especially at the moment because Rupert and I were at school together. We’ve known each other since we were 13. At school Rupert, of course, played all the sexy leading starlet parts and I played the rather dull ones and not an awful lot has changed, quite honestly! And here we are over 50 years on and we’re still treading the boards together as we hoped we would be when we set out as young schoolboys hoping to God that we would make something of our lives in theatre.”
He continued: “Although Rupert’s career has been stellar, I’m very thrilled with the straw that I drew. I have four children and the family has been just as important to me as the theatre. So I’m very happy with my lot and just grateful that I’m plodding on,” he said graciously.
Any secretly coveted roles Julian would still like to play?
“I have. I’ve got millions I’d like to play but I’ve never been very good at pinning them down. And part of the reason is I don’t think I’d be offered them. And that’s just how it is!” the most charming actor answered modestly.
A Voyage Round My Father is playing the Theatre Royal Bath from September 28 to October 7. Tickets can be booked on 01225 448844 or online at www.theatreroyal. org.uk