AN ENCHANTING EVENING
JULIAN OVENDEN TELLS HUGH MONTGOMERY HOW HE’S HELPING TO REINVENT SOUTH PACIFIC...
ETON College has spawned more than its fair share of acting talent, with Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Damian Lewis among the stars educated there. It’s a list that makes another Eton alumnus, Julian Ovenden, feel slightly inadequate. ‘I’m the least successful Old Etonian actor working. It’s mightily depressing,’ he jokes.
Yet, quips aside, Julian is being far too modest about his own career – he is one of Britain’s most accomplished musical theatre stars, and has cut quite the dash in TV shows from Downton Abbey to The Crown. Now, he’s back on stage doing what he does best in a raved-about revival of the musical South Pacific, which is the main attraction of Chichester Festival Theatre’s summer season.
The Rodgers and Hammerstein classic tells the story of a group of American soldiers and nurses stationed on a South Pacific Island during the Second World War. Julian plays Emile, a local plantation owner who falls in love with Navy nurse Nellie Forbush.
But while it may be remembered for its lush, tropical setting and dazzling tunes, including Some Enchanted Evening and I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair, it is anything but simple escapism.
‘I think people have an idea of South Pacific from the [1958] film adaptation and that is not really a great representation of the genius of the piece,’ says Julian. ‘I don’t want to give too much away about [our version] but it’s slightly deconstructed, and it’s really trying to make the themes sing out as strongly as they can.”
One of the subjects it confronts head-on is racism – not least through its heroine Nellie, who, in a crux moment, demonstrates her bigotry when she discovers that her lover Emile has two mixed-race children by his late first wife. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s decision to make her a racist was a real provocation at the time that still offers plenty of food for thought now, as Julian notes. ‘[These days] we’re struggling with the question: what do we do after we have named someone a racist? We need to find a way to reeducate people whose views are ignorant, and not acceptable in today’s society, and the musical has a fairly good way of treating that particular idea, I think.’
By the same token, while South Pacific may have been progressive for its time, the original show displays its own racial prejudice, in its crude depictions of the Pacific islanders, and that is something this new production addresses, says Julian. ‘Daniel [Evans, the director] was very keen to reinvestigate [that aspect]. So I think you’ll find they are much more developed characters than perhaps they’ve ever been before.’
Julian did a lot of theatre at school – “part of the reason I did that was because it was the only way to meet girls,’ he laughs – but it was really only in his last year at Oxford University that he set his sights on an acting career. Drama school followed, as well as an early gig playing the Diet Coke hunk in one of their celebrated TV ads, which inadvertently brought him together with his now-wife of 11 years, opera singer Kate Royal: ‘We were in a pub together and she recognised me [from the ad] and got my number,’ he says.
With his rich singing voice and classical good looks, he has made a fine musical leading man over the last two decades, while, when it comes to straight dramatic roles, he gave a revelatory performance a few years ago in the Donmar Warehouse revival of Kevin Elyot’s seminal play My Night With Reg, playing troubled playboy John. As well as requiring him to get physically naked every night, it was a role that emotionally exposed him like never before, he says. ‘When I started out, I think I was a “thinking” actor more than a “feeling” actor but that’s changed in the last ten years.’
Meanwhile, on the small screen, he has most recently been seen in two contrasting roles – playing abusive porn actor Tom Pain in Channel 4 miniseries Adult Material, and as fictional Regency artist Sir Henry Granville in Bridgerton.
As far as the latter goes, he says Granville is unlikely to appear in the next season, but it is possible he will return at some point. Julian would certainly like the chance to play him again, not least because of the impact he has had as a gay character in a series with such a global reach.
‘I got a lot of messages, almost more messages than I think I’ve ever got from any job I’ve ever done, from people all over the world [living under] regimes or in areas of the world where they couldn’t be who they were,’ Julian reveals. ‘You have no idea a show is going to touch people in that way, but it’s rather satisfying that you can be involved in something that does that.’
South Pacific is at Chichester Festival Theatre until 5 September and is also available to watch online via a
stream on selected dates, cft.org.uk