MY LIST Christopher Kent
CHRISTOPHER Kent is an actor and a leading voice-over artist. He has appeared on stage in Shakespeare, contemporary drama and revivals of the classics, and he is an in-demand narrator for concerts by leading music ensembles. Christopher returns to the Swaledale Festival this year in An Exquisite Harmony, a dramatisation of one of the great love triangles of the musical world, between Robert and Clara Schumann, and Johannes Brahms.
I’m currently reading: A great deal about Clara and Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, of course. It’s all been preparation for the new concert that Gamal Khamis, Felicity Norman and I will be giving as part of the Swaledale Festival. What I found interesting, as I read, was that Clara, and Mozart (I’m currently working on a new production about him, as well) had a lot in common. They both had talented fathers who were so very pushy for their children. When they grew up a little, and had finished with being ‘child prodigies’, they both found it rather hard to settle themselves into proper adulthood. Both, in effect, were tortured geniuses. Clara’s husband’s solution
nd to her amazing talents was to try to keep her very much at home, producing babies – they had eight children who survived birth. I read English Literature (and drama) at Exeter University. Back then, I thought that all Jane Austen wrote about was romance and love affairs, now, I see that she wrote about money, the social status that you had if you possessed it. I also read a lot of James Joyce – well, I read Ulysses, at any rate. His Finnegans Wake was the only book that I’ve ever thrown across the room in sheer frustration. Maybe, one day, I’ll get round to it?
I’ve been listening to: So much Schumann, from both Clara and Robert, some Brahms, and a great many string quartets and quintets from Mozart. I’ve been absorbing pieces that can be integrated into the narrative, so that they can inform the audiences. When I am just about to go on stage, I have to be in total silence to focus properly, but away from work, I like jazz, and Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald are favourites.
On TV, I’ve been watching: The delightful One Day. It’s a lovely re-telling of David Nicholls’ novel. Ambika Mod and Leo
Woodall are the leads, and are a charming match. Then there’s The White Lotus ,a wonderfully perceptive lampoon of the very wealthy and “privileged”. On stage you are far more in control than you are in film or on TV. You go in, you do your show, and you finish around two hours or so later. When you’re on a film set, it could take all day, and you might just have a minute or so of work that will finally appear on screen. And, when you are doing voiceovers, that’s another thing entirely. I remember doing one for a popular cooking product, and I was asked to speak about six words. Take after take after take, with a different emphasis on
each word. Over and over again. Unbelievably, it took all day.
The live performance I’d recommend is:
The wonderful Sarah Snook (you’ll know her from playing Siobhan Roy in Succession )in her recent West End appearance, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Brilliant. Then there was Guys and Dolls at The Bridge – I don’t usually go for musicals, but this was an exception. Loved it. And London’s import from Sheffield’s Crucible, Standing at the Sky’s Edge. So clever, an intricate plot, but not confusing for a second – if it comes your way, don’t miss it.
My next box set will be: The third season of White Lotus ,and The Three-Body Problem, based on the book by Liu Cixin. Both intense and slightly weird. I voiced the TV trailer for it, and it looked enticing.
The App I couldn’t be without is: Parking apps, because I move around so much – they’ve got to tell me location, price and restrictions. Then there’s BBC Sounds, and also WhatsApp, because it’s the best means of keeping up with family, friends, colleagues. If you’d told me 25 years ago how useful it would be, and that you could hold a device in your hand which could connect you to anyone in the world, with a picture, I would have thought that you’d gone crazy.
What is right at the top of your “to do” bucket list?: I wanted to go to Leipzig, to see the house of Robert and Clara while I was preparing the show, but I just didn’t have the time – now I have to seize that opportunity to connect with them, to “feel” their presence and to soak up the ambience. And Japan, I really want to visit Japan. Everyone tells me what a beautiful place it is, and with such a very different culture to ours.
An Exquisite Harmony is part of the Swaledale Festival, at Richmond’s Georgian Theatre Royal, on Tuesday June 4. ww.georgiantheatreroyal.co.uk