Joshua shares stage with real-life mother
Joshua James came across Noel Coward’s play The Vortex (Chichester Festival Theatre, April 28-Saturday, May 20) back in 2013, the year after he graduated. It was at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, and David Dawson was playing Nicky Lancaster.
“I'm a big fan of David Dawson and I just thought the part would be great to play. I've played quite a few characters in that type over the years, the damaged poets. For some reason I seem to be drawn to them. I don't think I should ponder why but I just do it. I like playing these complex, three-dimensional, complicated and challenging parts but it also struck me when I saw this production that there was an incredible on-stage relationship between a mother and her son. I don't think my mum and I had ever really had big ambitions to work together. That was not a huge plan we had but when I saw this I just thought that it was a part that would be brilliant for her and also maybe a part that I could do. My feeling was that she would be great in the part anyway. She would be an incredible Florence in a productionthatiwasn'tinbutialso thought that I could maybe play Nicky even in a production that she wasn't in.”
Now it is happening – with both of them: “A couple of years later I did the Chekhov season in Chichester and we took that to The National. Dan Raggett, the director, and I had been friends for a while. We were sitting outside the National Theatre doing that thing that you do when you are that age, plotting world domination and he said ‘Have you ever read The Vortex by Noël Coward?’ I said ‘That's so weird’ because I had seen the production a couple of years before and then he said ‘What about doing it with your mum?’” It has taken a while to come to fruition, but it has now. They are working together for the first time: “It feels really quite easy. I think it helps that being mother and son we do have a huge amount of admiration for each other. I have been a fan of hers for 33 years andithinkthefeelingismutual. We've always liked each other’s work and to be honest I'm just really enjoying so far messing about with a really, really, really good actor with whom I just happen to have that weight of a real-liferelationship.andnicky isgreattoplay,asisay,thatcomplicated, 3D type of character that has dark and light, that is black and white and grey and every colour on the spectrum in between. He feels like one of those parts that could be played by anyone. People talk about there being as many different Hamlets as there are human beings in the world and I thinkthesameistruefornicky. I love how witty he is and I love how cutting he can be and how honest he is but I also love how fragile he is.”
It also helps Joshua to have playedchichesterbeforewhere one of his roles was Konstantin in The Seagull: “There's a direct lineage from Konstantin to Nicky in The Vortex. but it also helps that I am familiar with the theatre and it is a really beautiful space. It feels like a place where you can do intimacy and epic-ness side by side very easily and there is a really great scene at the end where there is just Nicky and Florence onstage.thatfeelslikeit'sgoing tobereallyexcitingtodoonthat bigstageandyetbesointimate.”