Weatherfield meets Walford in a clash of love rivals!
A new touring production of the classic mystery play Sleuth features respective Corrie and EastEnders stars Todd Boyce and Neil McDermott as romantic adversaries. Casting genius, applauds RICHARD BARBER
THE casting for the new touring production of seasoned thriller Sleuth is neat. Todd Boyce played serial killer and all-round rotter, Stephen Reid, in almost 300 episodes of Coronation Street, on and off between 1996 and his eventual demise under the wheels of Peter Barlow’s car last year. Neil McDermott was – indeed, is – EastEnders’ bed-hopping bad boy Ryan Malloy, playing him on and off between 2009 and February of last year.
“But who knows?” he says, with a twinkle. “There’s nothing to stop him turning up again.” So, who can resist the chance to see Corrie locking horns with ’Enders live on stage? Todd was offered the role of hugely successful mystery writer Andrew Wyke – who invites his wife’s lover, Milo Tindle, to his house and convinces him to stage a robbery of her jewellery – while producer Bill Kenwright was still alive. He’d featured in Bill’s production of The Exorcist in Birmingham and the West End, opposite Bill’s long-time love, actress Jenny Seagrove.
“I didn’t need to be asked twice to do Sleuth.” Neil was cast as Milo, who gets caught up in Wyke’s obsession with deception, after Kenwright’s death last October.
Widely acknowledged as the thriller writers’ thriller, Sleuth is a highly regarded piece of work written by Anthony Shaffer in 1970. A long-running success in the West End and on Broadway, it won a Tony in 1971 for best play and was made into an acclaimed film in 1972 starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. Thirty-five years later in 2007, it was remade with Caine switching to play Wyke with Jude Law portraying the younger lover.
You can catch Sleuth at the Grand Opera House in York this week and then touring throughout the UK, finally coming to rest at London’s Richmond Theatre in May.
And these are two hefty parts, with pages of dialogue to learn and commit to memory.
“Being on a soap,” says Neil, “was useful in learning lots of lines. But the difference with being in EastEnders – and the same must be true of Corrie – is that you don’t have to remember them for more than a few days.”
Todd agrees. “This has been more of a challenge, a beast of a play. My brain was used to taking in lines and then ditching them.” Not that he regrets a second of his time on Corrie. “It was such a great place to work, I’d happily have stayed there for the rest of my life.”
They hadn’t met before this production. “But I was very aware of Neil’s work on EastEnders,” says Todd, 62, “and I thought he was terrific.”
Neil repays the compliment. “Stephen Reid was such an iconic character, arguably the cobbles’ best/worst killer ever. It was impossible not to know him.”
Each came out of pantomime to take on this new challenge with a mere three weeks of rehearsal.
Neil, 43, had been in Sleeping Beauty in Bath, “giving the world my Prince, for what must be the last time!”
Todd played Lucifer Vanity in Mother Goose in Derby.
This seems the appropriate moment to suggest that it’s surely more fun being a baddie. “Oh yes,” they chorus.
“It gives you something to get your teeth
into,” says Todd. So, what happens if he’s recognised over the frozen peas in his local supermarket? “Funny you should say that. I had to ask somebody the other day in Sainsbury’s where I could find a certain item and the blood drained from her face. She said: ‘I don’t like you.’ I explained it was only acting.”
As Neil has got older, he says, he’s segued from romantic leads – certainly in the theatre – to playing comedy villains.
He’s graduated from The Sound of Music twice (Captain von Trapp last time round), as well as PrettyWoman and Shrek.
So, he’s happy with the attention his alterego Ryan brought him, including those nominations for Sexiest Actor in a Soap and so on? “I must admit it took me slightly by surprise when I first started on EastEnders.
“I was about 30 and I remember catching a bus to meet friends for a night out. There was a lot of pointing and giggling from a group of girls on board. I’d like to point out, though, I never won any of those Hunkiest Men awards.” Apparently, it was squarejawed Scott Maslen (Walford’s resident cop, Jack Branning) who always came out on top.
“And it was noticeable how people reacted, depending on who I happened to be with – if it was Charlie Brooks, who played the murderous Janine, people were sympathetic towards me.” But, if he was with Charlie Clements, squeaky-clean Bradley, he’s the one who’d get all the hugs.
SCAN Todd’s CV and he seems to have lived all over the world. Born in Ohio, his family moved to New York, then Germany, Chicago and Brazil, finally settling in Australia where, straight out of school, he joined the cast of a soap, The Restless Years, before enrolling in drama college.
Was his father in the Army?
“No, I always get asked that. In fact, he was in corporate sales.” Todd appeared in a succession of TV mini-series throughout the 80s before moving to the UK in 1989, having appeared opposite Kylie Minogue in a film called The Delinquents. “She’s exquisite, a tiny doll.”
Insofar as you can control your career, Neil says he’s been at pains to vary his workload. “I did a lot of musicals when I first graduated from drama school in North
London. Then my agent said I was in danger of being typecast and got me some TV work, which culminated in EastEnders.”
He brushes his uniformly dark brown hair out of his eyes.Was there ever a point when he flirted with the idea of becoming a pop singer?
“When I did The Sound of Music at the Palladium, Andrew Lloyd Webber was the producer and the driving force behind finding the actress who’d play Maria – it turned out to be Connie Fisher – via a TV talent show.
“I remember Andrew coming backstage, fixing me with a beady eye and saying: ‘Good news! We’re doing Joseph next.’ I know he was hoping I’d audition on live TV but I felt I’d got beyond that point.
“Not to be grand, I wanted one day to do serious dramas and plays like Sleuth. Go the talent show route and you run the risk of not being taken seriously by casting directors.”
When he stepped away from EastEnders for the first time, he was invited to take part in Strictly Come Dancing.
“I said no. And then they asked if I’d like to know how much I’d be paid. And I said, ‘Better not’ – and carried on with my career. I must admit, it has crossed my mind since how my life would have gone if I’d accepted the Strictly offer.”
Says Todd: “Well, look at Ellie Leach who I worked with on Corrie. Winning Strictly last year took her career to a whole new place. Now, she’s about to start touring the country as Miss Scarlett in Cluedo 2.”
Neil nods: “And Strictly certainly hasn’t harmed Bobby Brazier’s career. He’s quite the golden boy now.”
Unfulfilled ambitions? “There’s one less because we’re in Sleuth together,” says Todd. “The older I get, the more interesting the parts, which is a nice thing to be able to say.”
AND Neil? “More telly and I’d love to work for the RSC. And, since Covid, I’ve tried to do more writing. I’m currently writing something with actress Jess Ransom who I co-starred with on the tour of Home, I’m Darling. I don’t want to box myself in as an actor any more. I’d love the challenge of directing, for instance.”
To that end, he’s keeping his hand in with the Mishmak Youth Theatre which he set up in 2010 with his actress wife, Michelle Edwards, 42. Neil and Michelle have three children: Arabella is 13, Roddy 11 and baby Maria just six months.
“Both the older two have agents.Arabella was Jane Banks in Mary Poppins and was in The Sound of Music with Gina Beck in Chichester. Roddy was in the film, The End We Start From, with Jodie Comer, and in the second series of Belgravia.”
What of Todd? The sweetest smile. “I never, ever talk about my private life,” he says, firmly. Can I say, then, that he’s happily single? “No,” he says, and smiles again.
For now, Todd and Neil are enjoying their professional bromance. And nor do they try to downplay how they landed their roles.
“I used to leave The Restless Years off my CV,” says Todd, “precisely because it was a soap.”
Neil speaks for both of them: “There’s no doubt that, without EastEnders and Corrie, we almost definitely wouldn’t have been cast in Sleuth.”