Gary Stages A Comeback

Gary Oldman has made only a handful of appearances on stage in the last 40 years. Perhaps most notable was stepping on stage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood to collect a best actor Oscar in 2018.

The only acting required was to look surprised and say a few thank yous as he was presented with the best actor Academy Award for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in the wartime film drama Darkest Hour.

It was a role that had taken up a total of 200 hours in the make-up chair, 14 lbs of silicone rubber and 20,000 dollars worth of Cuban cigars (which gave him nicotine poisoning).

Some felt the award was overdue for a man regarded as one of a few gifted actors able to re-invent himself for every role. There has been much name-calling of Oldman – “one of the greatest actors of his generation”, “one of the top five actors in the world”, “one of the few truly great living actors”. And even “the master of being brilliant in bad movies”.

His film career has absorbed its fair share of the weird and the wired with roles veering towards villainous or anti-social personalities. His ability to portray the most extreme of characters is a testament to the enormity of his talent, suggests one critic.

The youngest of three children in a working class family in London, he left school at 16 and began acting in productions with Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre. He applied unsuccessfully for RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) which advised him to do something else for a living. He ignored the advice, winning a scholarship to the Rose Bruford College from which he graduated with a BA in acting in 1979.

His films have grossed 11 billion dollars worldwide, making him one of Hollywood’s most successful movie actors in terms of box office. He’s been part of the Harry Potter and Batman franchises. He’s portrayed many real life people, from punk Sid Vicious to Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

But his movie success has obscured the scope, scale and success of his stage work. He was a rising star of the British theatre until playing Sex Pistol Sid Vicious on the big screen in Sid and Nancy diverted him into the film world.

The stage remained a distant memory until now. At 67 Oldman is returning to the stage, something he says he’s been discussing for nearly 30 years. Now he’s making it a reality and where better to stage that return than at York Theatre Royal where he made his debut as a professional actor in 1979. He played a season in rep, including Dick Whittington’s cat in pantomime. Other shows included She Stoops to Conquer, Thark, Romeo and Juliet and Privates on Parade.

Legendary York Theatre Royal Dame Berwick Kaler recalls that the man now regarded as one of our greatest screen actors was not quite so purr-fect as a pussy. Young Gary kept falling asleep or fainting inside the hot costume. “On at least three occasions I had to turn to the audience and say, ‘oh dear boys and girls, the poor pussy cat has gone to sleep,” says Berwick.

Another actor in the rep company Michael Simkins has recalled the “bruising schedule of 50 performances in seven weeks, not to mention the drunken and relentless partying in various digs and rented bed-sits after curtain down.”

That this big Hollywood movie star began his career as a panto puss remained little known until revealed – with pictures, of course - in the national press in the wake of his Dark Hour Oscar nomination. The idea of an actor known for sinister, brooding and brutal roles scampering around the the stage on all fours in a furry suit with nylon whiskers stuck to his cheeks couldn’t help
In the early 1980s after rep in York and Colchester he was part of the company at the famed Glasgow Citizens Theatre alongside other young actors, who included Rupert Everett. “The beautiful men of the Citizens Theatre Glasgow” ran the headline on a feature about the company.

Oldman has called his time at the Citizens “a coming of age – the work was joyful, bold and exhilarating. In the years that followed no other theatre experience could match it,” he said.

It was while appearing in Edward Bond’s controversial play Saved at the Palace Theatre in Westcliff that Royal Court Theatre Director Max Stafford-Clark ‘spotted’ him. Or rather had Oldman drawn to his attention – by Oldman himself. Like many young actors he had written to the director setting out why he wanted to work at the Royal Court in London.

Stafford-Clark recalls that “it was a particularly well-argued letter” so went to see Saved. Many of the audience – and there were only about 30 of them - walked out of the controversial play but the director was impressed by Oldman and cast him in another Edward Bond play, The Pope’s Wedding, at the Royal Court.

His Saved performance won him two awards – the British Theatre Association Drama Magazine award for 1985 and the Time Out Fringe award as best actor.
Roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company and at the Royal Court - in the work of new British writers including Edward Bond and Caryl Churchill – followed. There was talk of playing Henry IV at the Royal Court and Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger at the National Theatre. Harold Pinter was lined up to direct him in his play The Caretaker in the West End.

Oldman’s last stage performance was in 1987 in Caryl Churchill’s satirical play Serious Money at the Royal Court.

His theatre star was on the rise but, as one commentator explained: “The movies found him”. Oldman himself noted that many actors wanted to be in movies but said “I never thought I’d get into films in a thousand years”. How wrong he was.

He’d turned down a small film role in Mutiny on the Bounty to play Sloane in Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane on stage at a regional theatre. He eventually made his film debut in the British film Remembrance in 1982.

Playing Sid Vicious on screen in Sid and Nancy got him noticed, followed by another real life role – as playwright Joe Orton – in Prick Up Your Ears. After those films were shown in America, Vanity Fair magazine labelled him “The hottest thespian export since Albert Finney”.

Oldman was declared a “metamorphing actor” - namely one who doesn’t play himself in every role, who doesn’t just offer variations of himself over and over again. He wasn’t against changing himself physically for a role. After starving himself to play skinny Sid Vicious, he was hospitalised a week before filming began causing the production being delayed. As his then wife actress Lesley Manville said, “We’re both interested in not playing how we are or what we look like.”

The verdict from Hollywood after seeing Sid and Nancy and Prick Up Your Ears was in: “At 29 Gary Oldman is in the forefront of energetic English actors, many of them from working class backgrounds, most of them theatre-trained performers as comfortable in front of the camera as on the stage.”

Now he’s returning to York and the stage as he rides high as the shabby, farting spy Jackson Lamb in Apple TV’s hit series Slow Horses. At the Theatre Royal, he will perform Samuel Beckett’s 50-minute one man play Krapp’s Last Tape about an old man listening to his younger self via taped recordings.

Both play and city resonate with him. “My professional public acting debut was on the stage at York Theatre Royal. York, for me, is the completion of a circle. It is ‘where it all began’. York, in a very real sense, for me, is coming home,” he says.

Which makes the coupling of York and Krapp’s Last Tape all the more poignant - a play about a man returning to his past of 30 years earlier.

Krapp’s Last Tape is at York Theatre Royal from 14 April to 17 May. Sold out. Check with box office for returns. 01904 623568/yorktheatreroyal.co.uk