Hier ist der Text des Artikels - Ich habe mich auch spontan zum Probemonat hinreißen lassen...:
Zitat:
Playing a self-destructive doctor in a new adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya may be just the tonic he needs
Sarah Crompton
Trust me, I’m a doctor: Armitage stars as Astrov in Uncle Vanya
AN LE
The Sunday Times, January 5 2020, 12:01am
Richard Armitage puts his head in his hands and emits a noise that’s somewhere between a sigh, a laugh and a groan. “Oh no! Why would you want to pin this up?” he says with a horrified whisper.
I have just asked him whether his liking for flawed characters is part of his desire to shake off the pin-up tag that has stuck to him ever since he burst into the public consciousness as the conflicted John Thornton in the BBC’s classic North & South, an adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel. The image stuck during his portrayal of the double-dealing agent Lucas North in Spooks, and even while he played Thorin Oakenshield, the dwarf warrior in the Hobbit films.
Never has a man seemed more ill at ease with the heartthrob label. He squirms with embarrassment in his chair every time the subject comes up. He is grateful for the loyalty of his fans, he says, but worries that “there is this thing of, ‘Is he just totty?’ Because the industry will sometimes write you off as a serious actor if they think that. I have always been conscious of that and fought against it, because I don’t really see myself like that at all.”
For the record, it seems to me that Armitage, who is 48 and lives alone, dividing his time between London and New York, is both handsome and serious. He is also articulate, friendly and funny, in a wry, self-deprecating way. We meet in a small, tatty room in south London, surrounded by oddly matched chairs and fan heaters to ward off the chill. In the larger space next door, he is deep in rehearsal for Ian Rickson’s new production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, which also stars Toby Jones (who needs no introduction), Aimee Lou Wood (of Sex Education) and Ciaran Hinds (of Game of Thrones and much more).
Armitage plays Astrov — a doctor, forester and self-destructive visionary — and he is loving every moment. “I wanted to play Chekhov, but I think I came into it with the preconception of, ‘Oh, Chekhov, it will be lovely — we’ll be on swings and there will be lovely dresses, and we’ll sigh and think of Moscow.’ But it’s actually much more muscular and vital than I ever dreamt.”
This is partly, he says, because the new adaptation by Conor McPherson “has something solid and Irish about it. It’s like granite, really no-nonsense.” It’s also because of the kind of director Rickson is. “He feels like a conductor rather than a director. He has no preconceived idea of what this play will be. It’s as if he’s allowing the actors to form the play with him. It’s incredibly exciting, thorough and detailed.”
To get a sense of how Astrov, a proto-environmentalist who is obsessed with planting forests for posterity, might fill his days, Armitage and Wood (who plays Sonya) spent a day planting trees at Tring Park with the Woodland Trust. Armitage also interviewed a trauma surgeon who has worked in war-torn Syria to interpret how Astrov might cope with the poverty and death around him. “With anything that is to be imagined, we try to programme a real memory rather than a false one,” he explains.
Vanya marks his return to the British stage just over five years after his previous appearance, in a devastating production of The Crucible at the Old Vic, directed by Yael Farber. Before that, he had performed only small roles — a far cry from the gargantuan task of embodying the tragic John Proctor. “It was like going from being a spear carrier to a tent pole,” he says with a smile. “There was quite a big leap in that time.
“It’s odd, because all I ever wanted to do, when I was coming up, was to work with a physical-theatre company for the rest of my life. I would have been a very happy man. But the doors opened in different places and I took a different path. The yearning to be on stage has always been there, but you just get busy with other stuff.”
He jokes that talent agents tend to regard a stage play as a prison stretch that ties an actor to one place for six months at a time. But there’s no doubting Armitage’s pleasure in returning to live theatre. “It’s like going back to my roots. It’s such a weird paradox, because, when I was sent to tap classes aged four, I loved the technical side of it, but hated being looked at, hated standing on the stage. Now I understand that people aren’t here to see their favourite actor doing something, showing off. That isn’t the point of it. The point is, I am there to help them feel something, so it’s all about them, not me. That makes it so much easier.”
What he finds in theatre is always life-changing. “That was particularly true with The Crucible, but certainly also with this. Little keys are turning inside me” — he gestures to his chest — “and you feel, yeah, I haven’t been there before.” He looks back on The Crucible with a kind of awe. “By the end of it, I felt wrung through, but at the same time transported. It almost felt as if I was floating off the stage.”
The intensity of that performance was far removed from the beginning of his career, when he sang and danced in shows such as 42nd Street and Cats. “I was quite successful for a few years, but I knew this wasn’t where I wanted to be.” So he went to drama school and began again. There was some resistance at the BBC when he, as a relative unknown, was cast in North & South in 2004, but his embodiment of the rough, tough mill owner softened by love was a key factor in the show’s unexpected success. “I think that was the first time I got a handle on a role where I felt I understood so much of it and I was passionate about it. I was trusted with something from beginning to end.”
The Hobbit movies were equally transformative. “It was not something I had ever imagined for myself. I was happy working on Spooks, in my little two-up, two-down house, and I didn’t have designs on going to Hollywood — and still don’t, really. I think that was a moment, maybe my peak. I had that experience, I did the premieres and all that, and now I can go back to being me.”
The variety of the work he continues to take on is impressive. He was a charismatic Guy of Gisborne in the BBC series Robin Hood — “I loved that show” — and, more recently, played the serial killer Francis Dolarhyde in Hannibal and a CIA officer in Berlin Station. He also starred off-Broadway in Mike Bartlett’s tragic comedy Love, Love, Love, and in My Zoe, a film written and directed by Julie Delpy, about a divorced couple coping with the death of a child. He shot it 18 months ago, immediately after his mother died. “It’s very personal to me,” he says quietly. “It contains all of that grief.”
Armitage is about to be seen in the Netflix miniseries The Stranger, based on a Harlan Coben novel. He plays a man whose life comes crashing down around his ears after he discovers a secret about his wife. “It goes down a dark path, but it’s quite a buoyant thing,” he says. “I loved making it. I didn’t want the job to end.”
He admits that he is attracted to flawed characters. “I don’t think I have a heroic face,” he says, pulling one. “I feel there is a darkness to it. If I was ever cast as a hero, I would look for the flaws, because I don’t really believe anyone is without an internal push and pull. Even Cate Blanchett, who does nothing wrong ever. She’s like an angel, but you think to yourself, ‘She must have something in her...’”
His voice trails off and he laughs again. This brings us back to Astrov, who looks so relentlessly towards the future that he can’t see the truth in front of his eyes. “It’s interesting that he’s an outsider in the play. I’ve often felt like that myself in life. I’m quite a solitary person. I enjoy my time with me, and sometimes it’s not necessarily healthy, because I can talk myself into quite a dark place.
“I’m an optimist, but at the same time, there’s a discipline in me that will attack me for not working hard enough, not achieving enough, not being good enough. You always think, ‘I’ll grow out of that. With success, those voices will disappear.’ But they don’t, they get louder. I suppose I’m learning a bit about myself through Astrov.”
Uncle Vanya, Harold Pinter Theatre, London SW1, January 14–May 2; unclevanyaplay.com