26 | April 11, 2013 | www.cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News
The critical list:
LOADS MORE THEATRE at cambridge-news.co.uk/whatson
Interview
Lenny Henry: ‘After a few moments you forget I’m a guy you once saw on telly and you’re drawn in’ W
ILL you be staying at a Premier Inn? This is the kind of question you really don’t ask Lenny Henry these days. The comedian turned theatre star is much more serious and much less happy-go-lucky than you’d expect from those crazy Red Nose Day suits he chucks on. Gruff, eloquent and fiercely proud of his recent forays into the red-curtained world of creaking stage floors and bright lights, he’s all about knuckling down to some real work. Who cares about those cheesy hotel adverts when you’re in a Pulitzer Prize-winning play anyway? The 54-year-old is starring in August Wilson’s Tony Award-winning Fences, which is coming to the Arts Theatre next week. Set in Pittsburgh in the late 1950s, it’s an African American family drama of hefty importance, fringed by the fact the Ku Klux Klan are still
Ahead of his appearance in Fences at Cambridge Arts Theatre, ELLA WALKER talks to Lenny Henry about what it’s like finally to be taken seriously. n Cambridge Arts Theatre, Monday-Saturday, April 15-20 at 7.45pm. Tickets £15-£35 from (01223) 503333 or cambridgeartstheatre.purchase-tickets-online.co.uk
on the prowl and bubbling with aggression. Lenny plays Troy Maxim, a
former baseball player turned bin man, who is slowly destroying his family. “He’s a very bitter but charismatic man,” says Lenny. “At the beginning he’s very funny but as we peel the onion of his character we slowly find out that there’s a lot boiling underneath, and a lot of it very unpleasant.” Whether you like Lenny’s stand-up or not, it’s hard to argue the guy doesn’t have the clout to take on the role since his lauded appearance as Othello in 2009 – even if it’s a notoriously tough part to get a grip on and Denzel Washington, James Earl Jones and Laurence Fishburne have tackled it. “It’s a huge part, it’s bigger than King Lear, more lines than King Lear,” Lenny explains. And the language, deep and American, tumbles and rolls over itself, filled with double negatives and layered with complicated emotions. “It was really daunting. More daunting than doing Othello,” Lenny admits. “It’s very emotional, very emotionally involving and sometimes your heart is in your mouth.” At least this time around he doesn’t also have to deal with iambic pentameter. He reveals that when he first read the script, aged 30, he thought “I’m never going to do that, it’s too many lines” and just put it to one side. But it’s not for a 20 or 30-year-old actor: “It’s the sort of play you do when you’re in your 50s and when you’ve had a couple of turns round the block, and you know a bit more about life.”
A career littered with triumphs (co-founding Comic Relief and a steady series of sold-out standup shows), as well as the odd regrettable decision (he is often quoted wishing he hadn’t appeared as a warm-up act for The Black and White Minstrel Show in the 70s), combined with a personal life we still find strangely fascinating for its lack of angry-messiness (is it really that amicable between him and former wife Dawn French?) – you could definitely say he’s done his fair share of world-weary laps. Perhaps now, ageing and braver, he’s found a niche to slot into more easily and less gratingly than some of his previous roles. He’s also got the kind of bullish work ethic you need to make it in theatre. Despite a tentative start with Fences (“About two weeks into rehearsals I literally had a meltdown, I just didn’t think I could learn it”), that his co-star Tanya Moody fixed with a cup of tea and a sturdy plan of action, the production, and Lenny in particular, are now notching up rave reviews. Not that he’d know. “I tend not to read the reviews,” he says, flattening my spiel of: “You’ve been called towering! Magnificent!” with a gentle “That’s nice,” before dismissing it with a curt: “What I know is that if I do the work I make a connection with the audience and that’s the most important thing. “I didn’t know what I was expecting. I think if you go in thinking ‘Hey, I’m going to be huge in this!’ you’re never going to do it and it’s going to be rubbish. I tend to go in very, very scared and get my head down and work as hard as I can.” Does he ever succumb to panic? “All the time. In fact, if I didn’t have a cork up my bum on the first night of Fences I don’t think I would have survived!” he splutters. And finally, there’s a hint of the
Lenny Henry I was expecting, choking and coughing with laughter. The other one, who has been talking so earnestly and passionately, the one who has appeared to wide acclaim in Othello and Comedy of Errors, splits off, and you hear the Lenny you think you know: the largerthan-life one with the booming TV voice. Is it still difficult getting people to see him purely as an actor, without expecting him to burst into a comic routine and plaster on a wacky grin every time he opens his mouth on stage? “I think there still is a moment at the beginning of the play where people expect me to say ‘Katanga my friends!’ or something, but then I think after a while they get mesmerised by the fact the play has begun and that they’re in the middle of a story,” he muses. “After about five or six minutes you forget that you saw this guy on telly once and you hopefully get drawn in.” It seems to annoy him that his personality is so often separated into multiple categories – standup, actor, irritating TV personality – and is quick to clarify. “I’m a comedian,” he says bluntly. “Lots of people think that I’ve given up comedy but I haven’t.” And he is even blunter, almost ferociously so, when asked what people should expect from Fences: “It’s one of the greatest plays ever written. They’re going to have an extraordinary time.” But get him talking about all the mishaps the cast have experienced so far, and that hearty chuckle is back. “There’s a moment when Cory, played by Ashley Zhangazha, throws his football helmet at the end of part one because he’s so angry at his dad, and the helmet bounced off the steps and went into the audience,” says Lenny, giggling like a child. “And I got bronchitis and was coughing through quite a lot of the play. There’s a point where I have to sing where I did actually sound like Kermit the Frog.” Although he’s talented at avoiding reviews, and sidestepping praise, Lenny doesn’t hesitate for a second when it comes to revealing
Cambridge News | www.cambridge-news.co.uk | April 11, 2013 | 27
PROMOTE YOUR EVENT at cambridge-news.co.uk/whatsoncalendar
PASSION: Lenny Henry in Fences. “It’s a huge part – bigger than King Lear”
what he is most proud of: “Adopting my daughter Billie. She is the thing that’s made me the most proud. She’s wonderful, like any 21-year-old she has her own little bag of tricks that we try to deal with, but she’s a great person. She’s very loved.” And career-wise? “I think it was Othello, when I did it, it was amazing. It was a whirlwind of nerves and the slow realisation that maybe I could do this . . .” But if this relatively new state of being controversial for his acting prowess, rather than his jokes, comes crashing down, he has more than a few back-up plans. Lenny is currently in the process of developing a sitcom
with his long time collaborator Kim Fuller and is working on a serious TV drama that’s still in its secretive early stages. “I’d love to make a movie. I’ve always loved movies and I’ve always loved acting, so I think that, if God will allow, I’d like to do feature films,” he says. “And I’d like to write too.” Having got himself an MA in screenplay writing, he has already sold a film to the BFI which he hopes to direct, and has written two radio plays. Then there’s Comic Relief, which, after another stratospherically successful year, shows no sign of slowing. Does he get sick of wearing the crazy suits? “Oh no, that’s great. I don’t know how much
longer we’ll do it for but what’s wonderful is that the next generation of comedians, and the generation after that, who were all at school when it started, or weren’t even born, have taken Comic Relief as their own personal thing and so I think it will continue after we’ve gone.” But for now, touring with Fences is the priority, even if that means reliving his memories of driving endlessly around Cambridge, searching for the stage door. “I think if anybody invades England,” he says, laughing, “I’m coming to Cambridge to hide because no-one will find me, they’ll be stuck in the one-way system.”