JANE HARDY INTERVIEW

Jane Hardy

is a feature writer who has interviewed a few of the big names from Arlene Foster to Mrs Thatcher.

Acclaimed actor Matthew Forsythe has been wowing audiences in A Night in November, struts his musical stuff with The Soda Popz, but when resting, could do a superb job tiling your house, as he reveals to Jane Hardy.

If you were to cast actor Matt Forsythe (41) in Shakespeare, whom he really rates, there would be an obvious role for the guy. Snug the Joiner, one of the so-called “rude mechanicals” in Midsummer Night’s Dream. He wouldn’t need to method act this part as he originally trained as a joiner and is still employed, when not being a thespian, as a builder. When we arrange our rendez-vous at a downtown Caffe Nero, he says he will be spending the afternoon tiling someone’s house. Later, he jokes about the contrast of driving his van to the interview wearing his smart schmutter.

He is successful and has just bagged a prestigious London Pub Theatres award for A Night in November. While an extremely high percentage in his profession are unemployed at any given point, working as teachers or business trainers on the side – “I think it’s as high as 90%” – he has just finished a tour of Marie Jones’ play, which gained rave reviews after appearing off the West End and at the Minack Theatre, Cornwall. Critics handed out four to five stars to the production directed by Matthew McElhinney and said, “As Kenneth, Forsythe is astonishing... a privilege to watch”. It opens at The MAC this month.

This is a role he was meant to play, as Forsythe explains: “Funnily enough, A Night in November is the first play I ever saw twenty years ago. Patrick Kielty played in the one-man show. I’d been doing musical theatre, that was my first passion, had got into drama school in London and thought I really ought to see a play.” He’s a Marie Jones fan and admires this, her only overtly political play.

Personally, too, Matt Forsythe likes Ms Jones and her husband. “It was my fortieth birthday party on Saturday at the Beat Club, organised by my wife Michelle and delayed because of the pandemic, and Marie Jones and Ian McElhinney came. They’re fabulous – it was a great party and they got us out around midnight. As Marie says, this is her most important play and her best writing. But you must have a connection.”

Forsythe does, in spades. His background is east Belfast working class and he talks about Kenneth McCallister, the main character he plays, as someone he knows under the skin, even if his attitudes and behaviour in a mixed society would be different. “The negative feelings are built into his core and he would never come into contact with the other side except at work.” Forsythe reveals that he was brought up in a pretty self-contained part of town. “I grew up in Protestant parts, went to British schools. It’s a bit like supporting a football team. But then I worked as a joiner with people from the other side and discovered they’re just the same.”

The narrator works as a dole clerk and “cleanly discriminates”, as he admits in the drama, against the opposite team, Catholics. He is excited at being accepted into the golf club, symbol of getting on, before his Catholic boss. But on one night in November, everything changes at a football match. Not just any old fixture, of course, this was the Northern Ireland v Republic of Ireland match in ‘92, which ended in a nil-one result to the Republic.

Apparently Matt’s character attends the match with his father-in-law, Ernie, whom he knows to be a bigot. Forsythe says: “He sees this venom and hatred in the crowd. The whole play is an end game, asking ‘Is it even possible to change?’” The actor adds that the message post-Brexit, with class division seeming to harden in the UK, is more relevant than ever. Yet the subject matter of A Night in November remains raw, even with the healing distance of time. “It’s still very politically charged, talking about certain things which affect the characters, like the Shankill bombings.”

There’s quite a journey of selfdiscovery, with the character, portrayed in the first outing by Dan Gordon, eventually leaving Northern Ireland for New York to support Jackie Charlton’s Irish army.

It’s a demanding role, with Forsythe commanding the stage alone, but conjuring up a cast of male and female characters. Quizzed on how he does women, he laughs and refers to Kenneth’s upwardly mobile wife Deborah, saying there’s a detail he uses to get into character that involves fiddling with a necklace. He demonstrates, saying: “I may have based that on my wife, Michelle.” They met while performing Guys and Dolls with the New Lyric Musical Theatre Company. “I was in the chorus, Michelle was playing one of the leads, missionary head Sarah Brown.” The couple eventually got together after the post-show party, and are now

Matthew performing A Night in November.

married with a daughter, Isla, aged five. Apparently Matt Forsythe was playing a trick on Michelle one day by guying her look, complete with wig. He says now: “I was in the bedroom and heard these little footsteps on the stairs. Isla opened the door and said, ‘Daddy, what are you doing?’ and I said to her ‘I’m playing a game on Mummy, don’t tell her!’” An actor’s life is always fun.

After studying at the prestigious Drama Studio in (east) London, and contributing to the fees, he got his first role, understudying in the West End. He was made up, he says, to be, if not regularly treading the boards, part of a team producing a great show, Our Boys by Jonathan Lewis. Forsythe says he was in awe of some of the cast, which numbered Laurence Fox, then as now in possession of interesting views. He nearly made it on stage one time. “Someone was late, and I was ready but in the end they said ‘We’re waiting on him’. But I was over the moon to be working there.”

Forsythe has done Christmas shows, starting with Big Bad Wolf at The Waterfront, which was “great fun”. Then came a tough role as the partner of a woman dealing with stillbirth in Mydidae. It’s set with the two protagonists metaphorically, and actually, naked in a bathroom. “It involved full nudity but wasn’t sexual at all. As the woman, Julie Maxwell was phenomenal, she stole the show.” He says sadly that Maxwell’s premature death was a big shock.

He reveals that he enjoyed working with Gillian Anderson in The Fall. “But she was very private, she is also the producer on the show. Aidan McCardle – Mr Selfridge in the series, who’s a great guy and a great actor – played opposite me and sometimes you haven’t even said Hello to the person you are acting with before you have to start.”

As an actor, Matt Forsythe knows he’s in a challenging profession. “You have to be comfortable at failing, you’ll fail for different reasons. Looks are important, sadly, in the television age and sometimes your hair’s not right. I got a small role in Game of Thrones and had then cut my hair for another audition.” As a result he didn’t make the final edit.

Lockdown stopped the planned trip to New York with the Marie Jones play, but the play streamed online at ababab and director Matthew McElhinney, Marie Jones and Forsythe did question and answer sessions online. Initially, he says he found lockdown good craic, but then found the enforced break at home in Bangor challenging as he was not only at home dad but tutor to Isla. “It worked for the first couple of weeks.”

With his wife, Forsythe performs in a popular band, the Soda Popz, specialising in show music plus Elvis, the Everly Brothers and Johnny Cash. They have performed for older people in care homes during lockdown and also put on shows for neighbours in their back garden. “It was lovely to see people dancing and letting their hair down, our next project is Rocking around the Christmas Tree in December.”

As ordinary life more or less resumes, Matt and Michelle have enjoyed going to SIX by Nico in Belfast. “Beef and Parmesan and other tasting dishes, we like this restaurant a lot. I love my food and baked a lot during the pandemic, even made a bit of bread.”

Future ambitions include Shakespeare and Matt Forsythe has had experience of acting in Stratford’s 1400-seater theatre. He was part of the RSC’s reopening project as a student, when David Tennant and others presented a kind of Bardic anthology. “It was directed by Greg Doran, RSC director, who wanted fresh voices to be the first voices heard. We did the Henry V speech, acted in a bit of Hamlet with Harriet Walter in the play within the play, and I’d love to get back. It’s easy to be terrified of Shakespeare yet he sits well with a Northern Irish accent.”

Forsythe has interesting things in the pipeline. Actors often have to check their phones for the agent’s call but Matt Forsythe has the right personality for the job. “It’s tough when you don’t get a job, but playing McAllister in England was the best. Unlike Northern Irish audiences, who are with you all the way, vocally, the English audiences were quiet. And then we had the standing ovations.”

A Night in November opens at The MAC (www.themaclive.com) on November 11.

Soda Popz: Rocking around the Christmas Tree, The Black Box (Dec 3), The Market Place Theatre, Armagh (Dec 16).

Matthew and his wife Deborah perform in the band, Soda Popz.

“Funnily enough, A Night in November is the first play I ever saw twenty years ago. Patrick Kielty played in the one-man show. I’d been doing musical theatre, that was my first passion, had got into drama school in London and thought I really ought to see a play.”