Putting the camp back into campaign

Meredith and I went down to the Noël Coward Theatre in the West End in order to interview a young actor, Sam Swainsbury, involved in one of the most exciting theatre companies playing currently in London.

Swainsbury plays a cocky flight sergeant with no combat time in Privates on Parade. He answered our questions and only confirmed any notions we may have had about the toughness of the acting profession.

Felix: Why do you think you were selected for this current role?

Sam: This role? I think it’s suitability. I’ve got an agent who is my link to the professional world. She will get casting breakdowns looking for a certain type of person and then will run through her client list and say, “Sam is suitable for this”. Ultimately she gets me in the door and then I audition. I am very lucky with my agent. She’s one of the best in the game so she can get me a really good audition like this one [for Privates on Parade]. Then I go in and try to wow the pants off the director, which often doesn’t happen. When I read this part, though, I thought this was very much in my comfort zone, so I went into the audition and just said ‘give me the job’ – I didn’t actually say that – and it just went really well. It was a combination of suitability, timing and obviously Michael thinking I had the ability to do it.

F: What’s it like working with Michael?

S: Working with Michael? (Laughs) He’s really shit... no! When I talk about Michael Grandage, I can’t help but gush because I think he is fantastic. He’s brilliant like no one I’ve known before. He assembles a company of like-minded people, who are at the top of their game and who all get on with each other. He talks to everyone in the company on a level, so there are never feelings like ‘he’s the director’ and we’re ‘the actors’. He always talks across at you, which is remarkable in itself. He also loves what he does so much. He loves directing. If you’re not in a scene and you watch him watching a scene, he is there, living for it. He is one of the best directors I’ve ever worked with. Hopefully I will work with him again and again.

F: So how is this different from other companies you’ve worked with?

S: This job is the highest calibre job I’ve had so far. When it comes to theatre, this is pretty much as good as it gets: in the West End, Michael Grandage company, Simon Russell [Beale] in the company… there in rehearsals… For me as a young actor it doesn’t really get much better than that.

F: Will you be working on other productions for Grandage?

S: Well that’s down to Michael! I hope so. He is very loyal. He says to us in rehearsals that he loves to work with the same people again and again. That’s why he’s assembled such a great team. He keeps working with people whom he enjoys working with and has a good relationship. You end up with a great company full of people who really do their jobs well.

F: As an actor, what is your import to the part, how is it being directed and how much do you bring to a role?

S: I guess he [Grandage] says “let’s try something”. You get up and you have a go. Then he’ll say “this was good, that wasn’t” and he’ll direct you, honing your performance. He is very open minded about what actors as individuals have to offer. He used to be an actor himself. It’s always great to work with directors that have previously been actors because they have way of understanding what we do... because it’s a fucking odd job.

F: How do you prepare for a role?

S: It depends. There are some characters that come and you totally get them – totally get where they are coming from. A lot of it comes down to my experiences. There are other times when the characters are much further from you and you have to research and use your imagination to understand those experiences. For this [Privates on Parade] for example, it’s 1948, and we’re in the British Armed Services. Immediately there are things we can research. Where are you? We’re in Malaya. Okay, what’s it like in Malaya? Why are we there? You’re in the army. What’s your rank? What do you do? You build up a character profile; then you can have fun with it in rehearsals and play with voices and funny walks.

F: Is there a difference to playing a comic part as opposed to playing a more dramatic part?

S: Not really. You start in the same way. You need the character to be rounded and real, but when it comes to performance the only thing that’s different in comedy is that there is a technique, which separates it from drama. It’s just simple comic timing. If you look at Simon tonight, his comic timing is second to none. That’s something some people have and some people don’t and it’s something you can work towards. Another actor in this company, John Marquez, has got an incredible nose for comedy and for sniffing out a gag without making it unreal. We’d been open for three or four weeks, and there was a line that was bugging him and he suddenly thought “Oh I’ve been missing this gag!”. He told us in the dressing room and suddenly found a way of saying it with a rhythm. The line gets a massive laugh every night. There is a technique to comedy that straight drama does not necessarily need.

F: Is acting a job or a calling?

S: For me it was definitely a calling.

F: How old were you when you decided?

S: Nine. I did a jazzed up nativity show at my primary school where I was playing Oriole the Angel. I took these three kids back in time to show them the true meaning of Christmas. My parents had no idea. They came to watch the show and they were knocked over by how much I’d learned. They took me to these theatre workshops around the corner and that was it. It’s an impossible career sometimes, when you’re working, like now, it’s the best job ever. When you’re not working, it can send you insane. It’s so competitive and completely subjective and often based on nepotism, timing and luck. I think you need some sort of calling in order to get through the tough times.

F: So is this your big break?

S: I will only be able to tell that in retrospect from the jobs that come afterwards but it’s definitely the best exposure I’ve had so far..

F: What do you really aspire to in this profession?

S: It really changes as you get older. When I was at drama school in my early 20s, I was just waiting for the limo to pick me up to take me to the airport, then a private jet off to Hollywood and boom, famous thanks very much! But as you get older you realise…

F: That the reality of life is somewhat different…

S: Yeah, now I am 30 years old and what I aim for is to be happy and to reach a point in my career where I can choose between jobs and have a healthy family life. I think last year was the first time I was living off acting and not needing to… I was a male nanny for two years. Unemployed actor’s side jobs can be very weird.

F: What’s the weirdest job you’ve had?

S: Mine haven’t been too bad. I dressed up as Buzz Lightyear for a rich kid’s children’s party. That was pretty humiliating. But one of my friends went around collecting piss from people. He was doing free sexual health checks, going around bars collecting chlamydia tests… so yeah there is some pretty random stuff.

F: Hopefully you won’t have to do that again...

S: No hopefully not…

F: So if you had the choice… Hamlet or Macbeth?

S: I think it would probably be the Scottish Play [Macbeth] as I think it’s a bit grittier. The thing with Hamlet is that it’s amazing but everyone’s got an opinion on it. I think I would just be scared of not getting it right.

F: What would be your ultimate role?

S: I’ve predominantly done theatre since I left [university] but I’m very interested in film anyways. At the moment I’ve really got a hankering for exposure on television. I just find it so exciting. It would be lovely to have one of those contracts with a big American series; like with the new Mad Men or something like that. It would be extraordinary. When it comes down to it I do like playing the bad guys. I would like to play the trickier characters like Edmund in King Lear… yeah, someone with a bit of edge to them, maybe not quite so nice.

F: Can we ask you something a bit unfair now just because of the kind of newspaper we are… at this moment, how would you defend the arts to the scientists and engineers that read our papers in the battle for funding?

S: Obviously science is incredibly important but if you work all day, where do you escape to when you finish work? They [science and art] are completely in balance with each other. I know that when I want to escape I listen to music… art is everywhere. I just think we need art, we just need it. We need smiles! If we had a world without laughter or tears it would be a world of robots and I think that freedom of expression and to enjoy that expression is completely paramount as us as human beings…

F: And finally, you’re in the profession of dressing up… Have you enjoyed the uniform?

S: My girlfriend said to me – there was a commercial video [for the show] that went up and I’d thought that they were rather nice when I first tried them on– and then she said “everyone else looks okay but your shorts… what is the deal with your shorts? They’re just much shorter than everyone else’s”. They’re not! It’s just because I am much longer than everyone else! They took a bit of getting used to but it’s quite nice, wearing uniform. I wear a very fetching policeman’s outfit late in the play. That’s probably one of my favourites.