The Guardian,
 |
| 'Beneath the charm and good looks, there lurks a political will and a crusading zeal' ... Samuel West |
His face has been compared to a Botticelli cherub. He has frequently been typecast in TV and cinema as a "damaged toff." But Samuel West, who has taken over from Michael Grandage as artistic director of Sheffield Theatres, is about to reveal his true colours.
He kicks off next week playing Benedick in Josie Rourke's Crucible production of Much Ado About Nothing. A safe choice, it would seem, for an admired classical actor. But Sheffield will soon discover that, under West's charm and aesthetic good looks, lurk a strong political will and a crusading idealism.
On paper, it looks as if West's career has been relatively plain sailing. Since his parents are Timothy West and Prunella Scales, he was born into the "family business" of acting. At prep school, the boy Samuel made his debut playing Claudius in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
It was seeing his dad play Shakespeare's Claudius to Derek Jacobi's Hamlet at the Old Vic a few years later that settled his choice of career. "People clapped loudly," he said recently, "and I thought 'I'd like to do this'."
After flirting briefly with becoming an astrophysicist, West read English at Oxford and acted his socks off. After that he moved neatly into a career that has combined classical theatre (including a steely Prince Hal to his father's Falstaff) with prestigious British movies (Howard's End, Iris, Carrington), TV and radio. With his expressive, elegantly cultured voice, West has also become a favoured narrator of TV documentaries and reader for audiobooks.
Analytic
West could easily have settled into the life of a comfortable Establishment actor with a warm seat at the Garrick and a modest gong to look forward to. But that leaves out of account two things: his analytic intelligence and missionary zeal. Steven Pimlott, a close friend, who directed West in an outstanding RSC Richard II and Hamlet and a Chichester Master and Margarita, is convinced this is the key to his personality. "There's a direct link," says Pimlott, "between his art and his politics. He's a very passionate human being who cares deeply about what's happening in the world. That gives him a vehemence and energy that comes through his work. As an actor, he's also very concerned with the overall picture which is what led him into directing."
Reticent
West's radicalism manifests itself in many ways. At the time of 9/ll he was one of only two actors at the RSC who rejected the idea of observing a minute's silence:."Not," according to a company member, "out of any lack of respect for the victims, but because he felt the same ritual wouldn't have been observed if a group of Palestinians had been killed."
Asked directly about his politics, West is understandably reticent. "I was," he says "a member of Socialist Alliance until two years ago. I left when they became Respect. But whether I would have voted Respect in the last election is both my own business and irrelevant since they didn't have a candidate in my constituency."
What matters, however, is the extent to which West's politics have informed his work. His Richard II was brilliant precisely because it refused to treat the role as a lyrical study in self-pity: the lesson this Richard painfully learned was that even a sanctified king rules only by popular consent. West's Hamlet was a similarly political figure equipped with a built-in bullshit detector that enabled him to see through Claudius's smiling public rhetoric. As West told Lyn Gardner at the time: "If Tony Blair isn't good casting for Claudius, then who is?"
West's Hamlet was also shaped by his own earlier direction of the play for an RSC fringe festival - the first stirrings of a directorial urge that has since led West to stage plays by Christopher Fry and Helen Cooper in Chichester, Les Liaisons Dangereuses in Bristol, Insigificance in Sheffield, and a sparkling Cosi Fan Tutte for ENO that showed real musical awareness.
West denies, however, that this was all part of some cunning masterplan. "If I had a classical career," he says "I felt I'd come to the end of a particular branch when I played Hamlet. I just felt ready to move on to directing."
Now, at 39, West faces his biggest test yet: running the three-theatre Sheffield complex.
The key question is whether his political idealism can survive the inevitable compromises of power. "I wouldn't," he says, "want to be responsible for staging plays that said things I felt passionately shouldn't be said. But that doesn't mean I'll only do plays I agree with. That way lies agitprop. What I do believe is theatre is a medium with a peculiar ability to air vital issues."
That much is evident in the choice of work for his first season: it includes Brenton's The Romans in Britain which West himself will direct, Dario Fo's Mistero Buffo, Sondheim's Assassins, and Tanika Gupta's Gladiator Games, dealing with the death of a young Asian in custody. Angela Galvin, Sheffield's chief executive, insists West is not using theatre as a soapbox: "It's not a case of his wagging his finger at the audience. It's simply a desire to encourage people to think."
Of the private man, much less is known. He's articulate and charming but with a faint air of solitude: dividing his time between his new Sheffield home and an Islington maisonette, he lives alone. His hobbies include music and gardening, though he also shyly admits to bonding with Julia Roberts over needlepoint. His heroes are an oddly eclectic bunch: the Marx Brothers, Peter Cushing, and the seventies pop group Sparks.
But, even if we're unlikely to see West in the pages of Hello magazine, he is self-evidently a man with a mission: a Botticelli cherub with balls. "Sam," says Pimlott, "is an idealist to the core and totally without cynicism." If that idealism can survive the highs, and inevitable lows, of running a vast regional complex, then the theatrical world will be his oyster.
Samuel Alexander Joseph West
Lifestory Born June 19, 1966, son of Timothy West and Prunella Scales. Educated at Alleyn's School, Dulwich, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (BA Hons English)
Career highlights Theatre: A Life in the Theatre, Haymarket, 1989; The Sea, National Theatre, 1991; Richard II, 2000, Hamlet, 2001, RSC. Directed The Lady's Not For Burning, Chichester, 2002 and Cosi Fan Tutte, ENO, 2003. Television: Hornblower, Waking the Dead, Cambridge Spies. Films: Howard's End 1992, Persuasion 1995, Jane Eyre 1995, Notting Hill 1999, Van Helsing 2003. Currently artistic director, Sheffield Theatres
Hobbies Photography, gardening, music, poker, supporting Wimbledon.
On his acting "I've never had to swear on screen and I'm often in frock coats. I usually play toffs and soldiers, with a sideline in mass murderers."
The Guardian Profile - Samuel West
He kicks off next week playing Benedick in Josie Rourke's Crucible production of Much Ado About Nothing. A safe choice, it would seem, for an admired classical actor. But Sheffield will soon discover that, under West's charm and aesthetic good looks, lurk a strong political will and a crusading idealism.
On paper, it looks as if West's career has been relatively plain sailing. Since his parents are Timothy West and Prunella Scales, he was born into the "family business" of acting. At prep school, the boy Samuel made his debut playing Claudius in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
It was seeing his dad play Shakespeare's Claudius to Derek Jacobi's Hamlet at the Old Vic a few years later that settled his choice of career. "People clapped loudly," he said recently, "and I thought 'I'd like to do this'."
After flirting briefly with becoming an astrophysicist, West read English at Oxford and acted his socks off. After that he moved neatly into a career that has combined classical theatre (including a steely Prince Hal to his father's Falstaff) with prestigious British movies (Howard's End, Iris, Carrington), TV and radio. With his expressive, elegantly cultured voice, West has also become a favoured narrator of TV documentaries and reader for audiobooks.
Analytic
West could easily have settled into the life of a comfortable Establishment actor with a warm seat at the Garrick and a modest gong to look forward to. But that leaves out of account two things: his analytic intelligence and missionary zeal. Steven Pimlott, a close friend, who directed West in an outstanding RSC Richard II and Hamlet and a Chichester Master and Margarita, is convinced this is the key to his personality. "There's a direct link," says Pimlott, "between his art and his politics. He's a very passionate human being who cares deeply about what's happening in the world. That gives him a vehemence and energy that comes through his work. As an actor, he's also very concerned with the overall picture which is what led him into directing."
Reticent
West's radicalism manifests itself in many ways. At the time of 9/ll he was one of only two actors at the RSC who rejected the idea of observing a minute's silence:."Not," according to a company member, "out of any lack of respect for the victims, but because he felt the same ritual wouldn't have been observed if a group of Palestinians had been killed."
Asked directly about his politics, West is understandably reticent. "I was," he says "a member of Socialist Alliance until two years ago. I left when they became Respect. But whether I would have voted Respect in the last election is both my own business and irrelevant since they didn't have a candidate in my constituency."
What matters, however, is the extent to which West's politics have informed his work. His Richard II was brilliant precisely because it refused to treat the role as a lyrical study in self-pity: the lesson this Richard painfully learned was that even a sanctified king rules only by popular consent. West's Hamlet was a similarly political figure equipped with a built-in bullshit detector that enabled him to see through Claudius's smiling public rhetoric. As West told Lyn Gardner at the time: "If Tony Blair isn't good casting for Claudius, then who is?"
West's Hamlet was also shaped by his own earlier direction of the play for an RSC fringe festival - the first stirrings of a directorial urge that has since led West to stage plays by Christopher Fry and Helen Cooper in Chichester, Les Liaisons Dangereuses in Bristol, Insigificance in Sheffield, and a sparkling Cosi Fan Tutte for ENO that showed real musical awareness.
West denies, however, that this was all part of some cunning masterplan. "If I had a classical career," he says "I felt I'd come to the end of a particular branch when I played Hamlet. I just felt ready to move on to directing."
Now, at 39, West faces his biggest test yet: running the three-theatre Sheffield complex.
The key question is whether his political idealism can survive the inevitable compromises of power. "I wouldn't," he says, "want to be responsible for staging plays that said things I felt passionately shouldn't be said. But that doesn't mean I'll only do plays I agree with. That way lies agitprop. What I do believe is theatre is a medium with a peculiar ability to air vital issues."
That much is evident in the choice of work for his first season: it includes Brenton's The Romans in Britain which West himself will direct, Dario Fo's Mistero Buffo, Sondheim's Assassins, and Tanika Gupta's Gladiator Games, dealing with the death of a young Asian in custody. Angela Galvin, Sheffield's chief executive, insists West is not using theatre as a soapbox: "It's not a case of his wagging his finger at the audience. It's simply a desire to encourage people to think."
Of the private man, much less is known. He's articulate and charming but with a faint air of solitude: dividing his time between his new Sheffield home and an Islington maisonette, he lives alone. His hobbies include music and gardening, though he also shyly admits to bonding with Julia Roberts over needlepoint. His heroes are an oddly eclectic bunch: the Marx Brothers, Peter Cushing, and the seventies pop group Sparks.
But, even if we're unlikely to see West in the pages of Hello magazine, he is self-evidently a man with a mission: a Botticelli cherub with balls. "Sam," says Pimlott, "is an idealist to the core and totally without cynicism." If that idealism can survive the highs, and inevitable lows, of running a vast regional complex, then the theatrical world will be his oyster.
Samuel Alexander Joseph West
Lifestory Born June 19, 1966, son of Timothy West and Prunella Scales. Educated at Alleyn's School, Dulwich, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (BA Hons English)
Career highlights Theatre: A Life in the Theatre, Haymarket, 1989; The Sea, National Theatre, 1991; Richard II, 2000, Hamlet, 2001, RSC. Directed The Lady's Not For Burning, Chichester, 2002 and Cosi Fan Tutte, ENO, 2003. Television: Hornblower, Waking the Dead, Cambridge Spies. Films: Howard's End 1992, Persuasion 1995, Jane Eyre 1995, Notting Hill 1999, Van Helsing 2003. Currently artistic director, Sheffield Theatres
Hobbies Photography, gardening, music, poker, supporting Wimbledon.
On his acting "I've never had to swear on screen and I'm often in frock coats. I usually play toffs and soldiers, with a sideline in mass murderers."
The Guardian Profile - Samuel West
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