There are two things actor Alec Newman swore he’d never do. The first was appear in a Restoration Comedy. The other was do a commercial musical. This year, however, the Glasgow born thirty-something whose early stage highlights included a turn opposite Cate Blanchett in David Hare’s play, Plenty, has returned from a stint in Hollywood to appear onstage for the first time in five years. The first show he appeared in was a revival of The Soldier’s Fortune, a Restoration Comedy, no less, in which he appeared opposite Anne-Marie Duff.
The second promise-breaker, which Newman is currently previewing in London’s west end, is in the stage adaptation of Susan Sedeleman’s1985 movie, Desperately Seeking Susan. The film was notable for featuring one of pop vixen Madonna’s earliest ventures onto celluloid following Sedelman’s direction of the then street-punk styled taboo-buster’s Into The Groove video. Newman plays Dez, the male lead originally played by Aidan Quinn in this semi-hip merry-go-round of mistaken identity among New York’s singles set.
This new version not only hops aboard the gravy train of putting hit movies onstage a la The Graduate. By framing its narrative around a soundtrack of hit singles by Blondie as well as a brand new Debbie Harry/Chris Stein number, it capitalises on the box office juke-box musicals such as the Abba inspired Mamma Mia have become.
“It actually feels like a big movie,” Newman muses, “because there are all these MGM people shuffling around wanting to make sure their rights aren’t being infringed upon. But I think most of the tickets will be sold on the strength of Blondie to be honest. It’s a shamelessly commercial exercise and shamelessly fun. I have friends about to play in Othello and Michelangelo, and here I am playing a guy played in a film by Aidan Quinn, and that just makes me giggle.
I was attracted to it, believe it or not, by the darker, sadder elements of the character. He’s a loser, but also a romantic, and his journey is about learning how to make a decision for himself. But that’s been beaten out of me in rehearsals. Be louder! Be faster! Be funnier! It has to be blurted out. And that’s really f***ing irritating to be honest. There’s nothing subtle about it. But that’s the genre we’re working in, which equates to sit-com, and has its own history and is important, and you have to respect that.
Also,” Newman further justifies to himself, “shows like this exist because people want to know exactly what they’re going to get for £55. I’m very sad there’s not enough straight drama on the West End, and in a way this show is one of the assassins of that. But if I’ve paid 55 quid, I want to see something that’s going to go off like a bomb.”
When first approached to play the part, Newman was still resident in Hollywood, and was forced to audition down the telephone.
“Picture this,” he says in the first of a stream of Blondie song title gags involving hanging on the telephone, in the flesh, etc. “My girlfriend was in one room decking herself, and the dog was sitting next to me cocking his head wondering what on earth was going on, and all the while I’m having to sing this song into the receiver with everyone listening on the other side of the world.”
Whatever such indignities, Newman’s musical credentials are in the blood. His Dad is Sandy Newman, who’d played in bands since a teenager, including The Chris McClure Section. In 1975 he took over as singer with Marmalade, who’d scored a number one in 1968 with the Paul McCartney penned Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. With Newman senior on vocals, Marmalade made the top ten in 1976 with Falling Apart At The Seams.
Long before he appeared in the video for McCartney’s 1997 single, Beautiful Night, Newman junior had grown up listening to the ex Beatle on cassettes during long car rides on family holidays with his Dad. There’s even a Beatle connection in Desperately Seeking Susan. Alongside Newman in the cast is actress Leanne Best, daughter of original Beatles drummer Pete Best, who was famously ousted in favour of Ringo Starr.
It was football rather than music that initially appealed to Newman, though an injury put paid to such ambitions. He only turned to acting after his local branch of the Cubs was over-subscribed and a Friday night drama club allowed him to discover his inner show-off. A stint at the National Youth Theatre and drama school brought him to Edinburgh where he appeared at the royal Lyceum in Brian Friel’s play, Translations, and as Tom in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.
If the last play introduced him to America, his next stage appearance opposite Cate Blanchett may have been in David Hare’s thoroughly English post World War Two set Plenty gave him his first whiff of Hollywood.
Newman describes his former co-star as “Absolutely spell-binding. She was like that just eating a sandwich walking out the door. I knew at the time I was privileged, but since she’s become God’s gift to actresses I realise exactly how lucky I was.”
Checking his own celluloid CV, beyond a small role in Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things, much of Newman’s work is available down at the local sci-fi/horror shop. An early lead role in a mini-series adaptation of Dune, Frank Herbert’s epic science-fiction chronicle first put on-screen by David Lynch in 1984. Newman’s part had originally been played by Lynch favourite Kyle McLachlan.
Newman reprised his role in Children Of Dune before notching up guest appearances in Angel and Enterprise and taking the title role in a TV version of Frankenstein. More recently he filmed The Gene Generation, a future fantasy about DNA hacking. The last year, though, has seen Newman tire of the way he was being cast in such material. Hence the Restoration Comedy and Desperately Seeking Susan. Onscreen too, this year has seen Newman get back to his roots in the Edinburgh shot Reichenbach Falls.
“I play a manic depressive alcoholic Scotsman,” he says of the film based on an early Ian Rankin short story. “Apart from anything else it was great being back in Edinburgh. That’s where my first job was, and just the smell of the brewery sets me off.”
Given how well he got away with an American accent in Hollywood, Newman can see the irony of doing a New York set musical in London. While he doesn’t rule out a return Stateside, beyond Desperately Seeking Susan he’s already lined up for Three-Way Split, a Grand Prix set buddy movie with James McAvoy. If, that is, “we’re not too old to play the parts we’ve been work-shopping for two years.”
Age is something Newman is acutely conscious of.
“It’s made me a lot more ambitious than I used to be,” he confesses. “I’ve always had this lack of awareness of time, but now I’m 32. I used to be 25, and tomorrow I’ll be 48. I’d hate to be 85 and sitting there wishing I’d said yes to something I didn’t.”
Desperately Seeking Susan, Novello Theatre, London, until April 19
www.Seeking-Susan.com
The Herald, November 13th 2007
ends
The second promise-breaker, which Newman is currently previewing in London’s west end, is in the stage adaptation of Susan Sedeleman’s1985 movie, Desperately Seeking Susan. The film was notable for featuring one of pop vixen Madonna’s earliest ventures onto celluloid following Sedelman’s direction of the then street-punk styled taboo-buster’s Into The Groove video. Newman plays Dez, the male lead originally played by Aidan Quinn in this semi-hip merry-go-round of mistaken identity among New York’s singles set.
This new version not only hops aboard the gravy train of putting hit movies onstage a la The Graduate. By framing its narrative around a soundtrack of hit singles by Blondie as well as a brand new Debbie Harry/Chris Stein number, it capitalises on the box office juke-box musicals such as the Abba inspired Mamma Mia have become.
“It actually feels like a big movie,” Newman muses, “because there are all these MGM people shuffling around wanting to make sure their rights aren’t being infringed upon. But I think most of the tickets will be sold on the strength of Blondie to be honest. It’s a shamelessly commercial exercise and shamelessly fun. I have friends about to play in Othello and Michelangelo, and here I am playing a guy played in a film by Aidan Quinn, and that just makes me giggle.
I was attracted to it, believe it or not, by the darker, sadder elements of the character. He’s a loser, but also a romantic, and his journey is about learning how to make a decision for himself. But that’s been beaten out of me in rehearsals. Be louder! Be faster! Be funnier! It has to be blurted out. And that’s really f***ing irritating to be honest. There’s nothing subtle about it. But that’s the genre we’re working in, which equates to sit-com, and has its own history and is important, and you have to respect that.
Also,” Newman further justifies to himself, “shows like this exist because people want to know exactly what they’re going to get for £55. I’m very sad there’s not enough straight drama on the West End, and in a way this show is one of the assassins of that. But if I’ve paid 55 quid, I want to see something that’s going to go off like a bomb.”
When first approached to play the part, Newman was still resident in Hollywood, and was forced to audition down the telephone.
“Picture this,” he says in the first of a stream of Blondie song title gags involving hanging on the telephone, in the flesh, etc. “My girlfriend was in one room decking herself, and the dog was sitting next to me cocking his head wondering what on earth was going on, and all the while I’m having to sing this song into the receiver with everyone listening on the other side of the world.”
Whatever such indignities, Newman’s musical credentials are in the blood. His Dad is Sandy Newman, who’d played in bands since a teenager, including The Chris McClure Section. In 1975 he took over as singer with Marmalade, who’d scored a number one in 1968 with the Paul McCartney penned Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. With Newman senior on vocals, Marmalade made the top ten in 1976 with Falling Apart At The Seams.
Long before he appeared in the video for McCartney’s 1997 single, Beautiful Night, Newman junior had grown up listening to the ex Beatle on cassettes during long car rides on family holidays with his Dad. There’s even a Beatle connection in Desperately Seeking Susan. Alongside Newman in the cast is actress Leanne Best, daughter of original Beatles drummer Pete Best, who was famously ousted in favour of Ringo Starr.
It was football rather than music that initially appealed to Newman, though an injury put paid to such ambitions. He only turned to acting after his local branch of the Cubs was over-subscribed and a Friday night drama club allowed him to discover his inner show-off. A stint at the National Youth Theatre and drama school brought him to Edinburgh where he appeared at the royal Lyceum in Brian Friel’s play, Translations, and as Tom in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.
If the last play introduced him to America, his next stage appearance opposite Cate Blanchett may have been in David Hare’s thoroughly English post World War Two set Plenty gave him his first whiff of Hollywood.
Newman describes his former co-star as “Absolutely spell-binding. She was like that just eating a sandwich walking out the door. I knew at the time I was privileged, but since she’s become God’s gift to actresses I realise exactly how lucky I was.”
Checking his own celluloid CV, beyond a small role in Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things, much of Newman’s work is available down at the local sci-fi/horror shop. An early lead role in a mini-series adaptation of Dune, Frank Herbert’s epic science-fiction chronicle first put on-screen by David Lynch in 1984. Newman’s part had originally been played by Lynch favourite Kyle McLachlan.
Newman reprised his role in Children Of Dune before notching up guest appearances in Angel and Enterprise and taking the title role in a TV version of Frankenstein. More recently he filmed The Gene Generation, a future fantasy about DNA hacking. The last year, though, has seen Newman tire of the way he was being cast in such material. Hence the Restoration Comedy and Desperately Seeking Susan. Onscreen too, this year has seen Newman get back to his roots in the Edinburgh shot Reichenbach Falls.
“I play a manic depressive alcoholic Scotsman,” he says of the film based on an early Ian Rankin short story. “Apart from anything else it was great being back in Edinburgh. That’s where my first job was, and just the smell of the brewery sets me off.”
Given how well he got away with an American accent in Hollywood, Newman can see the irony of doing a New York set musical in London. While he doesn’t rule out a return Stateside, beyond Desperately Seeking Susan he’s already lined up for Three-Way Split, a Grand Prix set buddy movie with James McAvoy. If, that is, “we’re not too old to play the parts we’ve been work-shopping for two years.”
Age is something Newman is acutely conscious of.
“It’s made me a lot more ambitious than I used to be,” he confesses. “I’ve always had this lack of awareness of time, but now I’m 32. I used to be 25, and tomorrow I’ll be 48. I’d hate to be 85 and sitting there wishing I’d said yes to something I didn’t.”
Desperately Seeking Susan, Novello Theatre, London, until April 19
www.Seeking-Susan.com
The Herald, November 13th 2007
ends
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