When John Savident opens his mouth, it’s a surprise what comes out. Because anyone expecting to hear the booming northern inflections of Fred Elliot, the larger than life local butcher Savident played for twelve years in Coronation Street may well be disarmed by the plummily cultured and decidedly luvvieish tones of the real life Savident. Especially as the gruff Lancastrian bark resumes business when Savident plays the title role of the business-man patriarch in Harold Brighouse’s Salford set play, Hobson’s Choice, on tour in Glasgow this week following a run at Chichester Festival Theatre.
Hobson’s Choice might seem a safe bet for Savident’s return to the stage. Generally regarded as a populist classic, and famously filmed with John Mills playing dim-witted cobbler Willy Mossop, as Savident himself points out, the play has become a staple of am-dram groups cross the land, where it’s depictions of ordinary folk are seen as easy pickings. According to Savident, though, it’s a thoroughly serious piece of work.
“There are parallels with King Lear,” he observes. “Hobson’s the head of the family, but he’s not the brightest of people, and when his daughter rebels he eventually becomes this tragic figure. The play came out just when the suffragette movement was beginning, and its set in Salford where it started, so there’s so much depth to the play. If one knows a bit of history, and I think one should, there’s so much there to find. People go, oh, its good old Hobson’s Choice again, and don’t really take it seriously. Which is unfair, because no-one goes, oh, here comes Chekhov and Ibsen again, do they?”
Hobson’s Choice is Savident’s first major role since his well publicised departure from Coronation Street towards the end of 2006. Citing personal reasons for his departure, when Fred was killed off, Savident is splenetic about the programme that turned his character into something of a national institution, with barely a good word to say about it.
“I can’t watch it now,” he says of the show that was his meal ticket for more than a decade. “I can’t bear it. Not that I wasn’t delighted that Fred was such a popular character who appealed across all age ranges. But what they’ve done to the programme and the way they treat people is an absolute disgrace. I remember Barbara Knox, who plays Rita and is an old family friend, telling me when I came in, you don’t know the power of this programme. And by God she was right. Not so much now, but in the 60s and 70s they were the kings and queens of television. But they rehearsed then, and had top writers and directors. Now they shove it out five nights a week, with no rehearsal, badly lit because there’s no time to do it properly. The writers now don’t understand the music of the dialect, and the scripts could have been set anywhere. That’s why I started bringing in the repetition,” Savident says of Fred’s trademark ‘I say, I say,’ delivery, which gave the impression of a northern English Foghorn Leghorn in a temper. “It was all based on people I knew, one man in particular, who didn’t like children very much. It was still in the midst of the industrial revolution then, and people still wore clogs and worked at the cotton mills. People who worked there had to speak loudly and repeat things just to make themselves heard. But the writers would never get that. Ever since Margaret Thatcher vandalised television, the British people are being cheated. I would never knock Coronation Street. It’s the people sitting in obscure offices only interested in making money that bother me.”
Given such personal flourishes he added to scripts, was there ever any danger that Savident could be seen to be getting above himself on set?
“Bugger that!” he says in response. “Bugger that!”
Savident’s return to the stage for the first time in more than a decade is also his first appearance since undergoing a heart operation from which he’s only recently finished recuperating. Given that the stress of taking the lead role in a national tour is considerably more stressful than hanging round a TV set all day, one wonders why on earth Savident is throwing himself back into the fray in such a manner.
“Three months convalescence s quite enough,” he says. “Though I find being in rehearsals I have to be careful not to put too much strain on the chest. Because I’ve not been onstage for such a long time that one forgets the energy and drive and dynamism required to sustain things. So I found myself getting very tired very quickly, and there was one performance that was very bad, which I found really quite frightening. I’m on top of it now, but while I’ve been down here I’ve also been diagnosed with diabetes.”
Savident’s career as an actor began in the early 1960s, when he was pounding the beat a policeman. He’d been involved in amateur dramatics groups since the age of ten, when he fell in love with films shown at his local cinema and dashing young Shakespearian actor Laurence Olivier became his hero. It was only when professional guest director Leslie Branch worked on a show with the Prestwich Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society. When Savident jokingly suggested he should audition for the director’s next London show, his bluff was called, and Savident found himself playing the Sherriff Of Nottingham opposite comedy legend Max Wall. Savident moved quickly from stage to screen, notching up appearances in Inadmissable Evidence, The Avengers and A Clockwork Orange. By the time he appeared on London’s west end in the Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall musical collaboration with Tony Hatch, The Card, his old mentor Leslie Branch had died.
Savident went on to work with his hero Olivier, and also with Richard Burton, who he first saw playing Hamlet long before he became a star.
“When I got the chance to do it,” he says, “it felt like you were standing on the edge of that wonderful glamorous light you’d only watched from afar.”
Hobson’s Choice isn’t Savident’s first appearance at Chichester. That honour dates all the way back to 1965, when he appeared with Albert Finney in John Arden’s play, Armstrong’s Last Goodnight and in Trelawny Of The Wells. Finney was at his superstar peak at this time, having starred onscreen in Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and Tom Jones, and more than a whiff of celebrity hovered around Chichester at that time.
“There were all sorts of people in Albert’s dressing room who made my knees wobble,” Savident recalls. “I remember once going in and Anthony Perkins was there. Another time I went in and Albert was surrounded by people as usual, and he said to me, ‘John, have you met John, Paul, George and Ringo?’ Well, I nearly fell over, because The Beatles were absolutely huge at the time as well.”
Since his return to the stage, Savident has discovered theatre too is a bit more threadbare than he remembers.
“They don’t have the resources anymore,” he mourns. “I did my first pantomime since 1961. back then there was a full choir and ballet ensemble. That’s all gone now. A lot of theatres in the provinces employ people who’ve only been on TV, and, unlike actors of my generation such as Patricia Routledge, have no stage-craft whatsoever. It’s the management’s fault for allowing that to happen. It’s the same everywhere, whether it’s New York or the west end. Where’s the glamour and the glory of Broadway these days? You can’t even get a play on now.”
Savident admits that as an actor he comes from a time “When dinosaurs ruled the world,” but maintains he’ll carry on acting “until I drop.”
Are there any particular parts he’s like to try?
“Hundreds!” is his immediate response. But I’ve got an answer to all of them. I’m too old. Being in solitary confinement in Manchester for so long, you lose touch with so many people, and get cut off. It’s like Rip Van Winkle. After a long sleep you wake up, and the hair that you’d kept short for the part has now gone grey, and suddenly you’ve a rotten hip and dodgy bones, and you’ve never noticed that you’ve become old. But I still get enormous pleasure pretending to be someone else. Onstage, you’re sharing a bit of yourself with the audience, and when they laugh there’s nothing quite like it. But television? Take the money and run!
Hobson’s Choice, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, September 3-8, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, November 6-10
The Herald, September 4th 2007
ends
Hobson’s Choice might seem a safe bet for Savident’s return to the stage. Generally regarded as a populist classic, and famously filmed with John Mills playing dim-witted cobbler Willy Mossop, as Savident himself points out, the play has become a staple of am-dram groups cross the land, where it’s depictions of ordinary folk are seen as easy pickings. According to Savident, though, it’s a thoroughly serious piece of work.
“There are parallels with King Lear,” he observes. “Hobson’s the head of the family, but he’s not the brightest of people, and when his daughter rebels he eventually becomes this tragic figure. The play came out just when the suffragette movement was beginning, and its set in Salford where it started, so there’s so much depth to the play. If one knows a bit of history, and I think one should, there’s so much there to find. People go, oh, its good old Hobson’s Choice again, and don’t really take it seriously. Which is unfair, because no-one goes, oh, here comes Chekhov and Ibsen again, do they?”
Hobson’s Choice is Savident’s first major role since his well publicised departure from Coronation Street towards the end of 2006. Citing personal reasons for his departure, when Fred was killed off, Savident is splenetic about the programme that turned his character into something of a national institution, with barely a good word to say about it.
“I can’t watch it now,” he says of the show that was his meal ticket for more than a decade. “I can’t bear it. Not that I wasn’t delighted that Fred was such a popular character who appealed across all age ranges. But what they’ve done to the programme and the way they treat people is an absolute disgrace. I remember Barbara Knox, who plays Rita and is an old family friend, telling me when I came in, you don’t know the power of this programme. And by God she was right. Not so much now, but in the 60s and 70s they were the kings and queens of television. But they rehearsed then, and had top writers and directors. Now they shove it out five nights a week, with no rehearsal, badly lit because there’s no time to do it properly. The writers now don’t understand the music of the dialect, and the scripts could have been set anywhere. That’s why I started bringing in the repetition,” Savident says of Fred’s trademark ‘I say, I say,’ delivery, which gave the impression of a northern English Foghorn Leghorn in a temper. “It was all based on people I knew, one man in particular, who didn’t like children very much. It was still in the midst of the industrial revolution then, and people still wore clogs and worked at the cotton mills. People who worked there had to speak loudly and repeat things just to make themselves heard. But the writers would never get that. Ever since Margaret Thatcher vandalised television, the British people are being cheated. I would never knock Coronation Street. It’s the people sitting in obscure offices only interested in making money that bother me.”
Given such personal flourishes he added to scripts, was there ever any danger that Savident could be seen to be getting above himself on set?
“Bugger that!” he says in response. “Bugger that!”
Savident’s return to the stage for the first time in more than a decade is also his first appearance since undergoing a heart operation from which he’s only recently finished recuperating. Given that the stress of taking the lead role in a national tour is considerably more stressful than hanging round a TV set all day, one wonders why on earth Savident is throwing himself back into the fray in such a manner.
“Three months convalescence s quite enough,” he says. “Though I find being in rehearsals I have to be careful not to put too much strain on the chest. Because I’ve not been onstage for such a long time that one forgets the energy and drive and dynamism required to sustain things. So I found myself getting very tired very quickly, and there was one performance that was very bad, which I found really quite frightening. I’m on top of it now, but while I’ve been down here I’ve also been diagnosed with diabetes.”
Savident’s career as an actor began in the early 1960s, when he was pounding the beat a policeman. He’d been involved in amateur dramatics groups since the age of ten, when he fell in love with films shown at his local cinema and dashing young Shakespearian actor Laurence Olivier became his hero. It was only when professional guest director Leslie Branch worked on a show with the Prestwich Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society. When Savident jokingly suggested he should audition for the director’s next London show, his bluff was called, and Savident found himself playing the Sherriff Of Nottingham opposite comedy legend Max Wall. Savident moved quickly from stage to screen, notching up appearances in Inadmissable Evidence, The Avengers and A Clockwork Orange. By the time he appeared on London’s west end in the Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall musical collaboration with Tony Hatch, The Card, his old mentor Leslie Branch had died.
Savident went on to work with his hero Olivier, and also with Richard Burton, who he first saw playing Hamlet long before he became a star.
“When I got the chance to do it,” he says, “it felt like you were standing on the edge of that wonderful glamorous light you’d only watched from afar.”
Hobson’s Choice isn’t Savident’s first appearance at Chichester. That honour dates all the way back to 1965, when he appeared with Albert Finney in John Arden’s play, Armstrong’s Last Goodnight and in Trelawny Of The Wells. Finney was at his superstar peak at this time, having starred onscreen in Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and Tom Jones, and more than a whiff of celebrity hovered around Chichester at that time.
“There were all sorts of people in Albert’s dressing room who made my knees wobble,” Savident recalls. “I remember once going in and Anthony Perkins was there. Another time I went in and Albert was surrounded by people as usual, and he said to me, ‘John, have you met John, Paul, George and Ringo?’ Well, I nearly fell over, because The Beatles were absolutely huge at the time as well.”
Since his return to the stage, Savident has discovered theatre too is a bit more threadbare than he remembers.
“They don’t have the resources anymore,” he mourns. “I did my first pantomime since 1961. back then there was a full choir and ballet ensemble. That’s all gone now. A lot of theatres in the provinces employ people who’ve only been on TV, and, unlike actors of my generation such as Patricia Routledge, have no stage-craft whatsoever. It’s the management’s fault for allowing that to happen. It’s the same everywhere, whether it’s New York or the west end. Where’s the glamour and the glory of Broadway these days? You can’t even get a play on now.”
Savident admits that as an actor he comes from a time “When dinosaurs ruled the world,” but maintains he’ll carry on acting “until I drop.”
Are there any particular parts he’s like to try?
“Hundreds!” is his immediate response. But I’ve got an answer to all of them. I’m too old. Being in solitary confinement in Manchester for so long, you lose touch with so many people, and get cut off. It’s like Rip Van Winkle. After a long sleep you wake up, and the hair that you’d kept short for the part has now gone grey, and suddenly you’ve a rotten hip and dodgy bones, and you’ve never noticed that you’ve become old. But I still get enormous pleasure pretending to be someone else. Onstage, you’re sharing a bit of yourself with the audience, and when they laugh there’s nothing quite like it. But television? Take the money and run!
Hobson’s Choice, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, September 3-8, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, November 6-10
The Herald, September 4th 2007
ends
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