It would be easy for
Paul Shelly to put his feet up and stay indoors watching the sort of
daytime TV which he sometimes appears in. Now aged 71, and after more
than four decades working with the likes of the Royal Shakespeare
Company and the Royal National Theatre onstage, as well as with film
directors such as Roman Polanski and Richard Attenburgh, and on the
small screen in such classic serials as Secret Army, you wouldn't
blame the veteran actor for taking it easy.
As it is, Shelley is
about to tackle one of the biggest stage roles for actors of a
certain age outside of Shakespeare's King Lear. Yet, as he prepares
to play tormented theatrical patriarch James Tyrone in the Royal
Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh's new production of Eugene O'Neill's
semi-autobiographical epic, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Shelley
may be gimlet-eyed in his dissection of the play, but he appears
positively laid-back at the prospect.
“It's an incredible
journey, this play,” he says. “You can do it on the surface, and
it's so beautifully written it probably works. Or you can start to
get into the emotional murk, and that's where we are just now. The
closer we get to opening, we'll have to come up for air, but at the
moment, we're finding out all the things that don't work before we
find the thing that is right. It's like life,” he laughs.
Given Shelley's elder
statesman status, one is tempted to draw parallels between him and
Tyrone. For all his levity, it's a notion that's clearly passed
through his mind.
“Listen, there are
things I say in there,” he says, making a clanging noise that
implies an epiphany of recognition. “There are bound to be. He's an
older man, I'm an older man. He's an actor, I'm an actor. He's made
some terrible mistakes in his life, I've made some terrible mistakes,
so there's bound to be. He's a miser, and there are reasons for that,
and I hope I'm not a miser, but I husband my resources, so you use
that.”
For all his talk of
journeys, Shelley is more than aware that he hasn't given himself an
easy ride, even if director Tony Cownie has been working with Shelley
and the rest of the cast on cutting O'Neill's mighty text to a
manageable length, “or we'd all still be here at midnight,” as
Shelley observes. “But who are we to say that it's over-written. It
all just tumbled out of him, and he couldn't stop.”
O'Neill based Tyrone on
his own father, writing himself as the youngest son in a family
plagued by dysfunction, failure, addiction and loss that was so near
the knuckle that he left instructions to his publisher that the play
wasn't to be published until some twenty-five years after his death.
With his widow transferring the rights of the play to Yale
University, Long Day's Journey appeared in 1956, three years after
O'Neill's death.
The Royal Lyceum's new
production marks something of a coming home for the play. While Long
Day's Journey premiered in Sweden, followed by a Broadway run, the
play's first UK production was in Edinburgh. That came during the
1958 Edinburgh International Festival, when Jose Quintero, who had
been in charge of the Broadway production, directed Anthony Quayle as
James. Also in the cast were Ian Bannen and Alan Bates as the
brothers.
The last time the play
was seen in Scotland was a touring production in which David Suchet
played Tyrone. If these are big shoes to fill, Shelley is only too
aware of the scale of the task he's facing.
“When I was offered
it I wondered whether I could learn it all,” he says. “You get to
a point where actors have to face themselves. I've seen it happen in
other productions when I've been younger, and older actors have
terrible trouble with the lines. How does he know when is the time to
stop is quite a question, but the reason I accepted this, once you've
read the play, if you're still an actor, you accept.
“If I had said no, it
cannot be because of the play. It cannot be because of the part,
never mind the money. This is rep. It could only be fear, and fear is
something actors face from their youth. But being an older actor, one
of the things is just being able to hold the lines and keep it going.
I had to challenge myself is what I'm saying. A couple of lines in a
film, that's fine, but if you're offered something like this, you
don't say no. You're only offered a handful of parts like this in an
entire lifetime.”
For a couple of years,
Shelley was most familiar from what he calls a semi-regular role on
lunchtime medical soap, Doctors. Shelley discovered that show's mass
appeal while on tour with Mike Bartlett's contemporary version of
Greek tragedy, Medea, which visited the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow
in 2012, when the stage door was besieged by autograph hunters.
There is the matter too
of the YouTube collage of tender scenes between Shelley's character,
Jed, and his onscreen daughter, Zara, played by Elisabeth Dermot
Walsh, which a fan has posted and set to a schmaltzy soundtrack.
This is all a far cry
from Shelley's roots in Leeds, where he resisted becoming an actor
until long after his elder brother had, and he ended up at RADA.
After seasons in rep, Shelley wound up being cast opposite Sir Ralph
Richardson on the West End, and appeared in Richard Attenburgh's film
of Joan Littlewood's Oh! What A Lovely War. Shelley went on to appear
as Donalbain in Roman Polanski's 1971 film of Macbeth, dividing his
time between stage and screen in a way that few actors of his
generation manage.
Shelley played the
title role in Julius Caesar at Shakespeare's Globe, and after
performing in Tom Stoppard's play, Arcadia, on the West End, was
visited backstage by Hollywood couple, Paul Newman and Joanne
Woodward. Shelley has had a long relationship with the Orange Tree in
Richmond, and has worked at the Donmar Warehouse and with a younger
generation of directors such as Rupert Goold. Unlike James in Long
Day's Journey Into Night, Shelley has kept moving, with little or no
chance of falling into a rut.
“Some things I've
done well,” he says, “and some I've done not so well, but what
else am I going to do? I'm fit enough, mentally and physically, to
keep going, but that'll go soon enough. At the moment it's the
challenge of doing great parts like this. That's what keeps me
going.”
Long Day's Journey Into
Night, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, January 17-February 8
ends
Paul Shelley - An
Actor's Life
Paul Shelley was born
in Leeds, and became interested in acting while at university before
training at RADA and following his brother, Francis Matthews, into
the business.
He worked in rep before
appearing in Richard Attenburgh's film of stage hit, Oh! What A
Lovely War, and as Donalbain in Roman Polanski's film of Macbeth.
Shelley appeared
extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National
Theatre, while appearing in numerous television roles, including
Secret Army, Doctor Who and Paradise Postponed. Between 2010 and 2012
Shelley appeared regularly in TV soap, Doctors.
At Shakespeare's Globe,
Shelley played the title role in Julius Caesar, and Antony to Mark
Rylance's Cleopatra.
Shelley played Duncan
in Rupert Goold's production of Macbeth, which opened at Chichester
Festival Theatre before transferring to the West End and later to
Broadway.
Shelley has a long
relationship with the Orange Tree in Richmond, where he last appeared
in The Conquering Hero. Shelley toured in Mike Bartlett's
contemporary version of Medea, and in 2013 appeared in King Lear at
the Theatre Royal, Bath.
The Herald, January 14th 2013
ends
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