Simon Russell Beale, one of Britain’s leading Shakespearean actors, has spoken of his sorrow over the generation of young performers struggling without work and of his fear that audiences will be frightened to return to the theatre for some time.
“My heart breaks for young actors,” he said this weekend. “To be a graduate drama student now must be horrible, with nothing in the bank and no previous work to persuade people to cast you in the future.”
The actor, who has started to write a book about his theatrical life while in lockdown at his home in Wiltshire, said he is feeling panic for the first time in his career. The lack of certainty about the re-opening of theatres has unsettled him, he said.
“I have never absolutely panicked before, even when I was young and out of work. But I am feeling it now.”
Russell Beale, 59, was about to perform on Broadway in a long run of the acclaimed production The Lehman Trilogy when theatres were shut.
“What was difficult was the idea that the job didn’t exist any more. Normally if they cancel a show you can just go and find another one. Most of us are scared because we have no idea what is going to happen and what theatre is going to look like in the future,” he told the Observer.
Last week the actor’s union, Equity, came to a deal with the Society of London Theatre to protect those actors appearing in musicals and plays at the time of the shutdown.
Under the agreement, cast members under contract have the chance to start again, once a revised performance date is set. The government’s self-employment income support scheme should provide further protection for some and thetheatres and Equity are lobbying for those who are still not covered.
“I hope too many don’t give up,” said Russell Beale. “When I was young people dropped out of acting, of course, during the first few hard years, but God knows what is going to happen this time.”
His more optimistic hope is that the public will realise how important the West End theatres are to the general appeal of London as a destination, even for those just going out to eat.
In July 1606, Shakespeare had to close down his theatre because the weekly death toll from the plague had risen. In August, there were 116 deaths in one week and 600 Londoners died that October. But audiences later returned, once the government order was lifted.
“You wonder how people were coaxed back into the theatre in Shakespeare’s time. I am bullish though about people’s fundamental need for contact, or at least physical proximity, whether they are watching a play, a concert or a firework show. We need that sense of community,” said Russell Beale.
The actor has brothers and sisters working in the NHS and he has examined the different nature of his own very different vocation during his enforced period at home.
“I certainly feel a compulsion to do it and I am missing it desperately, although not the anxious hour before you go on stage,” he said. “What I do miss is the feeling at the end of a show that you have achieved something: that first beer afterwards in the dressing room. It is really the bargain you make as an actor. You do it as well for the type of silence you can sometimes hear in the theatre, or for the laugh you get. I want us to all get together again for that one day.”
