History in the making

LET’S face it, without Richard Hope – or rather, the character he plays – there wouldn’t be another chance for BBC viewers to swoon in admiration of Aidan Turner’s manly bare chest and brooding in Poldark.

Hope plays banker Harris Pascoe, the man who secures Ross Poldark the capital he needs to start again in the second series. “He’s a minor character but filters his way through the first series and in the next it’s quite meaty,” he explains.

When we spoke Poldark had yet to be shown and become a much talked-about ratings hit. He hoped the series would continue for a second series – and it has. He previously worked with writer Debbie Horsfield, who adapted Winston Graham’s novels, on another BBC series The Riff-Raff Element.

“Poldark is made on location and in Bristol where I live,” he adds. “Most of my stuff is done in the studio – in my bank – and with Aidan who’s a very talented actor.”

He knew Robin Ellis, the original Ross Poldark, through his brother, actor Jack Ellis, because they were members of the National Youth Theatre together.

In the new touring production of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys – which plays in York and Darlington next month – Hope takes the leading role of teacher Hector, whose unconventional teaching methods and relationships with his pupils causes raised eyebrows among the teaching establishment. Hope was in the building – the National Theatre in London – doing another show when the award-winning play premiered ten years ago and he’s always wanted to do Bennett’s work.

He lost out for the lead in another of the author’s work, Enjoy, a few years ago although appeared in Forty Years On as the head boy just before he started university. “For me it’s like work by Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn, you have to be very precise on the language and it’s such wonderful stuff to read. I had no idea of all the references in the script so that took quite a long time to do. Obviously Alan’s an expert in Auden, Larkin and all that,” he says.

He supposes there must be elements of teachers he liked and admired in his portrayal but he’s tried “to make Hector my own”. Hope arrived in acting via the National Youth Theatre and a role written for him by Barrie Keefe. With it came the offer of an Equity card, which no actor could work without in those days, and so “I thought I’d give it a go and so officially I didn’t train”. He was mentored by someone special – Laurence Olivier, who’d retired from running the National Theatre and was doing big TV specials for Granada by the time Hope was cast in one of them Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Olivier also put him forward for Brideshead Revisited.

In The History Boys his co-stars include eight young actors, many fresh out of drama school. “It’s strange playing the old fart part,” he says. “The director Kate Saxon went round drama schools interviewing everybody so it’s a good collection of younger actors. In five years time they’ll all be household names as has happened to the original cast”.

The situation is different to when he entered the business in many ways. “Olivier’s tip to me was to work with good people and to hold on to your personal instinct. I think that’s true. It’s very different now, there’s all that debate about actors who can afford to go to drama school. It’s different from the time I started and was in a youth theatre with people like Tim Spall and Tim McInnerny. Now there are so many people doing drama courses.”

He did one play at school before auditioning for the National Youth Theatre, whose director Michael Croft asked him why he wanted to be in it. “I said, ‘well I’ve got a five pound bet going on’ and he said ‘all right, you’re in’. Nobody had ever said that to him before. At that time I didn’t really want to become an actor, I just found myself really enjoying it.”

Being committed to a six-month tour of The History Boys has meant turning down other work but he’s happy “because Hector is such a wonderful part” although he’s not a great fan of touring, adding “It’s nice once you’re on tour and settle into it. But there’s all the booking of wherever you’re going, the trains and the accommodation. At somewhere like the National, it’s all done for you.”

AT 20, Kedar Williams-Stirling is the youngest in The History Boy cast although he’s been working on stage, film and television for more than half of his young life from the time he trod the boards of London’s Lyceum theatre in the Disney hit The Lion King as a 12-year-old.

“When I was a young actor I was at the National and a play at the Almeida theatre. But as an actor taking on a big role The History Boys is the first,” he says.

He enrolled in Sylvia Young’s stage school after his mum saw a documentary on TV about it and asked if he’d like to go, having seen him in school plays. “I went got in and in the first year got The Lion King, which was amazing. That spun everything in the right direction and gave me the indication of wanting to go down the route. From then on I’ve just been lucky enough to work,” he explains.

He’d seen the film of The History Boys but not the play. It’s nothing like his schooldays, he says, as he was at a performing arts school with totally different teaching methods. “But I would say the extravagant teaching of Hector had some similarity with my acting teachers, but not the academic side. What I’ve enjoyed about this job is there’s such an academic influence in this role that I didn’t get as much of through my education. I’ve enjoyed learning about the poets, philosophers, artists and all these people I should know.”

He describes cocky and confident Dakin as crude and demanding. Someone who’s very aware of what’s going on and has a very intelligent instinct “who doesn’t just say things for the sake of it. He knows what he’s saying and plans how he wants it to affect people”.

Kedar will be known to young BBC viewers from threes series of Wolfblood, which was filmed in and around Newcastle. Since finishing that he’s appeared on stage in a two-hander called Dutchman in a small space called The Crate in Nottingham. The History Boys offers the prospect of six months playing in a different theatre every week. “It’s very different to film and TV because there are things you don’t always have power over in the theatre. It’s a weird process but I’m enjoying it. I’m taking it as training because I didn’t go through the whole drama school thing. So it’s a learning curve for me.

“I don’t want to go down the obvious stereotypical route. I’m trying to break down that barrier in this role and in Wolfblood. I don’t want to be in this rut of pigeonholing and stereotyping.”

• The History Boys, York Grand Opera House, June 8-13. Box office 0844-8713024 and atgticket.com/York
• Darlington Civic Theatre, June 16-20. 01325-486555 and darlingtoncivic.co.uk