Tim Piggott-Smith: Why theatre is the eternal challenge for an actor

IT’S an actor’s lot to be a nomad. Tim Pigott-Smith, speaking from New York, is about to finish a run on Broadway after which he’ll return to the UK and a reunion with an old friend.

That old friend is George Costigan of Rita, Sue and Bob Too! fame. Together the duo will combine their talents later this month for a one-off evening of performance, patter and poetry to raise funds for Halifax’s Square Chapel.

The theatre counts both men as patrons along with TV screenwriter Sally Wainwright. Thus they will demonstrate their versatility with a dramatic A to Z of speeches, play extracts and verse before concluding with a new eight-minute vignette written exclusively for them by Wainwright.

The repertoire includes works by Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, Alan Bennett and Charles Dickens. Some will be solo readings; others will be shared. The Wainwright piece represents the first time both men have shared a stage together. And they’re keen to stress they’re not doing it in Halifax, not in London or New York.

“The fun of it will not so much be me and George as the 26 different pieces we choose,” says the 69-year-old veteran of stage, television and film. “We’re still in the process of finalising that. We’ve got different pieces and as you work on it different things appeal to you. It will be quite a rich and varied evening. And we’ll be flying by the seat of our pants a bit.”

He laughs. This is the man who, in a 45-year career, has played King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, made movies with Hollywood heavyweights like John Huston and Oliver Stone and whose television CV includes classic drama such as The Jewel in the Crown.

And yet he’s nervous. There’s something quite touching about that. Of Wainwright’s mini play he reveals, “It’ll be pretty terrifying. The rest of the evening will be reading; you’ve always got the script in your hand. But that bit we’re just going to do, and do properly. It’s a lovely little piece that she’s written, dark and funny. I don’t want to give too much away. She’s written it for us with the knowledge of who we are and what we are.”

At first glance Pigott-Smith and Costigan make unlikely bedfellows. One is steeped in the Royal Shakespeare Company, the other came through the Liverpool Everyman and, before that, a stint at Butlin’s. Yet their shared fascination with the job is what binds them together. That and a determination to light up the stage.

They met for the first time in 1981 during filming of a TV series, Fame is the Spur. Much of it was shot in Yorkshire and, specifically, within the giant mill complex of Dean Clough. Their reunions since have been sporadic and fleeting.

“Geography in our business is the great separator. I’m a guilt-ridden absentee patron because my life happens in London. To my shame I think the last time I was up there was when Square Chapel opened. George noticed that my name was on the list and said, ‘Come on, why don’t we do something?’ He twisted my arm a little bit. I felt it was about time I did something or took my name off the paper.”

Pigott-Smith’s links with West Yorkshire include a stint as head of the Compass Theatre Company, which was founded by Sir Anthony Quayle and for a time in the late 80s was based in Halifax. As actor/manager Quayle had the notion of running a company in the tradition of those once led by people like John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier. The issue, then as now, was funding.

Quayle was sponsored by the entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir Ernest Hall, who at the time was busily regenerating Dean Clough. When Quayle died in 1989 Pigott-Smith took over. And even though Compass later faded it helped pave the way for another company, Barrie Rutter’s Northern Broadsides, which was emerging around the same time.

“The company was always strapped for cash,” recalls Pigott-Smith “and because of that it made no sense for us as a touring company to have a permanent 52-week a year office in London. An awful lot of what little money we didn’t have disappeared in rent.

“So Ernest said, ‘Come up here. I’ll give you free office accommodation.’ It made huge sense in every way for the operation. Ernest was a fantastic supporter and a great, great man. Everything about being up there was positive.”

The 80s saw the transformation of Tim Pigott-Smith from character player to leading man. The high point was The Jewel in the Crown, an adaptation of novelist Paul Scott’s ‘Raj Quartet’ about the end of British rule in India, in which Pigott-Smith was Merrick, the racist police superintendent.

People still talk about the series - and Merrick, a quintessentially hissable villain - today. “As an actor you should think about the work and never about its potential impact. I’ve been in loads of projects when, halfway through, somebody says, ‘Cor, this is fantastic. This is going to make you a star. This is going to win you an award.’ It’s completely futile to think in those terms.

“If anything we thought The Jewel in the Crown was a little bit high-brow for mass appeal. But it came at a time when it was just possible for us to look back at the empire. If we’d done it earlier it would have been too soon. If we’d done it later there wouldn’t have been enough people around who remembered it. It just fell at the right moment in time.”

He enjoys meeting fans and relishes conversations with those who take him by surprise. “It’s particularly rewarding when somebody says that that’s why they’ve come to see you in the theatre, because they’ve seen something other than The Jewel in the Crown or one of the big ones. But I certainly don’t have any sense of snobbery about the difference between King Lear and Clash of the Titans. It was a great experience for me to be in something like that.”

His thoughts turn once again to Halifax, the Square Chapel and his old friend George Costigan. He likens their art to a tennis match. “One of the lovely things about working with George is that a lot of balls come over the net!” he laughs. “He’s full of spirit and inventiveness. That’s a lovely thing about our business: the ball may not come across the net in the same way every time. You’re constantly on your toes. I think there’s something about acting. It keeps you alive.

“In character and experience George and I are very different but I think we both have the same strong ideals about the power of theatre and the power of the imagination, and that binds us together very closely. People of our generation sometimes slow down. I don’t think either of us have. We love what we do so much that it energises us and keeps us going.”

An Evening with G & T, Square Chapel, Halifax, Sunday 28 February, from 7.30pm.

A master of his craft

Tim Piggott-Smith became a household name during the 1980s when he starred in The Jewel in the Crown - a 13-part adaptation of novelist Paul Scott’s ‘Raj Quartet’ about the end of British rule in India, in which he starred alongside Art Malik and Charles Dance.

Then there are others who remember him as Chief Constable John Stafford in The Chief.

Or as one of the PoWs in the Great Escape rip-off Escape to Victory in which the eclectic cast included Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone and Pelé.

His other films include Clash of the Titans, Quantum of Solace, V for Vendetta and the forthcoming 6 Days, a tale of the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege in which he plays Willie Whitelaw.