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Two old stagers find vigour in Brief Lives

Tim Walker

Wednesday, 30th January 2008

Tim Walker talks to the theatrical veterans Roy Dotrice and Patrick Garland about their long-awaited return to the work of John Aubrey

There can’t be another play in the country with a star and a director who have the experience of Dotrice and Garland. The former toured with the RSC and went on to pick up, among other glittering prizes, a Tony award for A Moon for the Misbegotten on Broadway in 2000 and, remarkably, five Grammy nominations, most recently for his recording of Winnie the Pooh. On screen, he is best known for playing Mozart’s domineering father in Amadeus. He also appeared in The Scarlet Letter with Demi Moore. He was, perhaps somewhat belatedly, awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s honours.

Garland, meanwhile, is a former artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre. On Broadway he directed Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. Other big successes include Forty Years On, A Doll’s House and, more recently, The Mystery of Charles Dickens with Simon Callow.

As impeccable as their pedigrees are, one wonders if, with the British theatre dominated by musicals and vehicles for youthful soap stars, there will be an appetite for a one-man show which revolves purely around words. ‘There is a line in the play about “ever longing to converse with old men’s living history,”’ says Dotrice. ‘When I was younger, I used to love to talk to my dad and my uncle and get my own “living history” from them and other old men. My hope is young people will feel like that today — they will want to know what Aubrey has to say about his illustrious contemporaries.’

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