Polarising audiences and critics

"Polarised! - It's quite extraordinary". Even in the sixth week at the Almeida, Colin Firth seemed a little shaken by the reactions. "I don't think I've ever been in anything that's been praised and damned like this.

"The funny thing is that you know, when you do a piece like this, that may be going to happen, but when it actually does...." he was momentarily lost for words.

"It's stupid really.When you get some really positive, good response, it's encouraging".

Wasn't it much better to get such positive reactions, good and bad?

"Yes, it is better. The play's got an edge to it. It's only comfortable things that are universally accepted and only dreadful things that are universally damned.

"I think it's shaping up. The whole thing is very complex and it has a large cast. In Russia they would take months to rehearse it. They've staged it there many, many times, in fact it's one of their most famous plays, more than Chekhov, and it's the most quoted from in Russian literature. It's like Hamlet - a big classic which again is quite exciting because nobody here knows it at all.

"I'd never heard of it before. It's the only thing he's written. He died at an early age  - 34. He was murdered while he was in some ambassadorial post in Persia by some Islamic fundamentalists.

"What we're doing is a classic as a new play. The Anthony Burgess part of it is very much a new play. If it's one part Griboyedov , it's certainly one part Burgess. I think he's done a dazzling translation - one of the most exciting modem language I've ever come across in my life.

"You think that and then Nicholas de Jongh describes it as doggerel because it's all in rhyming couplets, and you think: God, how can he? Some friends of mine saw it and were absolutely bowled over by the sound of the language - drunk on it. Billington said the same: 'Language headlong on a drunken spree'. It's exciting stuff, full of energy".

It was becoming increasingly obvious that Colin Firth was enjoying his part enormously.

"I'll tell you something else that's funny. Normally one does the tour first. The provinces get the run-in and trying-out and Londoners get the benefit of the more mature form. This time it's happening the other way round which perhaps is good. Richmond will be getting the more mature form.

"I haven't done as much stage as film work. This is my sixth play ever. I did The Caretaker two years ago with (and by) Harold Pinter. That was all I did that year for six months".

He is probably known to millions of cinemagoers for films like Another Country, A Month in the Country, Valmont,  Femme Fatale  and most recently for Hour of the Pig and on television for Lost Empires, Tumbledown and Hostages.

His very first stage part was in Bennett's Another Country - straight into the West End after training in what he calls "an unconventional drama school".

"I didn't even complete the course" he admits. "It was an amazing success for me to get that job, but it wasn't me that had the success in the role". Modesty?  "No, no, no, I mean it quite literally. I was only the third cast. I didn't start the play off. I didn't play the part I played in the film. I did the Rupert Everett part on stage. He and Kenneth Branagh were the first cast. 

"Both film and theatre have their problems and appeal in different ways. There's no question you're working with better texts in theatre - the scripts are better. There never is a question of 'what a great film script, we'd like to do that as well'. Once a film is done, that's it, unless someone wants to do a re-make. You just don't have great classic film scripts around that anyone can do. 

Having said that most film scripts are crap, the last thing I did had a wonderful script, a once in a lifetime, The Hour of the Pig - it's the best since Tumbledown - a masterpiece which read brilliantly.

"I've no plans whatsoever, but I hope at the end of the six week tour there will be .something. When I'm not acting? I have a son and I like to spend as much time with him as possible".

Given his growing reputation as an actor, Colin Firth's periods of not acting are almost bound to become strictly limited.
                                                                                                              Jenny Scott