Simpson, Richard – Interview Transcript
THEATRE ARCHIVE PROJECT http://sounds.bl.uk Simpson, Richard – interview transcript Interviewer: Rahul Bahal 21 January 2012 Richard Simpson, actor, on: Angry Young Men, Anthony Richardson, Belgrave Theatre Coventry, Censorship, Sir Peter Hall, Harold Pinter, Jonathan Lynn, Sir Ben Kingsley, Look Back In Anger, Sir Ian McKellen, Nottingham Playhouse, Sir Trevor Nunn, PARADA, RADA, RSC, Sir Patrick Stewart, The Comedians. RB: So how did you first get involved in drama? RS: Well I was born in Skegness which is a seaside resort in Lincolnshire and I was a war child so there wasn’t a lot of theatre going on, obviously, except amateur work and I got it amateur at school. My father was a very good amateur actor; in fact, the night I was born he was performing in a farce called Lord Richard and The Pantry; so I was called Richard. But after the war, just immediately after the war, there was theatre in Skegness as there was in a lot of the country at that time, mainly weekly rep. When you talk about weekly rep to youngsters now they can’t believe it happened, that is a play a week. You can imagine what that was like. Plays in those days were mainly written in three acts so it was learning an act a night, and then performing in the evening. Absolutely incredible, but it was the law and there was two reps when I was still at school, at ‘Skeg’, and they wanted a young boy for a play called Frieda, so I was recruited in to that and then in my last year at school a famous Rattigan play called The Winslow Boy they wanted a young naval boy; so I did that.
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