20 Questions With … Peter Davison

Actor, Peter Davison, was the youngest ever Doctor Who. He became a household name in the 1970s after appearing in the TV series The Tomorrow People and All Creatures Great and Small. Although not a regular to West End musicals, his current stint as King Arthur in Spamalot at the Palace Theatre (the character originated on stage by Tim Curry) is proving enjoyable.

His other TV credits include The Last Detective, At Home with the Braithwaites and Fear Stress and Anger, for which he won the 2007 Best Actor Award at the Monte Carlo Television Festival. On stage, he has appeared in Chicago (Adelphi), An Absolute Turkey (Globe), The Last Yankee (Young Vic) and Arsenic and Old Lace for Chichester Festival Theatre.

“Lovingly ripped off” from the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Broadway import Spamalot tells the tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in their quest to find the religious relic. It has a book and lyrics by original Python Eric Idle, who has also co-written the music with John Du Prez. The musical opened on 16 October 2006 (previews from 30 September) at the Palace Theatre, where it’s currently booking to 1 March 2008.
consequences.

Spamalot has a book and lyrics by original Python Eric Idle, who has also co-written the music with John Du Prez. The London production reunites the Broadway creative team including director Mike Nichols and set and costume designer Tim Hatley. The three-time Tony Award-winning Spamalot opened in March 2005 at Broadway’s Shubert Theater, where it’s still running.

The current London cast is led by Peter Davison as King Arthur, Bill Ward as Lancelot and Hannah Waddingham, whose replacement as the Lady of the Lake will be found via a Swedish reality TV contest (See News, 17 Jul 2007). The company also features Robert Hands (as Sir Robin), Steven Kynman (Herbert), Graham MacDuff (Sir Dennis Galahad), Andrew Spillett (Patsy) and Tony Timberlake (Sir Bedevere).

Date and place of birth
Born 1951 in London.

You trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. How do you look back on that?
It was fine. I was a very shy creature at Central, and I don’t think I really made much of a mark. I remember going back for a reunion about ten years ago and realising just before I got there that I’d probably done best of all the people in my year. But the moment I walked through the doors, I became the same kind of mouse-like creature I was before. It’s a very strange thing.

If you hadn’t become an actor, what might you have done professionally?
God knows. I failed all my exams, otherwise I probably would have become a teacher, but I missed out on that opportunity. I then had the opportunity to go my own way, so I applied for drama school and got in. I don’t know what would have happened to me otherwise!

First big break
I suppose my first big break was a series called Love for Lydia in 1976, which was closely followed by All Creatures Great and Small. Those were my television breaks – I’d worked in theatre for a couple of years before that. I felt that I had found my home when I did television for the first time, because I felt I understood it. I can’t figure out why that was, but I sort of knew when the camera was on. Things like that seemed to have a certain degree of instinct.

Career highlights to date
The things I look back on with most pride are A Very Peculiar Practice, At Home With the Braithwaites. Campion was very good, I think I underestimated it at the time. There’s been a few things I haven’t liked, but generally speaking, you like all the things you do. I suppose I’m going to have to say All Creatures Great and Small as well, because that was what got me known.

Favourite co-stars
Oh Lord. I loved working with Christopher Timothy and Robert Hardy on All Creatures Great and Small, they were great. Sean Hughes I enjoyed working with enormously. A lot of people really. Although I’ve been lucky enough to star in a lot of things, I always tend to think of them as ensemble pieces. That may be just because I don’t want to take responsibility for it! I do think it’s important that we’re all in the boat together.

Favourite directors
People like Martyn Friend, David Tucker – and Graham Harper who did my last Doctor Who ever, and he’s done quite a lot of the new ones.

If you could swap places with one person (living or dead), who would it be?
I’d like to be someone enormously adventurous, doing something I’d never do, like Ranulph Fiennes – if I was only brave enough to go and climb a mountain, I’d love to do that, but I know it’s quite beyond me. I can only sit back and admire these people who risk their lives in somewhat insane ventures! As long as I could be assured that I’d survive at the end of it, I’d like to swap places with someone like him.

Favourite books
At the moment, I’m reading a historical book about the Victorians. It’s very interesting. It’s about how we thought we were so good with our empire, and maybe we weren’t quite so good as we thought!

Favourite holiday destinations
Funnily enough, my family is away now. They’ve very conveniently buggered off to Majorca while I’m stuck in the West End! I find hot holidays where you just swim in the pool very, very boring. I would almost prefer to spend the time just driving around the country or just going on holiday in Britain. I think Britain has been a little bit neglected. Admittedly, this summer’s probably not been the best summer to do it.

Do you have any favourite after-show haunts?
I’m looking forward to meeting up with all the people I have failed to meet up with over the last couple of years. I’m very bad at that. But for the first week of Spamalot, because I was doing two things at once, I just headed home after the show. It was a hectic week – we did nine shows in effect, so I was pretty exhausted. The moment I persuade my friends to come along to the show, I’ll start going out more. I must get out more.

Favourite websites
Not specifically, only when I’m thinking about buying something online, and then I go back to the same ones over and over again. I’m quite an avid Amazon user, I must admit. That, and I just Google myself all over the world! It is the most extraordinary thing… Wikipedia I use quite a lot – I like Wikipedia in terms of finding things out, learning histories of people you don’t know about. I checked out myself on there. There’s several pages – how do these people find out this information about people? It is largely, I have to say, very accurate. Someone must be stalking me!

How are you finding working on Spamalot so far?
I’m enjoying it immensely. Once we got the first couple of days over with, which I knew would be slightly chaotic, or just panicky in my mind, because I’ve not done many musicals and I’ve not done a stage thing in about five years. I was quite nervy at first. The rehearsal process was a bit strange, because you only really rehearse for the first couple of weeks with the people who are joining, so you don’t really have an idea of what it’s going to be like slotting in. Then in the last week they get the people who are actually doing it in to rehearse. Everybody was very nice, so it wasn’t a problem. It was a bit of a shock, the first time we did it with the main company. You’d got used to the director running around playing all the parts, and then suddenly you’ve actually got real people.

What’s the funniest/oddest/most notable thing that happened during rehearsals?
Just my complete inability to memorise dance! That goes back many, many years. I was never able to do that because I’d done very few musicals. But you find after a while your body gets something called muscle memory, which is not something I knew much about, where your body seems to go in the right direction even though you’ve no clue that it’s meant to do that, once you go through it enough times. Some of the dance routines were fairly hilarious at first. I was always working about three or four beats behind everyone else. I find looking ridiculous quite easy. Looking ridiculous is fine with me, it’s looking like I know what I’m meant to be doing! There’s very few times where I’m meant to do that, but there are times where I’m meant to be dancing with everyone else in unison, and those are the moments of real panic! If you get it wrong, you stand out.

What have you taken from the film version?
Someone asked me when we started, and I was watching the previous cast do it, “Do you find it difficult watching the people who are doing it now?” and I said no. My problem is that Graham Chapman sticks in my head as King Arthur, because I’m such a Python fan. My performance maybe owes more to him than the previous incarnations of Arthur have. As it says in the title, it is “lovingly ripped off” from Python, but it is a marvellous mix of Python and sending up West End musicals. I didn’t get a lot of the references at first, but then people came to see the show and would say “Oh, that’s from Starlight Express”!

With the Python influence, it’s quite a light-hearted but anarchic musical. Does that transpose itself into rehearsals and the backstage environment?
Not really. There’s so much precision in a comedy like this, there’s relatively little chance for leeway. There’s a few funny things muttered onstage, such as when I ask “What’s a la vache?” and Robert Hands, who plays Robin, comes up with a different answer, like “fish and chips” or “Renault Clio”! That’s only muttered under our breath. Generally speaking it’s fairly precise. There’s not much room for improvisation, but you still have enormous fun within that. You get very varied audiences. Some are very attuned Python fans and some are very new to it and don’t know the characters, and sometimes you get a lot of people singing along to “Always look on the bright side of life”, and sometimes people haven’t heard it.

What are some of your favourite musicals as an audience member?
Well I’ve only been in one musical before, and that was Chicago, which I do think is another fun musical. It’s unlike any other musical because it’s not really staged – you get the band on stage and the actors kind of act around the band. So this is my first venture into musicals proper. I must admit, I’m not a huge fan of musicals. I don’t think I’d choose to go and see one on a night out, except probably Spamalot. It is a show you can enjoy if you hate musicals or if you love them. I probably veer towards not being a huge fan of the traditional West End musicals.

What’s the last thing you saw on stage?
Funnily enough, I went along to the first night of the Orlando Bloom play, In Celebration, which I just about I managed to get into once I’d persuaded my way past all the heavies protecting Orlando. That was very good. Tim Healy was really excellent, and Orlando Bloom – he does the job. What else have I seen on stage? I don’t know what I saw before that. Oh actually, I went to see The Pain and the Itch at the Royal Court – that was very good.

You’ve worked extensively in TV, but also in film, on stage and on the radio – what is the difference for you and which do you prefer?
The only difference really is in the amount of work you’re doing. Radio is great because you don’t have to learn the lines! Theatre’s great because once you get it on, and get past that first week, you only have to work three hours a night. Admittedly, you have to do the same thing every night, but that depends on the audience. It’s extraordinary how you can have a depressing and unresponsive audience after two weeks, or you can have a fantastic show after you’ve been doing it for months and months because the audience kind of lifts you up and they’re having a good time. There’s no great difficulty in doing it over and over again, surprisingly. Television and film are the hardest work, because you simply are there for hours and hours and hours. Television especially, because you don’t quite get pampered in the way you do in film. You’re there from quite early in the morning till quite late at night. You see less and less of your family, but I enjoy doing it.

You’re quite well known to many as being the fifth incarnation of Doctor Who. Does it all seem so long ago?
Not really, no. You’re always connected with Doctor Who in some shape or form. I still do the occasional audio CD, and I’m always being asked to come in and do commentaries on the re-releases of the episodes that I did. You’re always connected to it. The people who are making it now are fans of the shows from when I used to be in it, and I know quite a few of them personally.

I read that you composed the theme tune to Button Moon? How did that come about?
I did, yes. I did a job, my first television for Thames Televison, and I worked with the director, and I was talking to him about writing songs. He called me about a couple of years later, and said “I’m doing this new children’s television series, would you like to write the theme tune?” So I did! We went along to a studio and sang it, so it’s me singing it as well I’m afraid, and that was it. It was one of those things that you do, and you think that it’ll just be forgotten. But it seems to have come back and back. I wrote the theme tune for another television series called Mixed Blessings, and I did a couple of singles that my ex-wife released, one in Japan I gather! I still do write songs, but I don’t send them to anybody. It’s more for my own use. I play guitar and keyboards and through that, you get these marvellous things called virtual instruments now, where you can play anything virtually.

What are your plans for the future?
Well I don’t really know actually. I don’t know how long I’m going to do Spamalot for, it just depends on how long I enjoy doing it. Then we’ll see what’s around. I have no plans…which is quite nice really. Quite nervy in a way, but I have a job which I can do until someone kicks me out of it! I don’t have to worry too much. I suppose I’d like to do more telly, or ideally, I’d like to do a film. But they’re few and far between, and it depends on what comes up.

– Peter Davison was talking to Stuart Denison