There's no safety in the classics

Arts: Reviving theatre's masterpieces is not just being boring, says veteran actor Alan Stanford – it's a necessary reinvestigation of what is vital about such texts

EVERYONE KNOWS Alan Stanford. There's that unmistakable deep baritone with its plummy English intonations, and that benign expression that was for so long his trademark as a member of the Glenroecast. He's also appeared in countless roles on Irish theatre stages over the past four decades, and is even familiar to a young generation who have seen him in productions of plays from their school curriculum by Second Age, the company he helped establish 20 years ago.

Now, with Second Age branching out to tour other classics, he’ll be even more ubiquitous than ever. So why the new departure for a company that has been successfully catering to a more or less captive audience for two decades? “We’re going to have two kinds of Second Age: Second Age Schools, which will always be the Shakespeare [plays], and Second Age Classic. And the idea is that we will become, or we have become and are increasingly, a company that will tour nationally.”

The plays in the latter case will be what Stanford terms classics, “anything from ancient Greeks all the way through to Shaw and Wilde”. Not that he’ll be turning his back on his young audiences: on the contrary, he rates them very highly. “They’re like what the audience in the Globe [Shakespeare’s company’s theatre] would have been like. They can be rowdy, they can be noisy. They are a brilliant audience to play to, because when they’re sad, they let you know, and when they’re happy, they let you know, and when something good happens, they cheer.”

Whether adults will react in quite the same way to the company's new direction remains to be seen, but in its new iteration, Second Age already has a production of A Doll's Houseon the road. It's a new version written by Stanford, based on a translation by Paul Larkin, which is transposed from its 19th century setting to the 1930s because "there's something about the end of the 19th century that makes it look it like a museum piece". As Stanford sees it, it's every bit as relevant to 21st century audiences as it was to those who first saw it over 100 years ago.

“The great shock of the play is what Nora does, and it’s still shocking today. If you look in the tabloids, you’ll never see a headline that says ‘Film star – male – leaves wife and children. Shock! Horror!’ ” Yet when a woman leaves her children, the response is very different. “People still recoil at that . . . the attitude hasn’t changed.”

Yet, the choice of another classic text may only fuel those who peg Stanford as a traditionalist, given his penchant for trusted entertainers like Wilde and Coward. "We almost pay an appalling lip service to the notion of the new," he contests, before quoting Ecclesiastes: "There is nothing new under the sun, and unless we constantly revisit and reinvestigate and re-examine that which is gone before, we have no foundation upon which to build, not even anything to rebel against."

From Stanford’s perspective, revisiting theatrical “classics” is not only relevant, but necessary. “It’s not old-fashioned, it’s not traditionalist, it’s not ‘reactionary establishment boring old fart’,” he says, acknowledging some of the put-downs he’s received in the past. “It’s about reinvestigating, it’s about rediscovery. The one thing we do in theatre, the thing that we do for four weeks before ever a play opens? Rehearsal. The word is re-hear. Listen again. And if we don’t listen again to the work that’s gone before it, we’re not going to have a foundation upon which to build the work of the future.”

So they’re not just safe choices, then? “No! Not at all! In fact, do you know the hardest job you can do? It’s to direct a play that’s been directed 500 times before. Because comparisons are odious – it’s much easier to direct a play that’s brand new, because people have nothing to compare it with.”

This includes critics who, he maintains, go harder on productions of classic texts. “Sometimes I get good reviews, sometimes I don’t, but usually it’s down to the fact that people have expectations of plays that have already entered that rarified atmosphere of being classic.” He shrugs. “To me a classic play is something to mess with.”

That’s not to say he doesn’t welcome criticism. “I believe in a critic who has a long knowledge and understanding of theatre, who can come and look at a play and evaluate it with knowledge and understanding,” he says. “Good critics are a part of theatre. They are part of us.”

The “us” in question is the world of the arts, of which Stanford is a staunch defender. “The arts are in serious danger now, because they are such an easy target, and when you consider the money that is being spent – the billions and billions that are being spent on so many things – to cut funding to the arts, I think it’s dangerous to society . . . It’s dangerous because the arts are not an elitist hobby: they are us. The arts are us.”

He has said as much at an Oireachtas committee on the matter, speaking in his capacity as a member of the Arts Council. “Once upon a time a hundred thousand years ago, some men went to work. They got up in the morning, they went out to work. And their job for the day was to kill some deer, bring them back, cook them and eat them. And we only know it happened, because afterwards they drew paintings on a wall to show what they’d been doing,” he explains. “In other words, art is the representation of who we are, what we are, where we are, when we are and what we do.”

He calls suggestions that arts funding should be cut “an abuse of the nation” and is adamant that the ministry be maintained. “We need a minister at the cabinet table making that case, making that argument.”

As an Arts Council member, part of his remit lately is to make that case himself. He is also party to decisions about the allocation of any funding that does come through. Does his own association with companies applying for funding compromise his objectivity when it comes to such decisions?

"Once the name Second Age comes up or is on the agenda, I'm out of the room," he explains, in accordance, he adds, with strict guidelines. The same goes for any conversations about the Gate Theatre, with which he's had a long association and to which he returns next month with his fifth production of Dickens's A Christmas Carol.

Stanford is clearly a busy man. When he’s not directing, he’s writing or acting. So which is his true calling? “I like putting plays on the stage. I’m a play putter-on-er. A playmaker. And I don’t mind if I’m directing or acting, or writing.”

Yet, if forced to choose, he knows where his heart lies. "I'm an actor. I've been a professional actor for 42 years. That is what I am." In those four decades, favourite roles have included Salieri in Amadeus, Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Herod in Salomeand Pozzo in the Gate production of Waiting for Godot.

Yet, many still remember him best as George Manning from RTÉ's long-running soap, Glenroe. "I spent 11 years in everybody's living room as George, so that will always be there. And it was lovely, because George was terribly popular," he says. "The character was so beautifully written that everybody loved George, which was really nice, because I got a lot of free drinks out of it."

It was also Ireland’s introduction to those genteel, English tones that were to become the most recognised voice in Ireland and have been heard on voice-overs and advertisements on our airwaves ever since. Stanford was born in England, but he has spent the past four decades in Ireland, and now considers himself “Irish by choice rather than accident of birth”.

As Stanford corrects me, his is actually the second most recognised voice in the country, according to research by an advertising agency some years back. “The first most recognised voice in the country was Ronnie Drew,” he clarifies.

This fame has had its advantages. “Once I wanted to get the floors sanded in my living room,” he recalls. He dialled the first number he found in the Yellow Pages and asked for someone to visit his home for an estimate. The voice at the other end of the line didn’t hesitate: “ ‘Yes Mr Stanford, can you give me your address?’ ” He smiles broadly, eyes creasing at the recollection. “Now that’s voice recognition!”

Second Age'sA Doll's House is at the Helix Theatre in Dublin until Friday, Nov 27, then at Glór, Ennis, from Nov 30-Dec 3.A Christmas Carol opens at the Gate Theatre on Dec 1