David Suchet talks to Arminta Wallace about playwright Terence Rattigan, taking theatrical risks and Hercule Poirot as a sex symbol.
David Suchet has played a multitude of roles in his long and varied career. He has been Henry VIII and Antonio Salieri. He has won a BAFTA for his portrayal of Sigmund Freud and critical acclaim for his creation of Augustus Melmotte in Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now and that's not even the half of it.
But let's face it - for most of the people, most of the time, David Suchet is the guy who plays Poirot on the telly. Moustache and all.
So vivid is this Pavlovian response that it comes as quite a surprise to find oneself chatting on the telephone, not to a prissy little Belgian detective, but to an urbane and apparently easy-going Englishman.
Of course, as Suchet himself points out - with a momentary punctiliousness of which Poirot would be proud - nationality is not always a straightforward matter.
His family name was once spelled Suchedowitz; he has a Russian grandfather and a French one; and there are bits of South Africa and Germany somewhere in the genetic mix as well. "So you're actually talking to a Russian-French-South-African-German. Born," he concludes triumphantly, "in Paddington."
Whatever Suchet sounds like, it certainly isn't a man who has been summoned from the canteen to do a hurried interview on a mobile phone during his lunch break. He is immersed in rehearsals for a new production of Terence Rattigan's Man and Boy, due to open at the Everyman Theatre in Cork on October 11th.
This extraordinary play was first put on in 1963, and hasn't received a professional production in almost half a century. "It's a very harsh play," says Suchet. "It's unlike any Rattigan you've ever seen. It's got humour, it's got tragedy, it's got drama, and it's totally amoral - which, in 1963, was way before its time."
Isn't it something of a risk to revive a play that got such a rough ride the first time around, from critics on both sides of the Atlantic?
"Absolutely," says Suchet. Theatre, he believes, needs to take risks. "Do you know what's so exciting about this? It's a chance to do a play by a famous playwright that I don't think anybody in this country will ever have seen. I would love to resurrect this for Terence Rattigan. He's a brilliant writer. A far better writer than we give him credit for, really.
"And he was elbowed out in the 1950s and 1960s by the new wave of writers coming into the Royal Court Theatre in London - the John Osbournes, the Arnold Weskers, Pinter. After all that anger, Ratigan seemed a little old-fashioned, you know? He was a drawing-room playwright. And then he wrote this play to be taken very seriously - and it didn't work. People didn't want that from Rattigan, you see. But now, in our day, it all seems highly relevant."
Set in the world of financial politics in 1930s Manhattan, the central character in Man and Boy - played by Suchet - is Gregor Antonescu, a high-powered international financier. The boy of the title is his son, who has disowned him five years before the play opens. The plot brings them together again - but is there redemption for Antonescu? Is there heck, says Suchet.
"Rattigan describes him as the devil - and, of course, the devil has the charm of the devil. But this is a man who has not an ounce of morality, who will go to any lengths at all to save his own skin for money."
AS SUCH, HE is almost the polar opposite of . . . uh-oh. The P-word is approaching. But the mention of his pear-shaped Belgian alter ego does not appear to disturb Suchet in the slightest.
On the contrary, he speaks of Hercule Poirot with some warmth, and claims to be able to remember the exact moment when the role was first proposed to him: in a "very posh Chinese restaurant in Acton" in November 1987.
Suchet says he telephoned his brother John, the television newsreader, for advice. "I said: 'What should I do - should I take this, because it will be quite high profile?' And he said: 'Don't touch it with a barge-pole'." Almost two decades later, Suchet has filmed all but 12 of Agatha Christie's Poirot short stories - and has made the character his own to a quite startling degree.
"Well," he says, "because I like him so much. He's honest; he's kind; he's lonely. I was once told by the Agatha Christie family never to let people laugh at Poirot, but let them smile with him. His eccentricity makes people smile. They find him irritatingly lovable. And, actually," he says, dropping his voice a couple of confidential degrees, "some people find him quite attractive."
What? Screen sleuth in sex symbol shock? A jest, surely?
At the other end of the line, Suchet is laughing. "Well, I never saw him like that," he says, "but I get letters from certain ladies. I don't know why. But perhaps because he treats women very well. He has a great deal of respect for them, and I'll tell you ... yes, I do know why. You wouldn't feel at risk with him at all. If you went out to dinner with him, for example, there'd be no agenda. None at all."
Fans - even of the non-physical kind - will be delighted to hear that another four Poirot stories are in the pipeline, and Suchet hopes to be able, one day, to complete the set. "I don't know whether I'll be given the chance to do them all - but I'd love to," he says.
"Because my career's very varied. I know most of the world knows me as Poirot. But those people who know my work, in the media and so forth, will know about all the other stuff that I do - and it's very exciting. I'm very lucky."
And suddenly, time's up. The rehearsal schedule beckons. It's only when I replace the phone that a pleasing thought strikes me. I have, I realise, been talking to a legend in his own lunch-time.
Man and Boy, by Terence Rattigan, directed by Maria Aitken and starring David Suchet, Ben Silverstone, Colin Stinton, Jennifer Lee Jellicorse, Emma Ferguson, Will Huggins and David Yelland, opens at the Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork, on October 11th