As Malvolio Sam West is pompous and deluded, in real life the actor is a generous and witty conversationalist, as Gill Sutherland found out in this first part of our interview with him.
YOUR last appearances at the RSC were in the title roles in Hamlet in 2001 and Richard II in 2000, what’s enticed you back?
Lots of things. Mostly the new regime, and the part and the director. Tam and Dan, both of whom I know and love, said ‘Look, it’s our first season, it’s a Christmas show, do you want be Malvolio in it?’ So you go ‘yeah, I believe in you’. I want them to succeed and play my part in that.
Malvolio is not an enormous part, but it’s difficult and interesting and I love the ensemble.
I should add that it wasn’t that I wouldn’t want to have been here under the old regime, but they didn’t ask… At least they didn’t ask when the children were young enough for me to be able to do it [Sam has two daughters, aged seven and ten, with playwright wife Laura Wade].
Sam West at RSC
What was it like when you were here 20-odd years ago?
I’m mourning the death of the repertory system – when I was last here before it felt like a revolutionary thing to be playing Shakespeare for a year with 80 people.
The world of entertainment has changed a great deal, and so has the funding of theatres. It’s much harder to cross-cast a company affordably now.
I would love to be considered for a full season here. But until All Creatures Great and Small finishes, I wouldn’t be able to do it.
The Christmas schedule is punishing but doable.
Samuel West as Malvolio: Helen Murray ; www.helenmurrayphotos.com
Was Malvolio ever been on your radar?
Malvolio hadn’t been on my radar. I said a few years ago that I don’t get asked to do comedy… very soon after that I did a funny thing for an advert for BBC licensing. It’s shot like an expensive thriller, but it’s actually just about TV licences.
People laughed, and it was the first time I’d done something for a while which was absolutely meant to be happy and funny.
I don’t know whether it had any bearing, but then I got the call to do All Creatures Great and Small to play Siegfried [he’s been playing the hit TV role since 2020].
Malvolio has got to have a very high opinion of himself – he shares quite a lot with Siegfried Farnon. Siegfried is a man who has a passing and, in some instances, justifiable belief in his own invincibility as a vet. And then gets into situations where he’s clearly wrong and won’t apologise.
Would Siegfried ever put yellow stockings on though?
Well, that’s a very interesting question because you have to say, would Malvolio ever? And the answer is no, of course not. I mean, he’s got a pair of rolled up stockings at the very back of his drawer from when he was a footman, but that’s 20 years ago now.
He’s lovesick for Olivia, and wants to look magnificent – that’s what I love about my version of the costume, no spoilers, I want to sort of decorate myself. And as Sam I wanted to cover my balls! And what I’ve ended up with is something that he thinks is magnificent because she wants it. He will do anything to please her.
And so he says: “This does make some obstruction in the blood, this cross-gartering, but what of that? If it please the eye of one, it is with me as the very true sonnet is: ‘Please one, and please all.’ In other words, ‘So as long as you like it, darling, I’ll do anything.’
And it’s kind of sexual, ‘I like it when you put those things on.’ It’s an unshakable belief in his own potential and his own sexual attractiveness.
He comes on with a magazine [a copy of Hello!], and points to it… ‘There is example for’t: The Lady of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe.’
He’s encouraged – the Yeoman of the Wardrobe is no posher than he is. It’s sort of ‘I know him, the Yeoman of the Wardrobe, we were at butlering school together. And he just happened to be in the right place at the right time when the Lady’s husband died and she needed a shoulder to cry on. That could have been me.’
So he sees an opportunity, but ordinarily, like a lot of Puritans, he’s anti-laughter, he’s anti-joy. It’s not for any good religious reason, but because he’s scared of it. Like most people who hate things, it’s just because they’re frightened of it.
Like you find the hatred of migrants is greatest in the areas where there are fewest of them. It’s just based on sort of ignorance, really.
Twelfth Night
What’s Malvolio’s role in the play?
On the face of it he seems simple enough, but actually he’s the only character that has some kind of transformation. He has a transformation, but he doesn’t learn anything, which is really interesting.
There’s all sorts of things that have struck me as unusual about this play. The first is that there’s only one setting.
When you’re in Illyria, you’re really in it, and everybody’s sort of on top of each other. And I think we’ve done that quite well. It feels like a show where everybody’s a bit close and everybody’s a bit drunk and everybody’s a bit mad, and there’s nowhere else to go.
In As You Like It, you go into the forest, or in Midsummer Night’s Dream, you go to another part of the forest or you run away.
Here there’s nowhere to run away to. And also, there’s no older generation. Mostly, if you want to find love in Shakespeare comedies, you have to go in the nicest possible way, ‘Sod you, Dad, I’m off.’
There’s no Dad. There’s Toby, but he’s a piss artist. So they’re sort of left to their own devices, and their own devices around love turn out to be not great.
Olivia’s obsessed with mourning. Malvolio is in love with himself. Orsino is obsessed with love, like ‘nobody else has ever loved as much as I did’.
Laura [Sam’s wife who saw the show on press night] was pointing out how that beautiful scene where the boys are dancing with each other could, in another production, be just a group of incels: ‘I hate women, they don’t shag me, and I can’t get one.’
The production has modern vibes, was that deliberate?
So there’s lots of ways of doing it. And I’m not trying to shoehorn it into the modern era too much, but if you imagine young people slightly obsessed with social media and the way they look – Olivia thinks, ‘I do look rather good in black.’
And Orsino thinks ‘I do look rather good in a mirror, as a sad person.’ And actually, they both learn to look at the person next to them and turn off Instagram and live proper, full lives, possibly slightly more mature lives.
And Malvolio, who discovers this inner love for display and excess, which is very funny, actually ends swearing revenge.
And in our production, swearing revenge on the whole audience, who have been his constant companions but didn’t warn him. Which is a great payoff, I think. So Malvolio leaves with poison in his heart and doesn’t really learn anything.
TWELFTH NIGHT
Michael Grady-Hall’s Feste is extraordinary – singing divinely and clowning sublimely – tell us about that.
I’m sure most people would agree, Michael’s Feste is a sort of sun at the heart of the show, around which we all just orbit. He’s quite incredible.
I’ve seen Twelfth Night where the Feste’s been melancholy, and they’re often very impressive performances, but it doesn’t make the show work, because it gives Malvolio nowhere to go.
I said I thought my costume should look different from Feste and different from Orsino, and they said, ‘Orsino’s in this 1940s suit and then he’s in full medals, and Feste’s in a bee costume [laughs].’ So I wanted something as simple and vertical and black and white as possible. And I’m really pleased with it, because it gives him a role to play, and importantly, he’s good at his job.
He’s a good steward, he’s slightly finickety, and he loves 50 words when five would do. The better he is at being a steward, the funnier he is when he abandons it.
In the last line of the letter [the one that fools him into thinking Olivia loves him and to wear cross-gartered yellow stockings], he says, ‘I’ve slightly neglected my duties.’ It’s heartbreaking. ‘ I’m afraid the wine cellar’s not been restocked.’
I think he’s a fascinating character and I’m really enjoying playing him. And also, I’m really enjoying the play.
Did you not expect to enjoy the play as much?
Yes, I enjoy the play much more than I thought I would, and I like it much more than I did when I started. It’s a particular point of Shakespeare’s life. I mean, you might say between Midsummer Night’s Dream and Winter’s Tale, something where it’s not all sort of sunny and simple and it’s not all cynical and difficult, but the love is complex and it is a play about grief.
And those of us who’ve seen or read Hamnet, you know, the RSC show about the death of Shakespeare’s son, who was a twin, and died five years before this play. And I read something saying that Judith, like a lot of twins who’ve been bereaved, might have started copying the behaviour of her dead sibling – like Viola does.
I wondered if that had happened, whether it informed the play. I mean, how could it not? There is so much loss in the play.
It’s Christmas with all those dark overwrought bits.
It’s sold as a seasonal comedy, but actually, like all good Christmas comedies, it’s full of drunkenness and arguments and hangovers and people sleeping with the wrong people.
And it’s sort of the show for the day when you take the decorations down and you’ve got a bit of a hangover.
Interestingly, Adrian Edmondson – the RSC’s last Malvolio in 2017 – told Herald Arts he didn’t really like Twelfth Night. That’s quite surprising, isn’t it?
But he’s right, it is all about bullying and the fourth act is a mess – the duel is a mess, and the play completely loses its way.
I think [director] Prasanna’s handled it very well with a lot of physical comedy and with some judicious cutting.
Adrian’s a mate and I had that conversation with him.
Did he say don’t do it?
No, he did say that there were a tiresome number of costume changes, which is true for such a small part. There are about nine costume changes, I think, and one of mine, for reasons which I won’t go into, is quite complicated.
He also said it was laughing at someone being bullied.
I just had a very short conversation with Prasanna before we began where I said the problem is with the gulling of Malvolio because if taken seriously, it’s tantamount to abuse and stops being funny.
He said, we are going to take it seriously. It is tantamount to abuse and it does stop being funny.
And I thought, OK, then I’ll be in that production.
And I think what’s interesting now I’m in it is that he’s absolutely right and also Shakespeare agrees with him – Shakespeare loses faith in the gag slightly before the audience does. Even now you get some of the audience laughing at Malvolio as he swears revenge.
Because Feste is Michael’s beautiful clown performance in the centre of the show, you can take Malvolio seriously until he leaves…. He basically goes and gets the bus home and you can forget about him.
It’s OK to be in a production which stops finding those things funny. One of my favourite notes as a director is, and to myself as an actor is, play the situation, not the character.
Finally, what will your Christmas look like this year?
I love working at Christmas, but obviously I’m not going to be spending more than two days at home in London – just Christmas Day and the evening of New Year’s Eve for the whole of Christmas. But if you’re going to spend your holidays away from your home, Stratford’s a very nice place to spend them in.
My daughters are coming up for a few days and they’ll see the show just after Christmas.
I’ve got a little two-up, two-down house in Shakespeare Street which for an actor feels like a made-up address! But it’s perfectly lovely and it’s warm, which is important.
PART TWO of Herald Arts interview with Sam West continues in next edition when he speaks about his career, the loss of father, the actor Tim West plus where in south Warwickshire he was conceived!