Review: DAVID SUCHET - POIROT AND MORE, A RETROSPECTIVE - Original Theatre Online
Original Theatre have been innovating in capturing live theatre for streaming over the last few years and have produced some very good, highly watchable content such as Being Mr Wickham, Barnes’ People and Splinter of Ice. Their latest offering is a straightforward capture of a show that has been touring the UK for over a year, David Suchet - Poirot and More. Filmed in March 2024 at the Leeds Playhouse, it is delightful set of recollections from one of Britain’s great theatrical knights.
Sir David Suchet reflects on his acting career with a combination of a gentle chat about his roles with his long-time friend and journalist Geoffery Wansell, and provides an extraordinarily insightful masterclass on delivering Shakespeare words as he meant them to be said, and how he created the character of Hercule Poirot. However, as he cheerfully and gratefully acknowledges, it is his fame in the long running TV film series about Agatha Christie’s Belgium detective that attracts his audience rather than his thirteen-year stint at the Royal Shakespeare Company which started in 1973.
Although we are sure largely scripted, the chat between Wansell and Suchet, which takes up most of the first half, is charmingly delivered, showing their friendship but allowing Suchet to tell his stories like a practiced professional. We hear about his school days, his time with the National Youth Theatre and at LAMDA, and that first performance on stage as an oyster and then in Macbeth. They all too briefly discuss his family background and his grandmother who performed the sand dance on the Empire Music Hall circuit. He does acknowledge his wife of fifty-two years, Sheila, who he met at the RSC in 1972 and their life on narrowboats as an alternative to theatrical digs.
His break came when he suddenly got fired from acting stage manager in repertory but was then re-hired as a fully-fledged actor. They touch all too briefly on his performance as Blott in Blott on the Landscape on TV in 1985, which apparently interested the Christie family enough to consider him for Poirot, and as Lady Bracknell on stage in The Importance of Being Ernest. He also tells of his pantomime debut in December 2023 as Captain Hook at the Bristol Hippodrome for which he has been nominated for an award in the UK Pantomime Awards, and the joy of meeting young children after the show whom he describes as the “future audiences”.
In the second half, he gives a speech from Amadeus in which he was directed by Sir Peter Hall and, together with the author, reworked the last third of the play from the version originated by Paul Schofield. The reworked show was taken to Broadway where he was nominated for a Tony despite an adverse review from the New York Times.
He expands on this when he is asked what makes a good director and he tells us one who directs not dictates and we begin to get an insight into how he thinks and prepares as an actor for a part. The need for guidance and encouragement from the director to allow him to make mistakes in rehearsal as he explores the character he is playing.
The show really takes off as he leaves his comfy chair and explains his Shakespeare “Highway Code”, the method of using the text to understand and explore what the author intended. His explanations of Iambic pentameter, alliteration within the lines, antithesis (use of opposites) and onomatopoeia (when a word imitates the sound it describes), illustrated with speeches from many of his famous plays was quite extraordinary. You began to not only understand his method of leaning in on a character in rehearsal, but also his skill as a performer and a better understanding of the cleverness of the text. He describes the role of the actor is to serve the writer and find the right voice for the character as intended by the author. It is enthralling and fascinating to listen to.
Then finally we come to what we all want to hear, how he transformed himself into Poirot, describing the moustache, the walk with the special cane and most of all, the voice he adopted and why. It is a brilliant exposition and before your eyes he transformed himself from a well-bred emotional Englishman into cerebral Belgian detective. His 13 series and 70 episodes of Poirot were produced between 1989 and 2013 and are now the definitive performances of the character that attract audiences all around the world and will be a lasting legacy from this wonderful actor. Wansell claims he encouraged Suchet to take the part in 1988 and said it would “change your life” and so it has.
This is a highly watchable, insightful two hours and a joy for anyone interested in the process of creating theatre or simply wanting to be charmed by the man who created the definitive Poirot.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Nick Wayne
David Suchet: Poirot and More - A Retrospective is available to Original Theatre members from 17 May and for the general public from 31 May here.