Actor Tim McMullan, who is joining forces with Complicité once again for its latest show Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, tells Fergus Morgan about the moments that have made up his theatre career, from inspiration in Islington to Merchant mishaps
During three decades as a professional actor, Tim McMullan has traversed theatre, film and television, appearing in everything from His Dark Materials at the National Theatre to The Crown on Netflix to the film Shakespeare in Love. Yet one company has been at the core of his career: Complicité, the ensemble founded by Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden and Marcello Magni in 1983.
“I first saw a Complicité production when I was a student,” McMullan says. “It must have been 1984. Then I saw them again at the Edinburgh Festival in the summer of 1985, and it changed my life. All my preconceptions of what theatre could be were turned on their head. The thought that I would end up working with them never even crossed my mind at the time.”
After he had graduated from the University of St Andrews, trained at RADA and started working as an actor, McMullan did work with Complicité, though, devising and touring the world with some of the company’s most successful and most acclaimed shows, including 1994’s The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol, 1997’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, 1999’s Mnemonic and 2012’s The Master and Margarita.
“Complicité is easily the best thing that has happened to me in my career,” McMullan says. “It has been a really big part of my life as an actor. Theatre is the reason I became an actor. I fell in love with it as a kid. And no one makes theatre quite like Complicité. As an actor, you never experience anything else like it.”
McMullan is currently working with the company again, on an adaptation of Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk’s 2009 novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Rehearsals, though, are tinged with grief: Magni, the company’s co-founder and husband of McMullan’s co-star Kathryn Hunter, died of prostate cancer last September. His absence, McMullan says, is “hard to quantify”.
“Everyone is mourning,” he says. “Marcello was the heart and soul of the company. He was indivisible from it. And he still feels very much a part of what we are doing. We have all been influenced by his creativity and his willingness to play. There is a photograph of him in the rehearsal room. It definitely feels as if he is still with us there.”
I was taken by my parents to see a production of Arsenic and Old Lace at the Tower Theatre, Islington. I must have been six or seven, so it would have been the late 1960s.
I remember thinking it was incredibly funny, but not really knowing why. I was very lucky. My parents took my sisters and I to the theatre regularly. From a young age, I always wanted to be in plays, but it took me quite a long time to pluck up the courage. Eventually, I decided to give it a go when I was about 16.
The writing of Olga Tokarczuk. She is a new discovery for me and she is incredible. I also get inspired by these young climate activists. I’ve got a niece who is busy gluing herself to motorways and stuff, and I think it is brilliant. I think it is what we should all be doing.
I always wanted to play Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. That never happened. I was offered Hamlet once when I left drama school, but couldn’t do it, then never got another chance. In all honesty, though, when it comes to parts, I am happy just seeing what surprises lay around the corner.
I wish there was more drama in schools. That infuriates me. The same goes for art and music. These things make people more articulate and imaginative, and better equipped to face the world.
I was in a production of The Merchant of Venice, playing Antonio. I was pre-set on stage while the audience came in. During one show, there was some malfunction with the lights. The audience thought the play had started and it hadn’t. They just stared at my back. I became so embarrassed that I turned around and said: “It’s all right, you can carry on talking.” And at that exact moment, the music struck up and the show started. Can you imagine anything more inept?
My first Complicité show, The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol. We were a little family, travelling the world with this wonderful show. It was one of the happiest times of my life.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. In true Complicité fashion, audiences won’t have seen anything like it before.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is at Bristol Old Vic on January 19-February 11, then tours until the summer. For more information, visit: bristololdvic.org.uk
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