 Suchet: stays in character as Poirot - except for lunch |
David Suchet has long been a familiar face on our television screens but his latest project will see him return to the West End in a stage role.
On Monday, he takes the starring role at London's Duchess theatre in Terence Rattigan's 'Man and Boy' - the first production of the play for just over 40 years.
Not to be confused with the Tony Parons novel of the same name, in this play, the "man" of the title is Gregor Antonescu, a Romanian-born financier in desperate straits.
The "Boy", Basil, is his natural son, living in a seedy basement apartment in Greenwich Village, New York, where the play is set, in the mid-1930s.
"I play a man who's completely amoral, " David explained to us. " A sort of Robert Maxell."
The action takes place in the course of a single summer night, when Gregor, on the run from the eyes of the world, turns up unexpectedly at Basil's apartment.
For Rattigan, the play was a new departure: he'd fallen out of favour with the literary establishement of the early sixties, who felt his plays were becoming dated.
But Man and Boy had a mixed reception and hasn't been produced since.
David Suchet is an accomplished actor, who's probably best known to many as Agatha Christie's Poirot.
He explained to Dermot and Natasha how he likes to stay in character between takes:
"I have to maintain the accent and maintain him because he's so different from me," he told us.
"He's got padding and a moustache and he doesn't speak how I speak. His gestures are so different from mine that it takes me ages to get into it.
"I do take off the moustache at lunchtime, though, and go back to being myself."
Terence Rattigan's Man and Boy opens next week at The Duchess Theatre. You might like to know that the production is taking part in a special discount scheme called Get Into London Theatre, to February 19.
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