The weeks' arts news
Monday 9 April 2007 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
Featuring an extended interview with one of Britain's most celebrated and dynamic actors, Sir Antony Sher.
Playlist
Tonight's Night Waves is given over to an extended interview with one of Britain's most celebrated and dynamic actors - Sir Antony Sher.
Sher's latest stage role is of the great 19th Century romantic actor - Edmund Kean - whose tumultuous life story was first turned into a play by Alexandre Dumas and then reinvented in the 20th century by Jean Paul Sartre. Sher takes on Kean in the Sartre version directed by Adrian Noble for a British tour ending at the Apollo in London at the end of May.
Antony Sher talks to Philip Dodd about playing Kean, who has been described as a small, dark man with a gruff voice from a poor background. Like Sher one of Kean's most notable performances was as Richard 111, but what other similarities exist between the two actors?
Sher also talks about his transformation from a shy, Jewish, gay man in South Africa to the flamboyant star of such varied roles as the drag queen hero of Torch Song Trilogy to his feted Shylock. He describes the darker side of his creative life and his addiction to cocaine as well as his tireless other works as a writer and a painter.
