Sussex venues for Far from the Madding Crowd on theatre tour

SussexWorld

Worthing-based Conn Artists are embarking on an ambitious three-month tour with their own adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely as

00:06ever to speak to Ross Muir. Now, Ross, you are on the road once again with Con Artist,

00:12your company which you set up a few years ago through Worthing Theatres. You're on the

00:16road with your own adaptation with Nick Young of Far From the Madding Crowd, which is a

00:20fabulous book as we were discussing just now. Why this one? What makes it such a great book?

00:27I think what makes it such a great book is, among many themes, it's ultimately about love

00:34and different ways of loving and how we relate to our partners. I think it's a story, Hardy's

00:45first great Wessex novel, and it's a story that resonates with a lot of people. It's

00:52got a fantastic central character, the independent, headstrong Bathsheba Everdeen, who inherits

00:58her uncle's farm and decides to manage it herself, which is absolutely wonderful. But

01:05then, of course, she's got these suitors, these three suitors, and gets herself into

01:12some very awkward romantic entanglements. Particularly with the suitor that you are

01:17playing, Boldwood. Yes, so William Boldwood, who is in effect her neighbour, his farmland

01:25borders hers. He's a wealthy but very lonely farmer, and she frivolously sends him a valentine,

01:36and he suddenly takes it as an awakening for him to fill a void in his life, and that is

01:45to be loved and have a companion. But his love, compared to Gabriel's, which is, of

01:53course, loyal to the last, is an obsessive one, and borders on insanity, and he doesn't

02:01know how to take no for an answer. So it leads to a very dramatic conclusion at the end of

02:07the book.

02:08What a fabulous character, as you were saying, Ian. Sometimes you read it and you feel more

02:11sympathy for Boldwood than you do other times you read it. Where are you sitting at the

02:15moment as you approach playing this very dark and complex character?

02:20I think at the moment it's about trying to find the truth of the role. I would like to

02:27sort of find his vulnerability, and then, you know, explore that through the scenes

02:34that I play with the actors. I think, you know, one of the interesting scenes in particular

02:39is when he confronts Sergeant Troy, and when he confronts Troy, who he knows at this stage

02:46is, you know, courting, at least Bathsheba, he's going to attempt to buy him off and give

02:54him the money to go and marry Fanny Robin. But what he doesn't realise is that Troy and

03:00Bathsheba have already got secretly married at Bath. So by the end of the scene, from

03:04having started quite high status, and I'm going to take control of the situation, he's

03:09this kind of pathetic wreck, who's been completely toyed with, you know, by Troy, and made a

03:17complete fool of. And I think that range within a scene to play is very exciting as an actor.

03:23Absolutely, and to do that on the stage is saying, obviously, it's a vast, dense, complex

03:28novel, but you've got to distill so much, haven't you, to put it onto the stage, which

03:33is a very different thing, isn't it?

03:35It is. And of course, you know, I should say that, you know, all of the actors are

03:39multi-rolling, probably apart from Bathsheba, although she does have a couple of little

03:43cameos as well. So, you know, we all play some of the yokels as well and the farmhands

03:48to try and give a flavour of the scene and the background. And there's going to be lots

03:53of sort of, you know, quick changes and movement from one scene to the next. So it should be

03:58quite fast moving and flowing. And we're linking the scenes with traditional ballads,

04:05but, you know, really only just like a verse or two just to take us from one scene into

04:09the next and try and give the audience the atmosphere and flavour of the times.

04:16Well, it sounds fantastic, Undertaking. Good luck with it. It's on at various venues in

04:22our area, which I'll specify, including Portsmouth New Theatre Royal and you're doing Horsham

04:28and so on. Lovely to speak to you and good luck with it. Thank you.

04:33Thank you, Phil.

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