00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspaper. It's lovely
00:06this morning to speak to Martin Swann, who is playing Perks, or a character to play,
00:11Perks in the Railway Children for the Warburton players. Mark, you're saying you grew up in
00:17that era, Bernard Cribbins, etc. What does it mean to you to play this role?
00:22It's a lovely role to play because as soon as you mention the Railway Children and Bernard
00:25Cribbins, everybody knows it. They don't go, what, who, never heard of that? I don't
00:31think there's many people of a certain generation who haven't seen that film and enjoyed it
00:36as an adult or enjoyed it as a child. It is a lovely film and it still stands up today,
00:39I think.
00:40Does that association, does that govern the way you play it, or is there only one way
00:44to play it, the Bernard Cribbins way?
00:47I just think you've got to get that, you've got to get that sort of, it's that dry Yorkshire-ness
00:53with still having that kindness there, you know, because he's not horrible to the children,
00:57he's not a grumpy man, he's just a proud Yorkshire man who gets involved with his three children
01:01from London and the sort of fun he's used from there. So you've got to, he loves them,
01:07he loves them in his own little way, along with his own children, and I think it's, there's
01:12many ways you could play it, but I think, you know, I thought it was good enough to
01:15be Bernard Cribbins, but I've watched it and I'm just, it's gentle humour with a little
01:21bit of, like I say, the dry Yorkshire humour in there, it's fantastic.
01:25And it's a film that's always been in our background, isn't it, it's part of our heritage,
01:29isn't it? And you're saying you've watched it again fairly recently.
01:32Yes.
01:33The fact is, it stands up, doesn't it? It really does stand out.
01:36It stands the test of time.
01:38But, it still works.
01:41The values, the values that were then, and even in the 70s when the film was made, and
01:47it's set in the early 1900s, the values, I still think, shine through today, which
01:51is family and community, and I think that's fantastic.
01:54Yeah, and you've been with Warburton Players for a little while, a couple of years?
01:58A couple of years now, done a few productions with them, really friendly bunch, good bunch
02:02as well. Come together as a team backstage, Freddie Lowe, we've got the house and the
02:07actors and actresses. We've got the youth theatre as well, so that's where we've got
02:09some of the children from to play some of their parts, which is great, so they can come
02:13through and be involved in an adult play, which is quite good, because doing kids'
02:17plays with kids, they learn some skills there, but working with adults as well gives them
02:23something they can look at and go, right, OK, this is how it works on an adult play.
02:29It really sounds a lovely prospect. Good luck.
02:32Lovely to speak to you. Thank you.
02:34That's great. Thank you very much. Lovely to speak to you as well, Phil.
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