Theatre

Fans of the 900-year-old Time Lord may find it hard to believe, but it is possible to admire David Tennant without ever having sat through a whole episode of ‘Doctor Who’. I do have some sense of the gravitational pull of the Tardis, having had two colleagues – male, of course – who were always happy to clash about the merits of Baker v Pertwee. Tennant was once such a fan: ‘I was convinced from the age of three that I wanted to be Doctor Who,’ he confessed when I interviewed him in Stratford in 1996. ‘Then, when I discovered that Doctor Who didn’t exist, I wanted to be the man who played him.’

It says something for Tennant’s drive that his wish came true, to such an extent that when he recently returned to Stratford to play Hamlet, he had to explain to the play’s director, Gregory Doran, that they couldn’t meet quietly in a local pub as it would quickly turn into ‘a sci-fi convention’. Feature continues

‘The Herbal Bed’ (RSC) as Jack Lane, 1996
Tennant was working in Stratford way back in ’96, which shows just how foolish those snobs were who moaned when the RSC announced he would take on the Dane. Other future stars have passed me by, but I did spot Tennant when I first saw him onstage. He was performing in Peter Whelan’s ‘The Herbal Bed’, a play about Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna Hall. Jack Lane, played by Tennant, accused her of an adulterous affair and of having ‘the runinge of the reynes’ – gonorrhea. But Lane had made a pass at Susanna himself and had been dismissed as unfit to train as a doctor by her puritanical husband. What was so memorable about Tennant was that he made you realise Lane was a conflicted character, full of self-disgust, whose foul behaviour was driven in part by the recognition that he lacked his employers’ integrity.

‘As You Like It’ (RSC) as Touchstone, 1996
That year, he also played Touchstone in ‘As You Like It’, potentially one of Shakespeare’s least funny clowns. Again Tennant scored, this time as a man out of his comfort zone, desperate to get his leg over. Stratford’s old stage could be a daunting place for a first timer but he looked quite at home. As it was the year in which every other young Scottish actor had a role in ‘Trainspotting’, it seemed as if his unusual dedication to learning his craft might mean he would miss out on stardom for good.

‘The Comedy of Errors’ (RSC) as Antipholus of Syracuse, 2000
After his success as Touchstone, he was invited back to the RSC to play Romeo and Antipholus. I didn’t see the former but remember Tennant’s athleticism in ‘Comedy…’, sliding down a spiral staircase and somersaulting over a fountain in a manner worthy of a future Doctor Who. His gaunt, angular face and those wide brown eyes expressed endless astonishment as he was hailed by complete strangers. On the night I went, his servant was describing his would-be seductress who is ‘spherical like a globe’, when Tennant caught sight of an overweight, similarly spherical American in the front row and got a fit of giggles that sent the audience into hysterics without quite knowing why.

‘Lobby Hero’ (Donmar Warehouse/Ambassadors Theatre) as Jeff, 2002; ‘The Pillowman’ (National Theatre) as Katurian, 2003
Once Tennant left the RSC, he was quickly picked up to play the security guard with a moral quandary in Kenneth Lonergan’s ‘Lobby Hero’ and the manic artist in Martin McDonagh’s ‘Pillowman’, whose disturbed stories appear to be creating copycat crimes in a totalitarian state. After such prominent roles, it was hardly surprising that he soon began appearing on screen instead, most notably in Russell T Davies’s version of ‘Casanova’, which led to ‘Doctor Who’.

His recent return to the RSC was masterminded by Doran who saw him on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’. At some point during rehearsals, Tennant decided to abandon the Tardis. Maybe Hamlet’s indecision forced him to be decisive. Our review of the production in Stratford described Tennant as ‘a play-acting prince whose critique of the world lives most vividly in his eyeball-swivelling, lanky-limbed parodies of the parasites around him’. The production moves to London shortly but is already sold out. Soon he will have to reinvent himself for a post-Doctor world. Fame is fickle but at least, unlike that other son of the Scottish manse, Tennant knows that the public is completely behind him.

Read our review of David Tennant's ‘Hamlet’ at the RSC Stratford.