Playing it for Daniel

“I just dreaded telling them that I wasn’t going to do economics, so in the end I  wrote them a letter” The speaker was Chuk Iwuji who is playing Henry VI in the Royal Shakespeare’s ambitious year long project to stage Shakespeare’s complete works at Stratford.

I met him a small French restaurant near Clapham in between rehearsal sessions. He was speaking about the moment he decided to give up economics which he had studied at Yale and take an acting course at the Winsconsin Conservatory where he had been offered a scholarship. But would his parents, career diplomats, be appalled?  After much hesitation the letter was finally written.

“But my father rang up and he was over the moon.”  “All we wanted” his father had said, “was for you to get through school”. “They have been so supportive,” he added.

Star quality

It seems strange now to think of Chuk, real name Chukwudi, not being an actor and poring instead over dry trade figures or inflation trends.  Although I had seen photographs of Chuk before meeting him, there was a still an element of surprise. He was as good looking as his photographs, certainly; smaller possibly, but the photographs do not do justice to the incredible vibrancy, the clear star quality that James DePaul had seen when he offered him the scholarship on the strength of a production of Becket, directed by a friend as part of his master’s project.
 
He was enjoying the rehearsals he said. It was a real gift for an actor to have security for two and a half years, more importantly, everybody in the company got on so well.

“Everybody has a chance to grow. It isn’t a star led cast; Michael (Boyd, the RSC artistic director) has had the confidence to choose people he really felt were right for the part. People get such amazing opportunities.” Maybe not star-led; even so there are a fair few smatterings of stars included in the programme - Sir Ian McKellen as Lear, Judi Dench as Mistress Quickly in the Merry Wives of Windsor.
 
Pathway to the RSC

If Chuk was enjoying the rehearsals, I also suspected he was enjoying being interviewed. At some point in the future, maybe not so far off, interviews may become a bore, the questions too predictable, the answers automatic but not quite yet. So I was fortunate in hearing at first hand about his extraordinary pathway to the RSC.

For contemporaries who come out of drama school and have to struggle with auditions for television commercials or minor parts in soaps, knowing Chuk must be hard. His rise has been so apparently effortless.

The story goes back five years. He had finished at the Conservatory and was playing Hippolytus in Racine's Phedre,  when he had a call from his elder brother Daniel. It is obviously a close knit family and he talks a lot about them, especially about Daniel who sadly died of complications surrounding sickle celled anaemia.

Back to London

“Hey dude – you ought to come back to London, they have a black actor playing Henry VI at the RSC. Things are changing for black actors; the time may be right” Daniel had said. He moved back to England  and got a part playing the soothsayer in Ed Hall’s Julius Caesar and played in Stephen Pimlot's Hamlet, giving him the chance to meet people like Greg Hicks whom he describes as very influential. “He guided me through Bacchae with Peter Hall. and also helped me when I played Aufidius opposite his Coriolanus”

His chance to play Henry came completely out of the blue. “I was auditioning for another part with the RSC when Michael (Boyd) suddenly asked “can you read something for me. It was Henry and I instantly connected with it. I felt my training for the part had begun five years earlier. I thought of my brother, it felt as if I were meant to get the part.”

Brother's legacy

Henry, he feels now was his brother’s legacy to him. I said something about it being sad that he would not see him play it.  “Yes, it was sad,” Chuk said, “but he was 35 and he was not expected to live much beyond infancy. He had great strength you would not have known that he was ill.”

So what does he believe he brings to Henry? “Initially I felt myself judging the character a lot, which you shouldn’t do. He was very pious and during his reign England loses France so it is easy to look at him and think ‘weak king’. But it was more complicated than that, yes there was vulnerability but there was also a kind of strength; he did not want blood to be shed. There was bravery in wanting peace rather than starting a war. I came to see that he was not weak; he comes from a place of absolute strength and conviction about what he believed in, even if it went against what everybody else thought. I am not going to let him be a pushover. Hearing him speak you cannot help be conscious of the extraordinary way that Shakespeare’s themes are relevant in today’s political climate

More interest

Inevitably I ask him about the difference that being black makes to his performance.

“It’s not an issue for me but there is possibly more interest than there would be for a white actor. But it is one of the things which is fantastic about classical theatre it has that possibility.  If you do the job well then it is not an issue.” But he is annoyed where scripts specify race where it is simply not relevant. ‘Policeman, father of two.’ Why does it need to specify whether the actor should be white or black?”

“So, what next?”

He admits to being attracted to the “magic of film”. “It was film that made me want to become an actor – I was far more exposed to it than the stage.” So possibly back to the US.

“Could he do the accent?” 

“Certainly”

How does he describe his accent now? His voice is interesting – strong, very clear; you can’t quite put your finger on his origins.

“It’s a mishmash of Mid Atlantic tempered with several seasons at the RSC but as I am of Nigerian descent there are Igbo undertones. English is actually a second language. “

Thinking in English

I challenge this. He is far too fluent, his sentences far too sophisticated. Surely he thinks in English? He admits he does. Although he was brought up in Nigeria until the age of ten, he went to a boarding school in Surrey until A levels before going on to Yale. But Chuk believes that his consciousness of the language, the not taking it quite for granted, gives him an edge. With lunch over he hurries back to rehearsals.

Henry VI, Part 1, previews started on July 7. The play opens on August 9. If you have a chance, go and see him. I reckon that if you go now, you will be able to say when he has become a household name, as he surely will, "I saw that Chuk Iwuji at the RSC when he was just starting to be famous."  Except maybe by that time you will have learnt to say Chukwudi, Chuk may be easier for English speakers to pronounce but Chukwudi Iwuji has a very fine ring to it.