The Da Vinci Code, first a 2003 best-selling novel from Dan Brown, then 2006 smash-hit movie featuring one Tom Hanks, has now been adapted for stage by writers Rachel Wagstaff & Duncan Abel. Premiered back in January at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley, this all bells & whistles production will tour around the UK until November.
It arrives at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh on Tues 5th April – tickets will be selling fast.
I was lucky enough to sit down with three of the stars of the show: Nigel Harman, Danny John-Jules, and Leigh Lothian, when they spent a morning at 15th century Rosslyn Chapel, in the heart of Midlothian, and a crucial location in the Da Vinci Code story.
“I find it quite funny being here,” says Nigel, who plays hero Robert Langdon “because some of the stone pillars are represented on set. From the front they’re there, but when you walk behind them, it’s just half a semicircle and a load of unpainted wood with the name ‘Roslyn Chapel’ so we know which set it is!”
Nigel continues, “Being here is quite humbling and also a perk of the job. I’m not sure when I’d have got here. I know I probably would have done at some point in my life, but I’m not sure when. Now I’m here and I feel quite lucky.
There’s a responsibility that comes with the job, it’s one of the first things I thought [on arriving at Roslyn], because the thing about acting is you’re always acting, always making up — however method you get — you’re still acting! Then you come here, and it makes it incredibly real, so you think, ‘I have a responsibility to make it as believable as possible, because this place is everything you’d thought it’d be and more.”
Leigh adds, “I’ve never been before. It’s only an hour away from where I grew up, but unless you drove or got the train into town…but then that’s not really on your mind when you’re a teenager. I definitely knew about it, but this is the first time I’ve ever been.”
This is more surprising an omission than you might think…
“Actually, I’ve always been weirdly obsessed with history. When I was younger, my uncle used to bring me up to see all the historic spots in Edinburgh, so I’m surprised he never brought me here.”
And now she’s here?
“Whenever you get into a space like this, there’s an instilled respect that comes out in you. It’s definitely something I’ll take back onto set with me.”
Turning then to the Da Vinci Code, I ask what they knew of it before booking their place in the cast…
“It’s one of those films.” Danny, who plays Holy Grail expert, Sir Leigh Teabing, tells me, “You’ve got to be really focussed on it for the entire time. Every time I started watching, it would be the wrong time!”
He also hadn’t had a chance to read the book, which came out in 2003. “The last 20 years,” he explains, “I’ve just been constantly cracking on working. I had Red Dwarf going on, Death in Paradise going on, and I’m not the kind of person that can sit down for two hours without fidgeting.”
Leigh adds, “I read the book maybe a year after it came out, loved it, but I hadn’t actually seen the film until the audition came through.”
Up till then, she explained, she’d avoided seeing the movie in case it proved a let-down, butnow she did, and came away with a lot of questions about the play she was waiting to hear back from.
“I asked myself, ‘how are they going to put this on stage? I felt a strange intrigue as to how it could work.”
Sentiments shared by her cast-mates…
“The audio book is seventeen hours long!” says Danny, “We’re doing this with an interval and two hours. Whoever thought of writing this is lunatic, and the guys who produced it are even more mad, as are we [the actors.]”
and Nigel? “It’s two hours with an interval,” he says, “so basically a football match! When I’d tell people what I was doing, they were asking, “how are you going to put that on the stage?” That was the big question: ‘how are you even going to achieve that?”
And the script?
Danny tells me, “When I read the script of the play, I didn’t think that it seemed sparse, or I was missing the plot.”
He illustrates his point, relating events following a previous performance at the Theatre Royal Bath.
“I was walking down past the Spa, a few people who’d been to the theatre were sitting outside.” First one, then another thanked Danny for a lovely time, but it was the third chap to speak who made Danny’s day. “He says to me, ‘I understand it more clearly now.’ For me, that was like, wow!”
The positive reviews the show has received since it premiered suggests that Danny’s street side critic isn’t alone in considering the show a success. When asked, Nigel has a few ideas as to why that’s the case.
“First, we’ve got this thing called invisible gauze: you can’t really see it from the audience, but it means we can project on every wall, and ceiling on set, even float things in the middle. So, you can watch the workings of Robert Langdon’s mind, locations can change in the blink of an eye, mirror-writing can be revealed live. The visuals on the show are massive, and extraordinarily clever; it launches you into the story.”
“We also have a banging soundtrack! Ben and Max Ringham [the shows musical composers], who I’ve worked with many times, are just extraordinary. They’ve written some amazing music, so you’re constantly on this energy buzz all the way through.”
“Ultimately,” he finishes, “we never let the audience breathe. There’s a couple of moments, and I warn you now, if we slow the pace down its because we’re about to hit you with something else. I think that’s why it works.”
Now, there’s no escaping the fact that before Nigel and Danny took the roles of Robert Langdon, and Sir Leigh Teabing, respectively, they were first played by Tom Hanks, and Sir Ian McKellen.
“Why would anybody want to go and step into the shoes of a Lord of the theatre,” says Danny, “in a film that everybody knows, in a book that’s sold a hundred million, and you’re going to go on and step into Sir Ian McKellen’s shoes?“
Is he daunted? Not a chance. To Danny a huge part of his motivations in taking the role, was the challenge.
He says, “If one person walks out of that theatre and says “Ian McKellen” I’ve failed.”
Nigel has a different take, “I’ve never really thought about it.” he says, “The only question I had was when they asked me to do it was, “Will I have to grow the mullet?” They said no, and I said ‘I’m in’”
I’ve been in this position before. I did Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls which was Marlon Brando. I did The Caretaker, which Harold Pinter played himself [he also wrote the play] when it first went to London. I remember being freaked me out when he came to see the show!”
Nigel explains he’s done with thinking of comparisons, “I tend not to do that anymore. You know, Tom Hanks is brilliant, and lovely. I’ll just do my version. I don’t know how wildly different is, or how exactly the same age it is.”
That’s not to say Nigel’s entirely oblivious of Hanks’ performance,
“I do one line,” he adds with a smile, “like him. I remember a line he did the film, which I’ve stolen completely, and it arrived in the script, so I went, ‘I’m just going to sound exactly like he did, because he’s brilliant!’”
Leigh doesn’t have a multi-Oscar winner or theatrical Knight to take over from, but her character has undergone some changes from previous incarnations.
“The character that I play [Lieutenant Collet, a French police officer], in the film and the book, is male; I thought that was interesting, a nice little hook.”
I asked whether changing the sex of the character was noteworthy in her opinion, and her wider views on diversity and representation in the performing industries.
“These sorts of things matter, diversity matters” she confirms, “the industry now, is far more diverse than it has been, but it should have always been like that. That shouldn’t have been a change that had to happen. It should have been like that from the off.”
Leigh tells me that during cast and crew discussions with regards to understudies, the idea of a female covering Silas (a fanatical monk who serves as one of the story’s main antagonists) has been raised, “wouldn’t that be interesting? What’s to say that Silas couldn’t be female?”
She also points to the show’s casting of another woman in the previously male role of Vernet (a high powered, secretive banker our heroes meet on their journeys).
“You hope that more productions would think to play around with gender, think if characters have to male or female, or could they even be non-binary? Representation matters, we all gravitate towards films or stories offering somebody like us or who feels like us, or who looks like us.”
She reminded me of the viral Instagram post which circulated recently, picturing a delighted little boy standing next to one of the characters in the movie Encanto with whom he shared an uncanny resemblance. The hashtag read #representationmatters.
For Danny, his character may not have changed gender, but the somewhat eccentric aristocrat is Caucasian in both novel, and movie. I ask if his casting is colour-conscious (a deliberately inclusive, thoughtful act) or colour-blind (casting irrespective of ethnicity and other considerations.) For Danny, this isn’t the right way to look at things.
It’s a lack of education, Danny proposes, that makes his casting seem in any way unusual. He found himself checking his own thinking when the producers called him up to feel out his interest in taking the role on.
“When they came to me and said, ‘how about Leigh Teabing?’, I was like, what?! Even I was shocked! Then I look at it and I said to myself, “Well, okay, so he’s a billionaire, and he’s a professor. You know how many billionaires there are in Africa? Hundreds of them, hundreds!”
He carries on, “Think about it, right? I could name you loads of Caribbean “Sirs”: Sir Willard White, Sir Garfield Sobers, at least four West-Indian Lords of Cricket; Lord Pitt, who opened the old people’s home my grandmother died in. I could go on forever. It’s not unusual to see a black Lord of the realm, or a Sir, or a Knight. I could put 59 pictures of them on Instagram!”
“Look at Leigh Teabing, what is he? A billionaire, English professor, what would he wear?” He gestures to his own resplendent garb, “Of course, he’d have brogues on, of course he’d be wearing Harris Tweed!
“In the end, I looked at it from every angle, and thought, well why should I be worried about playing this part? I don’t see any reason why they [the producers] have to explain anything. In the end they just cast the part with an actor they thought could handle it.”
Ultimately Danny’s surprise is personal, rather than a matter of identity.
“But would you think of me in that guise?” he asks me, “Whoever thought of that, it’s just mad!”
Danny loved the challenge of his role, but what about Nigel? What got this award-winning actor and director to sign up for months on the road with this show?
“I liked the idea that it was a world premiere.” he tells me “But, we weren’t doing it in London. We opened in Bromley only so the creative team could commute in. After that, we hit the road.
I really liked that.
I love the West-End, but I find it’s a lot to ask people to: get on a train, to pay the train fares, and then to pay a hundred quid or more on tickets, and then you have to eat…it’s a massive undertaking. To bring it to people’s hometowns and ask the thirty-five or forty quid, I think it’s really good!
I also thought the script was good, and I knew a lot of the creative team, all of them top-end. If they said ‘yes’ to this, when normally they’re normally booked up in the West-End for at least six years, then something good is happening, and Luke Shephard, in particular, is a director of renown.“
Finally, we turn discussions to my hometown, Edinburgh and how they feel about coming to the King’s in April this year. Nigel reminisces about playing Shrek at the Playhouse several years back, and then tells me he’s a huge rugby fan, and that he’s hoping to catch a match at Murrayfield when he’s in town.
Leigh has more personal connections to Auld Reekie,
“Every show I ever saw as a kid on tour was at the Playhouse, so when I returned for the first time [playing lead in Beautiful, the Carole King Musical] it was really overwhelming. My teacher brought basically the whole school to come and watch; I cried quite a lot that day.”
She continues…
“I play my character as Scottish: we all keep our own accent. It seems important to go back to the hometown and represent the Scots!”
I leave the last words to Nigel and Danny, reflecting on the show’s life on the road thus far.
“There’s growing confidence about coming to the theatre and as that’s happened the responses to shows have got bigger and bigger. I don’t really follow the reviews, but I do think people are enjoying it. We’re a community,” he says, “We need you, as much as you need us.”
And Danny?
“I was speaking to the writers and they’re emailing back and forth with Dan Brown. “He was gracious enough to say, “you seem to have managed something that I couldn’t…good reviews!”” He beams at me, “Mate, I’m done.”
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