Much ado

TV Robin Hood favourite Sam Troughton temporarily halts our interview in memorable fashion: “Hold on two minutes, I’ve just got to go and do a dance,” he says and dashes off inside the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Courtyard Theatre at Stratford.

This isn’t just any old dance mind you. On stage, he’s unrecognisable in head-to-toe strips of newspaper with a marrowsized phallic appendage on display in a scene from the RSC’s The Winter’s Tale, which is part of this year’s Newcastle season.

Troughton doesn’t mind in the least being considered a “bit part”

player in Tale, but he’s also Brutus in Julius Caesar this season and signed up to play Romeo in 2010.

As promised, rehearsal done, the lithe grandson of Doctor Who Patrick Troughton and son of wellknown Stratford-based actor David Troughton races back to complete his interrogation about swapping bows and arrows for the bard.

“The whole phallic thing was in the original text. When we were rehearsing the thing everyone was saying ‘oh please, please, let us be wearing masks’ but now it’s brilliant and great fun to do. I have to say that I’m now a lot fitter than when I was dashing around in Robin Hood,” he says about the dance number which involves nearly every member of the cast.

One surprise he has is that he wasn’t the first member of the family to appear in Robin Hood. His grandfather was an early children’s BBC version of Robin Hood, in 1953, before ITV ran the popular series with Richard Greene.

“When we were researching Robin Hood I found out my granddad was the first actor to play him on television. It was a six-part kids’ series and I think there were thin wooden trees in the background. It’s a little-known fact, probably because of his Doctor Who connections. That ran and ran while this was a one-off. There are pictures, but I suspect that the BBC probably taped over most of the original programmes because no one saw the value of these early shows,” he says.

Rumour has it that just one episode of Patrick as Hood, with David Kossof as the Sheriff of Nottingham, is thought to exist.

Troughton jokes about the way his own Merrie Man, Much, swung violently between hero and coward from week to week. “I’d find myself saying ‘my script is different from last week’ but we had a great time particularly the four of us who were in all three series, Gordon (Kennedy, Little John), Jonas (Armstrong, Allan A Dale) and Joe (son of Alun Armstrong, Allan A Dale), we became very close and it was great living in Budapest. We were there for six months of the year and there was a lot of hype over the first series and it was strange arriving back to see ourselves on TV the next week.”

Troughton feels after the tremendous response to the first episodes that the third series didn’t deserve to wither away in the ratings the way it did, particularly as the scripts had improved.

“We were up against Britain’s Got Talent and only about ten people were watching by that point. That kind of thing is out of your hands really, but a lot of people did like it. And it’s quite difficult because a family drama has to be suitable for kids. Yet it finished in a bloodbath after they killed off Robin and Guy of Gisborne and they’d killed Marion the season before. So there’s a whole generation of children who’ve been scarred. But I survived,” he says.

In spite of all the months of hand-to-hand combat, the actor reveals that it was the stuntmen who suffered the injuries at the hands of the actors. “I knocked out one poor guy with a cabbage. He was standing a lot closer to me than he had been in rehearsals and I just turned and threw it with the same force,” he says with a shrug.

Troughton says that while instant fame seemed to pass him by somewhat, because he spent 18 months in Hungary shooting Robin Hood, he does still have friends of his four-year-old son, Finlay, calling him Much.

His partner is Rajer, an actress recently seen in the Doctor Who spin-off drama Torchwood.

Troughton’s the eldest of three brothers, Jim, being the Warwickshire cricketer, and William, just starting out as an actor.

On playing Brutus, his biggest Shakespeare role to date, he says: “It’s an incredible part. He’s a character with good intentions who makes some terrible decisions. How do you equate murder, let alone it being your friend, for the greater good. So he’s in a bit of a trap.

Julius Caesar was a play that I didn’t know hugely well, but we read a lot of Roman history which was brilliant and, ultimately, there’s so much you can read about the play,” says Troughton, who still feels that his fine monologues as Brutus are topped by those of Anthony.

“He’s told that he’s the villain in the same way that Hamlet is told he’s the hero. I think it’s the same way as your vote goes on a politician,” he jokes.

He cut his teeth with the RSC between 1999 and 2001, but is aware that his decision to be part of the current ensemble until 2011 is more or a gamble having lifted his acting profile in recent years.

“I have just moved up from London to Stratford and now I can go home from work every day. It’s also a fantastic project to get involved in and I hadn’t down any Shakespeare or much theatre for a while. There are also some fabulous parts ahead, like Romeo.

It’s suicide again I’m afraid, but I’m looking forward to playing Stratford with it next summer and taking the role to Newcastle,” says the actor who is delighted to also take on cameo roles in other productions – parts he dubs Ole Gunner Solskjaer roles, after the much-vaunted Manchester United substitute.

“If you’d asked me about Shakespeare roles a few years ago I’d have said I’d have to be older to play Brutus and I thought my chances of playing Romeo had gone. I feel I’ve had a lot of practise before playing Romeo,” he says, revealing that his discussions with director Rupert Goold have centered on his star-crossed lover, alongside actress Mariah Gale, being a Hamlet-style portrayal.

Troughton says he’d love to act alongside his father one day, suggesting Hamlet-Claudius rather than a more obvious father-and-son portrayal.

“I ask him for advice and he talked to me about Julius Caesar.

But the acting reputation of my family isn’t heavy on my shoulders.

I think that’s partly because my dad had the same thing with his father. When I first came to the RSC there was nothing about me being the son of David Troughton.

And thankfully everything turned out all right.”

Right on cue we’re interrupted by an older autograph hunter who thanks Troughton for being part of a family “which has entertained us for years”.

■ The Newcastle season, October 20-November 7, sees four Shakespeare plays – As You Like It, The Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar and a young people’s version of The Comedy Of Errors – touring to the city’s Theatre Royal plus the world premiere of A Tender Thing by Ben Power, a look at Romeo And Juliet as older lovers, and a new version of Roy Williams’ Days of Significance playing Northern Stage.

Newcastle Theatre Royal: 08448- 112-121 theatreroyal.co.uk Northern Stage: 0191-230-5151 northernstage.co.uk