Year of the devil

FEAST isn't too bad a name for an actor, particularly a well-employed one with a penchant for black-hearted roles. In the case of Michael Feast, he's enjoying what he calls the year of the devil.

Two versions of God's greatest adversary will follow his creation of evil Dickens character Fagin for Oliver Twist at Newcastle's Theatre Royal next week (April 20-24).

The Brighton-born actor caused a stir with a 1996 Royal Shakespeare Company Tyneside season production of Faust which, in his own words, "let it all hang out". As for returning to the North-East as the legendary Fagin, Feast says it's a part you can't turn down.

"I'm a great Dickens fan. It's a good question to ask me if there's room for another interpretation of Fagin. I would say yes, of course, but it took me a week in rehearsals to shake off the images of Alec Guinness and Ron Moody in my head. But I certainly wasn't about to stick a big nose on and start speaking with a lisp."

Feast hit on the idea of writing a storyline of his character's early life which told of him being born in Eastern Europe in a little Jewish community. Fagin's parents were killed in a pogrom and he made his way to London where the Jewish community brought him up.

"I felt in some small way that I'd got a background to my Fagin. What I didn't want was a stereotypical Jewish villain, what I wanted to play was a blackhearted criminal who just happened to be Jewish," he says.

Reviews have been good, with plenty of family appeal, despite adaptor-director Neil Bartlett creating a dark "unremitting" version which includes Nancy's brutal murder. There's also the rare sight on stage of Oliver's (Jordan Metcalfe) final meeting with a mad imprisoned Fagin.

"This scene is often missed out because it's quite harrowing. It's been said that without this scene the overall message doesn't make much sense unless you see Fagin become his own victim after making victims of other people," he says.

Feast doesn't mind the boos and hisses directed at him. "It's not a pantomime kind of play, but during matinees I do get a few boos and I shake my fist in time-honoured villainous fashion."

Feast confesses he's either cast as an ultra-white hero or a particularly evil person and has regularly popped up on TV in series such as Bergerac and Midsomer Murders.

Starting out as an actor in the 1960s meant that Feast has that rare distinction of playing Woof in the original naked cast of Hair in 1968.

"Part of what a lot of shows were about in those days was shocking people for one reason or another. Writers would say that this was to shock people out of complacency for a very valid reason. My generation was raised on actors who made the audience sit up a bit. I've always quite liked surprising audiences," he explains.

Feast feels that this allowed him to approach Michael Bogdanov's RSC version of Goethe's Faust with a little more ease than other members of the cast.

"I think quite early on in rehearsals there was a bit of a do because the director and casting people hadn't made it clear to the female cast that they had to get their kit off. They didn't like it, so there was a bit of a stand-off at one point. It became what was described as a series of "improving compromises", which I thought was quite a nice phrase.

"Contractually, the girls could stand firm because they weren't told before they signed. Bogdanov might have played his cards closer to his chest for longer which would have given the girls more to lose if they said no later, but he was rumbled because he thought all actors would just say okay."

After Fagin, Feast is playing Mephistopheles in Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus followed by The Devil in an almost-unknown Russian play called The Devil And Margarita, based on the Stalinist period in Moscow.

"Tony Sher wrote a book a few years ago about The Year Of The King and my wife (Maggie) feels I should write one called The Year Of The Devil," he jokes.

Feast is looking forward to touring Newcastle's revamped Quayside area and Baltic Contemporary Art Gallery and says of his first visit to the region: "In 1993 it was about January and snowing and I was appearing with the RSC at The Playhouse and I used to walk back to my hotel from the theatre. Then I saw all these kids with lads in shirtsleeves and girls with less on than we had in Faust who were really, really pissed. But I never felt less threatened by a large group of young drunks because they were just bouncing off me and had no interest in a middle-aged, tired-looking actor walking through their midst. It was quite an extraordinary experience.

"I come from Brighton which was always a lively town, but never anything like this. I like Newcastle. Whatever has been done to it in terms of modernisation really works."

* Oliver Twist runs April 20-24 at Newcastle Theatre Royal. Box Office: 0870 905 5060.

Published: 08/04/2004