Has Ian McKellen started a trend? To mark his 80th birthday in 2019, the theatrical knight undertook a mammoth tour of UK playhouses in an autobiographical show mixing personal reflections with reprised roles. Now the recently knighted David Suchet celebrates turning 75 with his own tour, looking back at half a century of acting, and half of that spent as Agatha Christie’s fastidious Belgian sleuth.
He has brought Poirot’s cane and moustache with him, though the latter remains inside a frame, gifted to him by a makeup artist. The show itself is a little too neatly presented as Suchet’s longtime friend, the journalist Geoffrey Wansell, accompanies him onstage to tee up the anecdotes rather than throw curveball questions.
Unlike McKellen’s show, the audience interaction is minimal and nothing feels unrehearsed. If you’ve read interviews with the star or seen him on chatshows, you’ll already know how Prince Philip’s tips on handling a mango made it into a Poirot episode or how Laurence Olivier’s penny-between-the-bum-cheeks trick influenced the detective’s walk. But Suchet is as clubbable as ever, from entering the stage waving both hands to the climactic vocal gymnastics showing how he settled on Poirot’s accent, a party piece you imagine has delighted many a dinner guest.
The second half is a masterclass on Shakespeare, with speeches by Shylock, Caliban, Oberon and Macbeth used to demonstrate iambic pentameter and various literary devices. But the first role Suchet plays is his granny, a music-hall veteran, who he recreates doing a soft-shoe shuffle for her gobsmacked grandson. Her passion for the arts, and that of his mother who was a dancer, is juxtaposed with the disapproval (until Suchet joined the esteemed ranks of the RSC) of his gynaecologist father. There are two affecting thumbnail sketches: one of young David, dazed and lonely at boarding school at the time his brother is born, the other of his ageing father proudly watching the filming of Poirot.
Several anecdotes have a familiar rise and fall as Suchet grandly sets the scene of an auspicious theatrical occasion only for our hapless hero to come a cropper centre-stage, whether tripping up as Tybalt or injuring himself wrestling in As You Like It. Or, years earlier, arriving at a drama-school movement lesson in full rugger clobber from his private school days.
Gossipmongers may leave crestfallen – there are no juicy asides about his esteemed company at the National Youth Theatre or the RSC, though we are given the sweet image of Suchet and his wife, Sheila Ferris, eschewing digs to live for several years on a narrowboat, travelling between theatres by canals. There are few specific recollections of particular directors, either, although he answers Wansell’s question about what makes a good one with a neat analogy about asking for directions while driving and not expecting someone to push him away from the steering wheel.
Directors, he ventures, are there to fill actors with courage. But it is a show mostly free from those Everest-scaling actor cliches lampooned by the spoof thesp Nicholas Craig, played by Nigel Planer. Suchet has some sound, straightforward advice for understanding the importance of a particular character or speech: omit them from a reading of the play to understand what they contribute.
Known by fellow actors for his meticulous approach to the material, Suchet gives us plenty about craft but I wanted to hear more about theatre’s place in society and the role of faith in his life: he is a Christian convert who recorded the first ever full-length audio version of the New International Version of the Bible. Still, it’s an insightful couple of hours and leaves you keen to see Suchet back on stage, putting his own little grey cells to use on his next leading role.
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