Whodunit Rehearsal for Murder is coming to Dublin's Board Gais Energy Theatre and John Byrne talks to one of the show's stars, Gary Mavers.
Billy Elliot's been wowing critics and audiences alike since its arrival at Dublin's Bord Gais Energy Theatre. But all good things must end, and the show is finishing its run on September 3rd - and its replacement looks like another sure-fire success.
Originally written as a 1982 TV film, Rehearsal for Murder was penned by Richard Levinson and William Link, whose work includes legendary TV shows Murder She Wrote, Mannix and Columbo. This version is currently on tour in the UK, with a stopover here in Ireland in September. Among its cast is theatre regular and familiar TV face, Gary Mavers.
He's probably best known for playing GP Andrew Attwood in Peak Practice and Will Manning in Casualty. More recently he featured in Emmerdale from 2015 to 2016 as Gordon Livesy, a character at the centre of a child abuse storyline. In Rehearsal for Murder he plays The Director.
JB: Can you tell us about Rehearsal for Murder?
GM: Alex Ferns plays this playwright called Alex who returns to a theatre exactly one year to the day his wife committed suicide, after she received bad reviews. He gets the acting troupe together again and act out, and basically he's got this thing in his head that she was actually murdered, she didn't commit suicide, and he wants to get to the bottom of it and find out who his wife's killer was.
About a third of a way through the play you realise what's happening: he's out to get who he thinks has killed his wife. That's the basic premise anyway.
Everyone loves a whodunit. They like to guess who they think it is, and there's always a red herring along the way.
I believe the show has quite a history?
It was actually taken from an old film in the early 1980s that starred an American actor called Robert Preston. It was then adapted for the US stage, and then Bill Kenwright, our producer, adapted it for stage in this country [the UK].
I think it works really well. It's a decent adaptation and we're all having a good time and getting good audiences so it seems to be working very well. We're in Bury St Edmunds at the moment. The weather's nice and it's a lovely little old theatre. We go to places like Glasgow, Aberdeen, then we go to see yourselves over in Dublin, then we go to Torquay. A week in each place. We're going right across the British Isles.
Have you played before at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre?
I've been there twice. I was there last for Then There Were None, an Agatha Christie play. And two years before that I was in Black Coffee, with Robert Powell. That was an Agatha Christie play where he played Poirot.
The cast is very strong with the likes of Alex Ferns, who played villain Trevor Morgan in EastEnders, and Susie Amy, who was Chardonnay in Footballers' Wives – but what's it like to work with the British showbiz legend that is Anita Harris?
Anita Harris is fantastic. She's like the consummate professional, and she's absolutely beautiful as well. And she's been in the business for years. It's great to be working alongside somebody like her; the old school professional.
Alex Ferns and Susie Amy, and Mark Winter are great too. And Mark Wynter was a bit of a musical star when he was younger. He was one of the singers in the Sixties and was quite a star.
Your career's been spread pretty evenly across TV, movies and theatre. Most actors claim that stage work is most rewarding – what's your favourite discipline of the three?
I like to mix it up. A couple of little films, the odd TV, then I'll go back to the theatre then I'll do TV again. I just like to diversify . . . and keep it fresh, really. I like the difference.
But I actually prefer TV or film, for the simple reason that it gives you time off to spend with the family and live, really. Because, when you're touring with a play, even though you're on stage for only two hours a night, you can't do anything else because you're always in a faraway place.
When you're doing TV you're two days on and five days off, six days on and three days off, so at least you can have some kind of semblance of life. That's just me personally. It's all to do with the work, but me preferring TV has nothing to do with the work, it's the fact that I've time off to do other things.
In saying that, we're a good group, a good bunch of people [in Rehearsal to Murder]. We all get on great, which is quite unusual in this business because if you don't get on with other people it's hell. But we're a good bunch of people, we all find things to do and we all get on with each other. We're all having a nice time and that's the main thing. You enjoy coming in to work. And that's what it's all about.
It's all egos, really, and there are no egos in this one.
Two of your brothers were in legendary Liverpool band The La's. Sounds like you're a bit of an artistic family. Is that the case?
I don't think it was intentional that I would become an actor and that Lee and Neil would go into the music business. It's just something that happened. It was just something that was organic, really.
I got into acting out of desperation really because I'd done different jobs and I was moving from one thing to another, and I just go to a stage where I thought: I need a proper career here. Now what career could I earn decent money and be successful if I put the work in and I got the right training behind me? And I thought: acting. I had a stab at it and thankfully it's worked out well for me. I went to drama school, I went to RADA and then just took it from there. But I'd never done it before; it was just a complete change of career, really.
My brother [Lee] just kind of fell into the music business. He was always musically-minded. Self-taught. And it was a road he decided to go on, y'know. It just kind of happened. We weren't like the Von Trapps. We didn't set out to be successful or famous. It wasn't like that at all.
Rehearsal for Murder runs September 5-10 and tickets are available from Ticketmaster and the Bord Gais Energy Theatre
