claytoncast

Having just come back from our summer holiday and long days of snoozing on sunbeds, it's made me more aware of the fact that we're heading into those three days that here in Britain we call summer.  I always associate summer with not being a particularly busy time, although in the last few years this has certainly not proved to be the case. Two years ago I spent most of July and the whole of August filming the final series of "Him and Her - The Wedding" and last year I spent several hot days combating the pressure  of fur and velvet in "Wolf Hall" -   more of that in an upcoming column in  The Stage.  My main feelings about summer though, are that it is a time when one has to find something to do. A time when one has to be inventive, and create work for oneself. I'm expecting a draft of my next book back from my publishers soon, so long summer days will be spent correcting the proof, appalled at my misuse of the comma, and reworking sections. Havin...

 It is seven years since I last did any theatre and that's a rather frightening thought. Hermann Kafka in a rather fabulous production by Sarah Esdaile  of "Kafka's Dick" by Alan Bennett at Watford Playhouse. A fabulous cast, four weeks rather enjoyable rehearsals and then the play was on. We had a relatively short run for two weeks after the press night, but by the end of that time I was longing to move onto something else. These days my boredom threshold is quite low, and going into something for three or four days and then moving on suits me absolutely fine.  Yet theatre was what I trained for. My desire to become an actor born out of school plays and plays created with neighbours children in back gardens during long summer holidays. My training was almost entirely theatre based, apart from two weeks in my second year doing a piece of theatre in front of some television cameras. When you left drama school in the late 1970s, theatre was what you were expected t...