‘Master of Complications’: Felicity Kendall returns to Tom Stoppard’s India Ink after three decades | stage

I I promise I won’t point to Felicity Kendall as Tom Stoppard’s muse. “No,” she says firmly. “Not this week.” Speaking to Stoppard’s former partner and longtime leading lady is a sensitive matter in the immediate aftermath of the writer’s death. But she’s previewing the revival of his Indian ink, so it sparkles during the conversation. The way Kendall refers to Stoppard in the present tense tells her poignant story.

Sitting on a squishy brown sofa at the Hampstead Theatre, Kendall describes revisiting the 1995 production, which was developed from a 1991 radio play. “It’s a play I always thought I’d like to come back to.” Previously playing Flora Crewe, a provocative British poet visiting India in the 1930s, she now plays Eleanor Swan, Flora’s sister. We meet Elinor in the 1980s, confronting a meddling biographer but uncovering her sister’s colorful and nuanced relationships in India.

Kendall claims she has only vague memories of when she was in the original production: “You’re scanning a play, getting rid of things as you go.” Eleanor was first played by Peggy Ashcroft (in her last radio performance) and Margaret Tyzack. The gorgeous sisters are both “bluestockings,” says Kendall. “They have pretty much the same beginning politically – they are edgy, they break the rules.” The young Eleanor was a communist, and had an affair with a married politician – but the stern older woman, always carrying “a couple of cakes on the go”, has become, Kendall suggests, “a little more reserved. Mrs Swan is mourning what is gone. And because she has lived longer, there is a sadness for the past.”

The role of Flora goes to Ruby Ashburn-Serkis, who sits alongside Kendall and describes the character as “endlessly volatile. It’s an adventure.” She believes the play is about “saying yes to life, taking chances when you get the chance, and not letting cloudy days get in your way.” Flora has learned “not to care what people think of her – that’s what I want for myself.”

Stoppard is scathing about Britain’s imperial past – “It amazes me how we get away with it, my dear,” quips Flora, “I don’t trust some of them to run the company.” Hackney Empire. It’s solid, lightly worn material, though the existing cast hasn’t delved into the background. “It’s all in the play,” Kendall exclaimed. “he [Stoppard] I dug it, don’t mess with yourself anymore. Although the play resonates with her childhood, it neglects any personal resonance. “Don’t do all that therapy about it because you’ll mess up the script,” she declares. “You don’t need it.”

Indian ink bounces off the page – but is it easy to play? “At first glance, it seems easy, but it’s actually very complicated,” says Ashburn-Serkis. “A lot of our training process has been digging to lay those foundations, and then bringing them back to the surface. It’s a wonderful gift.” For Kendall, the first voice of many of Stoppard’s roles, you need to “find the style and the rhythm. It doesn’t come from just reading it, you have to find out what that music is. Once you’ve got it, you know you’ve got it.”

In Stoppard’s other plays, Kendall was an academic (in Arcadia), a spy (Hapgood), and an actor (in both The Real Thing and Jumpers). Is there a common theme? She carefully wears the Star of David around her neck. “There are always three or four different things going on at the same time,” she says. “He likes complications.” Remember the 18th-century watchmaker Jean-Marc Vacheron, who was hailed as a “master of complications” for his complex watches. “It is what it is [Stoppard] She continues: “He is a master of complexity. There is no story. It is an idea, so one of your jobs is to translate his ideas through this person. She says the writer had the mind of a genius. It is heavy stuff, but he softens it with incredible intelligence.”

Stoppard spent several formative years in India, but insisted: “There is almost nothing of my experience in it [the play]Not even indirectly.” Kendall also grew up in India, where she toured with her parents’ theater troupe (a semi-fictional take on Shakespeare and God). Indian Ink is dedicated to her mother, Laura. Her co-star also has actor parents – Lauren Ashbourne starred in Sally Wainwright’s recent film Riot Women, and Andy Serkis is best known for his roles as Gollum and King Kong. “It was wonderful to be in their dressing rooms, and I would love to do my hair and put it in vintage costumes,” she recalls. Big.” “Were they happy you were getting into the business?” Kendall asks. “It was kind of inevitable,” the younger actor replies. And do they often exchange advice? “The one thing my mom says every day is, ‘Just enjoy it, Rubies.'”

This production is directed by Jonathan Kent. “He’s so romantic and passionate,” Kendall says approvingly. Despite his illness, Stoppard revised the script and “was involved in the production as much as he could,” says the Hampstead Playhouse. During their relationship, did he ask Kendall to test work in progress? “Not at all,” she says. “never.” Although her voice is perfect (husky, teasing) for his writing, it refutes the idea that she might have been an inspiration. “I don’t think that’s the way it works. He wrote what he wanted.”

In addition to Stoppard, Kendall’s career includes new plays by Alan Ayckbourn, Michael Frayn and Simon Gray. Now 79 years old, she has trained with the best. “It’s always so easy,” she says. “They love being there.” Ashbourne Serkis, who recently premiered David Hare’s Grace Pervades in Bath, says Hare was “like a little kid, because he was so excited. It’s one of my favorite things, watching him laugh at his lines.” Kendall agrees that playwrights are the best audience for their own jokes — “They love it!”

Ashburn Serkis says the previews for Hair were a whirlwind of rewriting. Was Stoppard similar? “Tom is definitely rewriting as he goes along,” says Kendall. “There will be scenes that have been deleted. The endings will be retconned.” This was nothing compared to the premiere of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, in which she played Constanze Mozart. “Papers were flying everywhere, until Paul Scofield finally did this“- Finger shaking, prevents further patching.

Death inevitably casts a shadow over our conversation, as it does with Indian ink. “It’s one of his most emotional plays,” Kendall says. She enjoys the way it reminds us of Stoppard’s Indian connection. “He was thought of as an English writer, but he was by no means one. The artist is not owned by anyone. Flora dies, but she lives on because of her writing. It’s a beautiful play to do now—because the artist lives on.”