It is hard to avoid politics when you meet Jack Davenport. The effortlessly handsome actor is no firebrand, but the subject floats around him like a fog. His father is Nigel Davenport, who became president of Equity in the Eighties, when the actors’ union was in danger of being dominated by the far Left. His uncle is the former MP Jonathan Aitken, who is a bit of a self- contained morality tale.
And now the friendly 33-year-old actor is on stage in a political play. Maxim Gorky’s Enemies, written in 1906, starkly predicts the imminent turmoil in Russia. In a small town a factory boss, Zakhar Bardin (Sean Chapman), tries to pacify a disgruntled workforce with dramatic consequences. Davenport is the younger brother, Yakov, a tortured vodka-swigging bohemian who tries to avoid confrontation. Inevitably there are resonances, which he explains while slurping on nothing stronger than a lemonade. “When you get a combination of class and economic inequality the mix can be explosive, which is relevant today.”
It is a meaty piece, adapted by David Hare, and midrehearsal Davenport is excited about getting his teeth into some artistic protein. His last job was filming two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels back-to-back. He plays a naval officer, Norrington, who has his own dialectical contradictions — “a bad goody, or a good baddie, depending on how you look at him”.
Davenport scratches his revolutionary new beard at the whiff of absurdity that hangs over the blockbuster. “Pirates of the Caribbean is the kind of job that never ends. The first film made so much money that Disney thought it is better to make two now than wait five years to get Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley together again. Making a period film on water never makes sense; you have to send the armada out if someone wants a sandwich.”
The tedium convinced Davenport that it was time to tread the boards again. “On films you are lucky if you get to say a line once a fortnight. It’s mostly people asking you if you want another latte. It’s not acting, more a form of loafing with other people’s clothes on. I know it’s an unoriginal thought, but I’ve always felt theatre is an actor’s medium. I’ve done more rehearsals in the last five weeks than in the last four years.”
Like most intelligent English actors, he has mixed feelings about Hollywood: “The only reason to go there is money. I’d be a fool not to go back when Pirates opens, but I’m not going to cry into my porridge if nothing happens. Acting can’t all be about making as much money in as short a time as possible.”
Davenport is best known for his screen work, but he also has a varied stage CV. He picked up an Olivier Award nomination for his performance in The Servant at the Lyric Hammersmith and earned his comedy spurs playing the journalist Toby Young in a one-man show, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, at the Soho Theatre.
“The Toby Young thing I enjoyed, though to this day I cannot work out what terrible combination of ego and hubris allowed me to go: ‘Yes, I think me alone on stage for an hour will be more than sufficient to entertain the masses.’ After I came off stage, I’d give my smelly clothes to the stage manager, then have to walk past the people who had just been watching me. That highlighted the ludicrousness and loneliness of this job.”
There is no chance of loneliness in Enemies. There is a cast of 20, and although Davenport’s is the biggest name, he does not have a significantly larger part. Enemies is the ultimate theatrical collective: “No one can hide, there’s so much to be seen. It’s a bit like an advent calendar, with windows constantly opening and closing.”
After the Almeida Davenport may be going back to television. He first came to prominence as Miles, the public school lawyer in This Life, the BBC drama that touched a nerve with its portrayal of young professionals drifting through careers, drugs and casual sex. There is firm talk of getting the gang back a decade on: “We’ve had meetings with the writer, Amy Jenkins, and the producer, Tony Garnett. There are various ideas floating around, but I think it is fair to say we’d all be up for it. ‘Warmly ambivalent’ is the best way to describe our feelings.”
The most likely outcome is a 90-minute update, which carries its own inherent problems. “My concern is that the thing about This Life was that nothing ever happened in it. It was about yoghurt. Who ate my yoghurt? You could pace things like that over 32 hours of drama but it is harder in a one-off.”
To me This Life will always be about sex. Sex on the office desk, sex on the sofa. “Well, yoghurt can come in handy if you are having lots of sex,” Davenport smirks. “It did feel like we never had any clothes on.”
He has stayed in touch with the cast. Andrew “Egg” Lincoln, who was his fictional best man, was also his best man in real life: “What a singular lack of imagination.”
This offhand remark prompts the obligatory difficult interview question. In 2000 Davenport married the actor Michelle Gomez, who is more gawky than Gorky as the staff liaison officer Sue White in the Channel 4 comedy Green Wing. Stories recently appeared in the tabloids suggesting that their marriage is wobbly.
This seems to come as news to Davenport. He confirms that they haven’t seen much of each other recently, but he chooses his words carefully: “We’ve been apart a huge amount, but that’s the deal. The thing with actors is it’s feast or famine, you are either with each other 24 hours a day or not at all.” I mention that he sports a silver-banded wedding ring. “Of course I do. I’m married!”
It is a noticeably uneasy exchange because during the rest of the interview Davenport is charming, self-deprecating and amusing. And when I change the subject he is charming, self-deprecating and amusing again, recalling how he met the unknown Ricky Gervais because the comic chose the background music for This Life, which his partner produced. “Not that he’s ever going to give an actor like me any work,” he grins.
Davenport’s career should thrive without the assistance of the most powerful man in comedy, whatever he does next. “The only plan I have is to keep changing. Keep dodging about like an overcaffeinated toddler so that people aren’t sure whether I’m the guy from the telly, the play or the movie.”
Enemies previews from Friday and opens on May 11 at the Almeida, N1 (020-7359 4404)
