The sign on the dressing-room door still says “David Tennant” but the tangle
of long limbs and nervous energy inside has never been in Doctor Who.
“I was eating Coco Pops,” it tells me, “with my girlfriend Natalie. I got a
message from the company manager. This was on Monday. I just kept eating.
And then I turned to Nat and I told her, and she started screaming and
jumping around. And I felt really...heavy. Yeah. Heavy and cold.”
This is Edward Bennett. You may not know him but, to be fair, he has been on
TV. He had a few lines in Silent Witness, and one line in a comedy
called Silence of the Clams. And since Monday he has popped up a few
more times, usually on the news. For he is Tennant's understudy at the Royal
Shakespeare Company's current production of Hamlet at the Novello
Theatre in London.
He was supposed to be playing Laertes. On Monday, with that phone call,
Bennett learnt that the good doctor had done his back in. Right afterwards,
he says, his hands were shaking so much that it took him ten minutes to tie
his shoes. Yet that night he filled the Dane's shoes for the preview and won
a standing ovation. On Tuesday night - press night - he did it again.
Shortly after we speak, on Wednesday, the RSC will confirm that Tennant has
slipped a disc, needs surgery and won't be back before Christmas. So it may
have to change that dressing-room sign, after all.
“We did an understudy run,” says Bennett. “But that was, what, five months
ago? Understudy rehearsals were only meant to start today. And obviously
it's David's show. Not just the publicity but the actual rehearsal.
Everything is geared towards that. You don't want him to be away, and you
don't want him to be sick.”
Tennant's back was “a little dodgy” on Friday and Saturday, Bennett says, so
he had had an inkling. The biggest worry was the scene in which Hamlet and
Laertes fight. “I thought that maybe I could fight myself,” he says. “Like
Punch and Judy. No?”
Bennett is thrilled to be where he is, full of admirable luvvy bravado and
quite happy to admit that he is suddenly far, far out of his depth. He seems
well aware that the role he is in is not his own; indeed, that the room he
is in is not his own. It's full of David Tennant's stuff, from the
occasional bag to a cracked red cup that says “Keep Calm And Carry On”
across the front. Proudly, he shows me the television and the window. His
old dressing-room had neither. This one is a relative palace, even if it's
not as nice as Patrick Stewart's, which has a bed.
“I want David to come back as soon as possible,” he says. “Then I can have my
two hours off in every show. I like that. And I want him to do it soon, so
I'm just a story that happened and people can still come and see him. And
then, obviously, I can go to Hollywood, or something.” He's wired, a little
croaky and popping cough sweets. He's not sure what would happen if he fell
ill, too. Something very bad.
Almost everybody in an RSC ensemble cast understudies somebody. In the
understudy performance, back in August, even Patrick Stewart (normally
Claudius) had a secondary role, as the Captain, in a bandana. “It was only
four lines,” says Bennett, “but he did it. He put on a Rambo band.” Before
the first two performances, director Gregory Doran walked on stage and
explained the knock-on effect of an absent Hamlet (“Hamlet will be played by
Laertes,” he said. “Laertes will be played by Guildenstern, Guildenstern
will be played by Lucianus, Lucianus will be played by Francisco”).
Bennett says that he stood backstage, shivering and waiting for the sound of
boos, flipping chairs and shuffling feet. But audiences tend to be kind to
understudies. Albert Finney famously got his big break by understudying
Laurence Olivier in Coriolanus. Laura Michelle Kelly was (one of) Martine
McCutcheon's (many) understudies in My Fair Lady and went on to win
an Olivier Award for Mary Poppins. But this, at the Novello, was no
normal audience. This audience contained almost every critic in the land,
and a bevy of devoted fans who were expecting to see Doctor Who. Tickets for
the entire 36-show run sold out in hours, and preview tickets were changing
hands on eBay for up to £600.
“After a speech like that, you do get a feeling of support,” says Bennett.
“But he can't do it every night. That's it now. Now
you're just playing Hamlet. You just have to remember that there could be
people out there who have come to see Hamlet, not David. Maybe from...well.
There must be somewhere that doesn't have Doctor Who. Some tinker from
Belize or something. Them.”
“My friend Tim was in The History Boys,” he continues. “He said,
this is what it's like when you come on as an understudy. For the first
night, everybody is like ‘Wow! Wow! Wow!'. And on the second night it's
‘Good, well done'. Then, on the third night, it's ‘Could you just come and
stand there for that bit, and do this and this and this?' After the curtain
call, it's been amazing. Both nights, everybody clapped me on stage. And
that was it. Floods. But as the company get a bit more used to me, and
potentially irritated with me, they'll stop clapping me on. I'll just be
clapping myself on!”
Bennett is not just Tennant's understudy. He is also quite unashamedly in awe
of him. The pair first worked together in the RSC's Romeo and Juliet in
2000 in Stratford. “I wouldn't say we worked together,” says Bennett,
amused. “He was Romeo. I was a spear-carrier. I was a member of Escalus's
watch. My job was to walk across the stage with a gun three times. And stamp
twice. And arrest Benvolio in the third act. And I got to grunt.”
The pair did, however, speak. “I remember talking to him at a party,” says the
understudy. “And I was like, ‘I just want you to know I think you're
incredible!' And he was like, ‘Thanks very much'.” Bennett was 18 at the
time, and on holiday from Cardiff University. He wanted to be an actor so he
knocked on the stage door in Stratford and asked whether they would have
him. “They said: ‘Are you an actor?' And I said: ‘Um, no'. So they said:
‘Well, we need spear-carriers. Send in a picture'. And I did. Although I
didn't know they meant, you know, a ten-by-eight. So I just sent in a
picture of me and my mates. Pissed at my 18th.”
At around that time, Sam West cast him as the priest in Coriolanus, in
a fringe performance. “He phoned yesterday,” says Bennett. “He said if he'd
known I'd be playing Hamlet he'd have treated me better. I was always making
him tea and carrying stuff for him. Flyering all over Stratford.”
Bennett grew up in the Cotswolds. His father, now retired, worked in computer
games and his mother was a secretary. Both are now in other relationships.
He caught the acting buzz, he says, thanks to a drama teacher at Chipping
Campden School. Aged 14, he went to see David Troughton in Chekhov's The
Seagull at the Swan in Stratford, where he sat in the front row and
decided that this was for him. He read politics and history at Cardiff
University but spent most of his time involved with various drama societies.
He even put on a mammoth production of Hamlet. That could explain
why, this time around, he wasn't so fazed by all the lines.
“It was amazing,” he says. “We did it in Castell Coch, this amazing old
castle. It took a year and a half. Me and my friend Ollie Newton. We had
open auditions in the whole of South Wales. All these people coming along.
Transvestites auditioning for Gertrude. Incredible.” Originally Bennett had
been planning to co-direct but their Hamlet, a law student, pulled out
because he had too much work to do. Bennett and Newton flipped a coin and it
was Bennett who ended up holding the skull. Newton now works for a media
company in Cheltenham. “He phoned me the other day,” says Bennett, “to give
me some notes.”
After university he went to RADA. There followed a few years in the regions
and a gradual creep back to London. His big break, a year ago, was landing
the role of Rodrigo in Michael Grandage's Othello at the Donmar. Greg
Doran was in the audience, and cast him as Laertes. And, of course, as David
Tennant's understudy. As if he'd ever need one. Oh.
“It's scary because he's so f***ing brilliant,” says Bennett. “I know I could
never go on and be like he was. Obviously I can't replicate what he does.
Although I've stolen a few bits. That's different, isn't it? Every actor who
tries to do Hamlet wants to do everything. That's what I found last night.
And today, reading the reviews. I want to show everything about this guy.
And I can't because I've only done it twice. So that's...that's kind of
stressful.”
For now, he is trying not to think about what this new break could do for his
career, in either direction. “It's worrying,” he says. “I mean, I might be
crap. Seriously. I haven't done any rehearsals. That's how I feel. I'm not
going to beat David, and I'm scared that I'm not good enough for it. And
after the reviews, which I shouldn't have f***ing read...”
They were all pretty good, though.
“I shouldn't have read them. I can't help it. I can't help it. Because I hate
that thing when you've had a bad review and you see people and they've read
them and you haven't. And they're treating you a little bit different. How
are you feeling? All that. So I'd rather just know. But, well, it's like,
did you see David's mug? Which I love? Keep Calm And Carry On?”
Yes. Is it meant to have that big hole smashed out of the bottom, do you think?
“Oh. I hadn't thought of that. Maybe he smashed it on the desk? F*** you, keep
calm and carry on! Oh dear.”
I'm sure it's nothing like that. Probably just an accident. Sshh. Have another
cough sweet.
Bennett laughs. “It's an amazing experience,” he concludes, sounding
exhausted, “but hopefully David will be back soon. Although I won't lie.
It's nice to be in his dressing room.”
Will I get my big break?
Being an understudy is rather like being a reserve goalkeeper. You have to be
fully trained and on top of your game, ready to go on at a moment's notice
and psychologically prepared both for becoming a hero and for seeing very
little, if any, action.
“Sometimes you feel very low-status and sometimes it works well,” says Corinna
Marlowe, a seasoned actress who has understudied leading West End roles.
Edward Bennett's situation, in which he stepped up from a smaller role, is
common. This time it worked, but sometimes the results can be faintly
ridiculous. In one production of Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo
both the middle-aged lovers were replaced by twentysomethings.
Actors are sometimes engaged simply as understudies. With misgivings, after
some “dreary” experiences as an understudy, Marlowe took a job as one in Copenhagen
by Michael Frayn, in the West End. She got to go on for Thursday matinees -
but then, when the cast left, was given the role for 20 months.
Understudies don't balk at being thrown on at the last minute because “it's
part of the job spec. You have to be ready every day”. But they like to have
“a moment or two” - and, if possible, time to get their loved ones to the
theatre.
What understudies hate most is being messed about. In one production Marlowe
was understudying an actress who turned up at the theatre obviously ill.
“She said: ‘I'll start'. She played Act I and finally went off, and I did
Acts II and III.”
One famous actress became notorious in the profession after getting stuck in
traffic before a show. The curtain was held for 40 minutes and the
understudy was dressed and ready to go on when she finally arrived. The
understudy was told to take off the costume, the actress dressed and walked
straight on.
The key for an understudy is to give a performance that not only convinces the
audience but doesn't bamboozle fellow actors. “You are supposed to have the
lines and the moves so you don't put off anyone else by saying something or
being in the wrong place,” says Marlowe. “But after that you are meant to
make it your own and play from your feelings.”
Damian Whitworth
