When John Hannah was a young boy in East Kilbride, the son of a
toolmaker and a supermarket cleaner, a future as the star of a major
Hollywood action franchise such as The Mummy would have looked an impossibly long way off. But this weekend Hannah is making a journey that could prove just as tough.
The actor, perhaps best known as Gwyneth Paltrow’s leading man in Sliding Doors, has returned to Scotland to work on stage there for the first time in 25 years, and has chosen to reappear in front of Edinburgh’s festival audiences by emerging from a wooden box on the recreated platform of a dirty, disused Bulgarian railway station inside a 320-seat fringe venue.
“It feels exciting to be here,” Hannah told the Observer this weekend after the first preview performance of a little-known Bulgarian play, The Titanic Orchestra.
“I find that the best way of testing myself and challenging myself is by doing things I don’t know that I can do, and that’s exactly what this is. That’s why the fringe is so interesting, because it lets you do that in a way that isn’t possible with other projects. I’m really enjoying the whole process.”
Hannah, 53, joins a succession of film and television stars who have gone back to basics and faced small, live audiences at the fringe. Last night Oscar-winning French actress Juliette Binoche appeared in the opening night of Sophocles’ Antigone at King’s Theatre, while last year the star of the Danish drama The Killing, Sofie Gråbøl, won plaudits for her performance in the third of Rona Munro’s historical James Plays at the Festival Theatre.
In 2008 Hannah’s fellow Scot Alan Cumming, celebrated on Broadway and acclaimed for the US television series The Good Wife, took a role in the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Euripides’ The Bacchae at the International Festival. Two years later he was back in a smaller fringe venue presenting a one-man cabaret show. In 2012 the veteran Scottish film and television actor Bill Paterson also returned to the festival and won awards for his performance at the Traverse. Edinburgh in August, long established as a proving ground for new talent, is also operating as a place for the big names in international commercial entertainment to test themselves anew.
In The Titanic Orchestra, which has never been performed in Britain, Hannah plays a mysterious magician, dressed in top hat and tails, who turns up unexpectedly, with dubious stories to tell of the wider world and its many deceptions. The part in Hristo Boytchev’s play is a good fit for a star who has sampled the taste of success and has now come back to his homeland.
His director, Russell Bolam, sees the production as “like a homecoming” for Hannah, while the actor describes a Scottish crowd as hard to fool. “We don’t like people getting above themselves up here, regardless of whether they have or not,” he said. “A lot of straight talking goes on.”
Hannah’s character – who may or may not be the escape artist Harry Houdini, and might also be the conductor of the orchestra that famously continued playing as the Titanic sank – is the linchpin of the drama. He performs a series of sleight-of hand magic tricks, involving boiled eggs and large bears, and presides over the disintegration of the limited world of a defeated quartet of alcoholic tramps, who are vainly working out how to swindle any passing train passengers. But it is a play which the actor believes throws up some big questions as well as some jokes.
“I don’t know if you could call it bleak,” he said. “It’s a fascinating show in that its great power is that it isn’t linear or naturalistic in any way, and it’s got a very philosophical kind of quality, and is a very difficult thing to challenge yourself with as an actor. That’s the main reason I was drawn to it.”
The role also appealed to Hannah because of Bolam, who last year lured him back on to the stage to perform in Chekov’s Uncle Vanya at London’s St James’s Theatre.
“John is one of the most fun and egoless actors you could hope to find in a rehearsal room,” said Bolam. “That we’ve found this strange, beautiful play – only the fourth Bulgarian play to ever be performed in the UK – to work on together so soon after Uncle Vanya is thrilling, particularly in a climate where any Bulgarian references in the media relate to immigration.”
The play’s run at Pleasance Courtyard comes as Hannah, who recently appeared on British televisions in Atlantis and in the mini-series The Widower, prepares for the release of a new slew of films, including Kickback, with John Cusack, and Funny Cow, with Maxine Peake and Martin Freeman, so the Edinburgh run is a kind of curtain-raiser for phase two of his screen career. Hannah’s fame dates back to his recitation of WH Auden’s poem Funeral Blues in the huge box office sensation Four Weddings and a Funeral, a film which he says he has not watched for 20 years.
Although he toured Scotland with shows in his youth, he has not appeared at the festival since the time he helped to stage a student production of Dylan Thomas’s dramatic poem Under Milk Wood. He eventually became disillusioned with theatre, he has said, but the new show is “a test to see if the stage still matters to me”.
The Railway Children author also wrote nasty ghost stories, now revealed in Philip Meek’s play, Edith in the Dark. Momentum Playhouse
GAME OF THRONES, THE MUSICAL
Not the Coldplay spoof, but an earlier, fully-formed production of Thrones! comes to Edinburgh from Baby Wants Candy. Assembly George Square
FREDDIE FLINTOFF
2nd Innings: for three nights only the former cricketing star promises a good account of himself till light fades. Pleasance Courtyard
ROSS AND RACHEL
What happened next? As the real Rachel, Jennifer Aniston, gets married, James Fritz’s play looks at “perfect” relationships. Assembly Festival
TRANSGENDER SPOTLIGHT
Entertainment from stand-up comic Sarah Franken, formerly Will Franken, to Jo Clifford’s vision of Christ in The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven. The Stand and Summerhall
The actor, perhaps best known as Gwyneth Paltrow’s leading man in Sliding Doors, has returned to Scotland to work on stage there for the first time in 25 years, and has chosen to reappear in front of Edinburgh’s festival audiences by emerging from a wooden box on the recreated platform of a dirty, disused Bulgarian railway station inside a 320-seat fringe venue.
“It feels exciting to be here,” Hannah told the Observer this weekend after the first preview performance of a little-known Bulgarian play, The Titanic Orchestra.
“I find that the best way of testing myself and challenging myself is by doing things I don’t know that I can do, and that’s exactly what this is. That’s why the fringe is so interesting, because it lets you do that in a way that isn’t possible with other projects. I’m really enjoying the whole process.”
Hannah, 53, joins a succession of film and television stars who have gone back to basics and faced small, live audiences at the fringe. Last night Oscar-winning French actress Juliette Binoche appeared in the opening night of Sophocles’ Antigone at King’s Theatre, while last year the star of the Danish drama The Killing, Sofie Gråbøl, won plaudits for her performance in the third of Rona Munro’s historical James Plays at the Festival Theatre.
In 2008 Hannah’s fellow Scot Alan Cumming, celebrated on Broadway and acclaimed for the US television series The Good Wife, took a role in the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Euripides’ The Bacchae at the International Festival. Two years later he was back in a smaller fringe venue presenting a one-man cabaret show. In 2012 the veteran Scottish film and television actor Bill Paterson also returned to the festival and won awards for his performance at the Traverse. Edinburgh in August, long established as a proving ground for new talent, is also operating as a place for the big names in international commercial entertainment to test themselves anew.
In The Titanic Orchestra, which has never been performed in Britain, Hannah plays a mysterious magician, dressed in top hat and tails, who turns up unexpectedly, with dubious stories to tell of the wider world and its many deceptions. The part in Hristo Boytchev’s play is a good fit for a star who has sampled the taste of success and has now come back to his homeland.
His director, Russell Bolam, sees the production as “like a homecoming” for Hannah, while the actor describes a Scottish crowd as hard to fool. “We don’t like people getting above themselves up here, regardless of whether they have or not,” he said. “A lot of straight talking goes on.”
Hannah’s character – who may or may not be the escape artist Harry Houdini, and might also be the conductor of the orchestra that famously continued playing as the Titanic sank – is the linchpin of the drama. He performs a series of sleight-of hand magic tricks, involving boiled eggs and large bears, and presides over the disintegration of the limited world of a defeated quartet of alcoholic tramps, who are vainly working out how to swindle any passing train passengers. But it is a play which the actor believes throws up some big questions as well as some jokes.
“I don’t know if you could call it bleak,” he said. “It’s a fascinating show in that its great power is that it isn’t linear or naturalistic in any way, and it’s got a very philosophical kind of quality, and is a very difficult thing to challenge yourself with as an actor. That’s the main reason I was drawn to it.”
The role also appealed to Hannah because of Bolam, who last year lured him back on to the stage to perform in Chekov’s Uncle Vanya at London’s St James’s Theatre.
“John is one of the most fun and egoless actors you could hope to find in a rehearsal room,” said Bolam. “That we’ve found this strange, beautiful play – only the fourth Bulgarian play to ever be performed in the UK – to work on together so soon after Uncle Vanya is thrilling, particularly in a climate where any Bulgarian references in the media relate to immigration.”
The play’s run at Pleasance Courtyard comes as Hannah, who recently appeared on British televisions in Atlantis and in the mini-series The Widower, prepares for the release of a new slew of films, including Kickback, with John Cusack, and Funny Cow, with Maxine Peake and Martin Freeman, so the Edinburgh run is a kind of curtain-raiser for phase two of his screen career. Hannah’s fame dates back to his recitation of WH Auden’s poem Funeral Blues in the huge box office sensation Four Weddings and a Funeral, a film which he says he has not watched for 20 years.
Although he toured Scotland with shows in his youth, he has not appeared at the festival since the time he helped to stage a student production of Dylan Thomas’s dramatic poem Under Milk Wood. He eventually became disillusioned with theatre, he has said, but the new show is “a test to see if the stage still matters to me”.
Other fringe highlights
SINISTER E NESBITTThe Railway Children author also wrote nasty ghost stories, now revealed in Philip Meek’s play, Edith in the Dark. Momentum Playhouse
GAME OF THRONES, THE MUSICAL
Not the Coldplay spoof, but an earlier, fully-formed production of Thrones! comes to Edinburgh from Baby Wants Candy. Assembly George Square
FREDDIE FLINTOFF
2nd Innings: for three nights only the former cricketing star promises a good account of himself till light fades. Pleasance Courtyard
ROSS AND RACHEL
What happened next? As the real Rachel, Jennifer Aniston, gets married, James Fritz’s play looks at “perfect” relationships. Assembly Festival
TRANSGENDER SPOTLIGHT
Entertainment from stand-up comic Sarah Franken, formerly Will Franken, to Jo Clifford’s vision of Christ in The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven. The Stand and Summerhall
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