Actor Gareth Roberts is playing Cadfael in its stage premiere, and reveals to Steve Pratt it’s the role he’s always wanted to play

IT’S A strange admission for an actor.

“I have never really liked performing,”

says Gareth Thomas, who leads the cast in the world stage premiere of Ellis Peters’ sleuthing medieval monk Cadfael in Darlington next week.

“I don’t enjoy performing but I like the rehearsal process. I do it (performing) and don’t think about it. It’s not possible to say I dislike it. With the rehearsal process, you explore and discover.”

He’s even ambivalent as to why he became an actor in the first place. I wonder if theatre the motivation for him going into acting?

“No motivation, I don’t even know why I became an actor,” he says.

“It was just get all the jobs you can. In those day acting was a closed shop. You couldn’t just walk in and play the lead, you had to spend your 44 weeks in rep first.

“I just wanted to carry on being a student and I went to Rada (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art). Then I did a lot of learning on the job. Experience in rep is invaluable.”

He may be getting into the Cadfael habit for his latest stage appearance but to fans of the BBC’s cult sci-fi series Blake’s Seven, he’ll forever be Roj Blake, leader of the space rebels.

Thomas actually left after two series – the show carried on without its title character – but did make a brief return for the finale.

He has also returned to the role of Roj Blake in recent years to record audio adventures of the magnificent seven.

He points out that he first played Blake 35 years ago. Does he mind that people still think of him as Blake? “It doesn’t bother me,” he says. “There are hundreds of things I’ve done that are out there on tape. Blake is probably more around than other things in the sense we are doing audio stuff now I am white and more heavy than I was 35 years ago.

“I have done a fair amount of television.

I think I have mixed up all the media quite a lot through my career. I never said I want to do stage or television.”

Cadfael is all new. On the stage, at least.

The Virgin In The Ice has been adapted, designed and directed by Michael Lunney for Middle Ground Theatre Company. Ellis Peters’ Cadfael novels have sold millions around the world and this production celebrates the cententary of her birth.

The production boasts a cast of 15, film projections, lavish settings and bespoke music to bring the medieval sleuth to life on stage. Thomas knew the book and what he calls “the TV thing”. While he’s careful to pay tribute to Derek Jacobi who played the role in the ITV series (“don’t get me wrong Derek is a superb actor”), it becomes clear during our conversation that the TV Cadfael was not Thomas’s – or indeed the books – idea of Cadfael.

“I have always wanted to play it,” says Thomas. “I was disappointed with the TV things. The books I read years and years ago, almost when they first came out. I suppose I’ve always thought he was Welshman, which I am, and always liked the character.

“I presume the play is taken very much from the book. The play is just dialogue whereas the book can be descriptive.

There’s some back projection and all sorts of things, music and sound effects.”

His research didn’t take him back to the books and “certainly not the TV show”, he says. “They asked me to do it but why I have no idea. He’s older than I thought he was. In his sixties, which for 1200 would have been quite old. In the TV series he was blond, English, blue-eyed and you could have eaten your breakfast of the floor it was so clean.”

Touring in Cadfael will take him all over the country, not a prospect he relishes. “No one ever likes touring. Very few people like touring because (a) it’s away from home and family and (b) you’re never longer than one week in one place and always travel on a Sunday. Or you’re driving hundreds and hundreds of miles every week and living out of a suitcase because you’re in a strange house.”

Fans of Blake’s Seven will be pleased to hear he’s recording more audio adventures in the summer. “They’re great fun. I love audio work and radio. At my age that’s the favourite one,” he adds.

  • Cadfael – The Virgin In The Ice: Darlington Civic Theatre, March 19-23. Box office 01325-486555 and online darlingtonarts.co.uk