Duncan still dares

PETER Duncan laughs about the idea of dying on stage. He has to, sometimes twice daily, in the tour of Birdsong, an adaptation of Sebastian Faulks novel about life before and during the First World War, which visits Newcastle and Darlington.

“When you play less important parts over the years you often die quite frequently. I remember being on stage with Edward Woodward in Cyrano at The National Theatre and I was the second to last to die in that,” he laughs.

The actor was also in Coriolanus with Sir Antony Hopkins and had to “die” wearing fibreglass armour which allowed him to bounce his head off the stage floor. “This got the German directors so excited and I suddenly thought, ‘I know what this theatre lark is about.”

Duncan has close family links with the North-East. His dad was a Redcar man.

“He was a Yorkshireman, which made me quite out-going. I have also discovered a whole new family, through a half-sister (Jennifer) who lives in Whitby, about ten years ago. She tracked me down because she was adopted and when she found out she decided to try and find her real mother.

“Her mother, who was 95, told Jennifer that she had a brother who was quite well known. It’s a great story. Jennifer grew up in Redcar, which I went to as a child because my father put on beach shows, called The Wavelets, on there just after the war. He went back, in the 1950s, a few years after I was born and it was a disaster and we didn’t stay long. The town had really gone into decline by then,” he says.

Duncan is hoping that his North-East relatives will be able to attend one of the North-East performances of Birdsong.

Before two periods of Blue Peter TV fame (1980-1984 and 1985-1986), Duncan was a stage actor and has returned to the theatre and made TV documentaries.

His Birdsong character’s is Jack Firebrace, which is probably one of the finest titles for a wartime man of action you could probably invent.

“It suggests quite a profession and it’s not a surname that’s particularly known. It’s not so much he’s heroic but he’s ‘doing his bit’ and he instils confidence, courage and compassion for other people. But you do see him crumble from that point of view and the horrors of the war and defeat and everything about him and his strength of character turns to dust. That’s the ultimate sadness,” he says.

Duncan first toured the play last year and jokes that checking the receipts probably inspired the production company “to go again this year”.

“People are so drawn to the well-known title and it has a reputation now and it is now a night in the theatre to remember. It’s accessible as well. Sometimes heavy drama can put people off, but it doesn’t because people become attached to the story. This is profound,” says the actor who is aware of the importance of the 100th anniversary celebrations to a massive number of families.

“Even though that generation is dead now, although this was an extraordinary, unexplainable event in human history – even though there are equal horrors going on, but not quite on that scale of two lines of trenches and tunnels,” he says.

Duncan’s Yorkshire-born grandfather, Alan Gale, who established the family link with Redcar, limped as a result of a First World War wound, but the actor knows little more than that about him.

He says he’s always seen himself as a stable sort of person, but as he’s got older – and become a father of four – Duncan thinks he’s been able to access his emotions a bit better.

“I wouldn’t say the emotion of this play takes me over in a way that’s destructive. There’s certainly a couple of times where it’s overwhelmed me, but I don’t feel that’s done me any harm. The strange thing about coming back to rehearse the role again is finding the emotional pattern that I’d forgotten almost like a melody. Actors work in funny ways. We have method actors in the show who access their own feelings to put into the part and I think I probably do that too. It’s so hard to fake a piece of emotion otherwise,” Duncan says.

He feels he hasn’t lost his youthful enthusiasm, having taken part in the BBC reality TV series Tumble where he risked injury taking on gymnastic competition.

“I’m still at it, thinking I’m 25 and haven’t shaken off my Blue Peter image at all. I think you’re more careful and sure of what you can do as you get older and I think you should become more docile and atrophy as you get older. I still run and play football, but to have lots of gymnastics coaches for three or four months, and work with a young acrobat, then I surprised myself at the physical state I got in and I seemed to know what I was doing,” he says.

Duncan’s aware that celebrities do get injured in programmes like The Jump and to be a certain kind of person to enjoy taking part.

“I think I have paced myself well and the secret is to avoid the really bad injury. The one reality show I’ve always wanted to do is Strictly Come Dancing, but there are so many wannabes for that, that you have to be a bit lucky to be chosen,” he says.

Would he put his name down as a recruit if the clock was turned back 100 years?

“Fascinating question because when I was younger I was more liberal. The point is that when you get older you realise that one gets wrapped up in the world you are in. Sometimes you have to do things you are fundamentally opposed to. Whether I’d become a conscientious objector or not I don’t know. But who knows what we’ll build up as the great evil to overcome,” he says.

• Edmund Wiseman and Emily Bowker star with Peter Duncan in Birdsong, which has been adapted by Rachel Wagstaff.
• February 23 to 28, Northern Stage, Newcastle. Box Office: 0191-230-5151 or northernstage.co.uk
• March 10 to 14, Darlington Civic Theatre.