Ian Kelsey tells Viv Hardwick how Burt Lancaster’s The Birdman of Alcatraz helped him find his starring role in another prison-based drama

THE Shawshank Redemption went from box office disappointment in 1994 to become the favourite film of a generation. Now, York-born Ian Kelsey is bringing the latest version of a 2009 stage adaptation to life and says it “should satisfy anybody’s craving to see what they love in the film on stage”.

A colleague wondered if Kelsey prepared himself for the part of Andy Dufresne, a banker wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, by visiting a prison.

“I do like doing that and most of the TV stuff I’ve done what is required for me to portray a world that I don’t know about. For instance, on the TV series Down To Earth (2003) I was playing an organic farmer and I knew nothing about that world. I went down and spent a couple of days on a farm in Devon and it was invaluable. If I was walking on a set and hadn’t have done that I’d have played things differently. I learned the guy’s attitude to chaos and when things go wrong.

“It was all water off a duck’s back to him and I was able to portray that. For Blue Murder (also TV in 2003) I spent the day with CID in Manchester and I discovered it was boring. Nothing happened and the boys explained it was 98 per cent paperwork and two per cent extreme excitement. Unfortunately for me I was in the 98 per cent. They took me for a pint afterwards and I learned more having that pint and saw how they dress and stick out like sore thumbs in a Manchester pub because they didn’t undo their top button and still have suits, ties and shiny shoes. They looked like undercover cops having a pint. It was hilarious,” he says.

Kelsey, who left his lead role of Howard Bellamy in BBC1 daytime drama Doctors to join Shawshank, has been to a Victorian prison before, but found that he hadn’t got time to investigate the world painted in the production based on the 1982 Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.

“I started watching the film and even before Tim Robbins (who plays Dufresne) had spoken I switched it off because I felt it wouldn’t be helpful because my character Andy is so softly-spoken and doesn’t conform to the person that the prison is trying to make everyone else.

“They want the inmates to turn from hardened criminals to people who can return to society. But, because he’s innocent and whenever anyone talks about what they’ve done to be imprisoned he doesn’t fit in. He’s not a bad man while everyone around him is. They are all bad, bad people with dark pasts and Andy’s not. In a film, with a camera lenses up your nose you can portray all that in a look, whereas on stage you have to put this across by your body language and how you speak,” Kelsey says.

He went for inspiration to another film, The Birdman of Alcatraz, where Burt Lancaster finds inner peace by looking after birds.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Tim Robbins watched this film before he played Andy and I had to develop how I talk covertly because quite a lot of his conversations are private and intimate, but the back row has to hear you. I’ve just come off three years of TV where you basically speak normally and the director told me I had to find why I was saying things and then when I got into a theatre my natural craft would carry words to the back row.”

Kelsey stars alongside Patrick Robinson, who is also a long-running member of BBC1’s Casualty, who is Andy’s best friend Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding.

The York actor, who first appeared at the city’s Joseph Rowntree Theatre, opted for a middle-American accent for Shawshank with a twang of southern states.

“During the rehearsal process, although the original setting was Maine, we moved it to general American so that people don’t start asking, ‘Where’s this guy from’?”

He laughs about having been to quite a lot of places since starting out from North Yorkshire but is delighted to have been able to stay in his old family home, where his brother still lives, during the Leeds leg of the tour before heading for Newcastle Theatre Royal .

“After Leeds, we went to Brighton and I live in Brighton and then Richmond, London. So, one of the first places where I’ll need digs is Newcastle,” he says.

Theatre-wise, Kelsey has moved from Billy Flynn in Chicago to Kes at West Yorkshire Playhouse but has reeled off a series of serious dramas on TV.

“I once saw a montage of things I’ve done and it absolutely took me back. I thought, ‘Blooming heck’, because you just crack on with work and I’ve done quite a lot of commercial television. Look at my cv in the programme and it’s not much because everything I’ve done has run for long periods as opposed to a working actor doing six or seven jobs a year. I did three years Emmerdale, three years Casualty and six years in Blue Murder. Even my run in Grease on stage went for a year. I don’t know what pigeon-hole to put myself in. I don’t know.

“Doing this straight play will do me some good, because when you do commercial daytime TV I call it factory acting because you turn up and know your character inside out. Sometimes you facilitate another character’s storyline or your own. You have to bend and move on an hourly basis. Sometimes you can fight it and say, ‘My character wouldn’t do that’, but on Doctors you have to say okay I’ll have to find a reason within minutes for me to say those words I’ve been asked to say, even though a month ago my character wouldn’t have said it.

“This is different. One of the cast met someone who had never been to the theatre before and was absolutely blown away by seeing this show.

Kelsey’s also met four old ladies who told him that they didn’t like Shawshank... but they did like Andrew Lloyd Webber.

“I thought, ‘There’s no white gloves and top hats in this love’.”

  • The first stage version of Shawshank, by Dave Johns and Owen O'Neill appeared at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. A later version, which was directed by Peter Sheridan, had its world premiere at the Peter Sheridan Theatre in London in September 2010. Two years ago it was seen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, directed by Lucy Pitman-Wallace, before Bill Kenwright agreed a touring version with David Esbjornson directing.

 

  • Newcastle Theatre Royal, Monday October19 to Saturday, October 24. Box Office: 08448-112121 or theatreroyal.co.uk/