‘I’ll never retire’

10:41am Thursday 19th June 2008

Joe McGann tells Viv Hardwick that he wants to keep on performing until they drag my boots from under the curtain' as he brings Fiddler On The Roof on tour to Wearside.

THE biggest shock came for actor Joe McGann when he decided to grow a beard to become the world's best-known milkman, Tevye, in Fiddler On The Roof. "To my surprise my beard was very grey while I had hardly any grey hairs on my head," says the 49-year-old who went online to get advice having never grown a beard before.

"I went to something like beards.com and it helped and I ended up putting bloody coconut oil on. Most guys don't seem to be allowed to grow a beard these days and my wife must be slightly perverse and she says she kinda likes it, but I've crept up on her a couple of times to give her a kiss and she's said oooh' and I think she's just being kind," he jokes. The musical, which plays Sunderland Empire Theatre July 14-19, is very special to Jewish people because it covers a tragic period in Russia when Jews were forced out by pogroms - more often dubbed ethnic cleansing these days.

"My wife is Jewish and I knew about it from that perspective. But the great points of the show are change versus tradition. I think all except one person who wrote it was Jewish and their parents and grandparents were emigrants who finished up in New York and America.

"This is set in 1906, the beginning of the last century and it's very difficult for people to understand how rife anti-semitism was in those days," says Joe.

He feels that the musical stands out because its songs are more Mediterranean and European than Broadway-based and has a serious plot compared to the normally frothy subjects chosen. "At the top and end of the show the audience see a collection of photographs of emigrants that were found in people's possessions in Auschwich. They remind us that these people were real and not a made-up story. I was never a fan of the film because I thought it was heavy on message and light on entertainment.

"Yes, the songs stood out and I thought Norman Jewison (the film's director) went a bit too far and had taken away the lighter aspects. I think it's delivered better with humour and entertainment because it's more provocative rather than a beating you over the head' polemic.

"The real story is the breakdown of this guy's traditions because things in pre-revolutionary Russia are changing apace and the tribe he belongs to is being blamed for everything."

The show had originally been written with Danny Kaye in mind, but Zero Mostel was its original star on Broadway.

Joe has family links with Fiddler and reveals: "My father-in-law was in the Drury Lane production with Alfie Bass and then Topol came in and became the legend he is. He's still playing the role in Australia because he was only in his 20s when he came over to do the West End and in his early 30s when he did the film, but looked a lot older."

He says he found his own version of Tevye by studying the script and came up with a character who has trouble when his five daughters chose love rather match-making for husbands. "There's almost a gallows humour there. He's laughing in the face of adversity and his own plight. The lovely conversations he has with God which are a great theatrical device because it enables you, basically, to speak to the audience. I find those scenes a joy to do and you can gauge the different kind of audiences in those moments, which are the more attentive and which are up for the humour. It's great I'm really, really enjoying doing it."

HE reveals that playing a part like this, following on from a run as Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls last year, really helps actors to stay fit.

"My brother Paul says it's like going away on a stretch (in prison) you come back all fit and all kind of cut," he jokes moving his conversation towards his famous family of brothers - Paul, Stephen and Mark are also actors.

As the oldest, approaching 50 on July 24, I ask him if he's planning anything special to celebrate this landmark. Joe surprises by replying: "I'll be in Woking and my birthday will go past pretty quietly. I might have a lunch for the family on the Sunday, but with birthdays I just don't care. I know it's a landmark and probably my daughter and I and my wife will have a lunch on the Sunday before or after the show because that's the only day I get off.

"They'll drag my boots from under the curtain because one day I'll drop down dead on stage. That will be fine for me because I have no plans to retire.

As long as I'm fit and well I'll keep on doing it."

He says that if any of his brothers are free they may well attend the celebration, but he admits that birthdays and holidays always seem to take second place to work offers. "My poor mother hasn't got a picture of us all together in the one room, all the lads and my sister, for about eight years now. Usually there's one or two missing because of work, but that's the way it goes. We just accept that's part of it.

"But I did see Paul here in Bristol and his sons and I'll see Mark next week because he's down at Salisbury near Bournemouth. Stephen came to see the show with his son about four weeks ago. Even at my mum's 70th at the last minute I think it was Stephen who had to work somewhere." Even though he's in Fiddler until November, Joe is already considering two new contracts. "There was one I really wanted to do, but unfortunately we couldn't make it work... a new musical called Eric The Musical at The Everyman, Liverpool, and part of the Capital of Culture thing. One of the breaks is that this contract over-runs it. Now another couple of things have come into the frame."

He's already starred in the Liverpool Nativity, seen on TV in December, and recalls sitting around a table with brother Paul, actor David Morrissey, Alison Steadman, Ken Dodd, Peter Reid, Peter Wylie of Mighty Wah and a couple of members of Echo And The Bunnymen and having an absolute scream.

"We've all kind of been made ambassadors for Liverpool as Capital of Culture and I had a great week at the Empire there with Fiddler. I think the greatest thing is the legacy afterwards and I recall with Glasgow in 1990 that the locals were what the ****!, this is not for us' and then all of sudden they started taking pride which is starting to happen in Liverpool now. And afterwards there was a real sense of resurgence and that it is now is a truly European city, whereas I don't think Liverpool is, but it's getting there." He's based in Hertfordshire but still feels he gets back enough to his home city. However, if the stage doesn't claim him then Joe feels that he will end his days overseas, somewhere like Nepal or South America.

"I'll either have to build them a theatre or come back and do the jobs that are available here. Please God I'm still hauling my bones around doing this, it'll be great."

"It's funny talking to some people because they say aren't you dying to get back on televsion' but I'm on every day in repeats of The Upper Hand, or All Creatures Great And Small and the stuff I've been doing for years and I work all of the time. I love the fact I earn my living in the entertainment industry."

* Fiddler On The Roof, Sunderland Empire Theatre, July 14-19. Tickets: £10-£32.50. Box Office: 0844-847-2499