From Captain Hook to Hamlet, Bond villain to Tony Blair, Toby Stephens has spent three decades portraying some of drama’s most compelling characters. Ahead of his appearance in Peter Shaffer’s haunting masterpiece Equus at TRB, he talks to Melissa Blease about mental health, AI, artistic honesty, his mother, Dame Maggie Smith – and why theatre should never be afraid to make audiences uncomfortable.
If you’re holding out for a hero, it’s very likely that acclaimed British actor Toby Stephens has been there, done that and aced the genre.
From Hamlet, Jay Gatsby and Tony Blair to Casanova, Edward Rochester and arch Bond villain Gustav Graves by way of Emperor Nero and Captain Hook (yup, Toby gives great anti-hero too), he’s pretty much ruled the national and international film, TV, theatre and radio Major Roles waves since he graduated from LAMDA in 1991… and the works mentioned here only represent the tip of his CV iceberg. Heck, this is an actor who’s even ‘been’ Jesus! Surely he’s at a point in his career where he can pick and choose which role he’d like to undertake next – if indeed, there are any he’s yet to play?
“I don’t actually think like that!” Toby laughs. “I much prefer being asked to do a role I’d never even thought about before…”
And the role that forms the reason for our chat is a case in point that proves Toby’s philosophy.
It’s a beautifully written, uniquely intriguing, moving, phenomenal piece that asks a lot of questions but has a real humanity to it.” On Equus
Toby is currently starring as psychiatrist Martin Dysart in a revival of English playwright Peter Shaffer’s compelling psychodrama Equus – a deeply disturbing play that’s unnerved, challenged and discomfited audiences since 1973 and continues to represent modern theatre at its dazzling, complex, most beautiful best.
It comes as a slight surprise, then, that Toby readily admits that he’d never seen or read Equus until director Lyndsay Posner introduced him to it. “It came with a whole bunch of baggage that I knew about, but it actually came as a real surprise to me too,” he says. “It’s a beautifully-written, uniquely intriguing, moving, phenomenal piece that asks a lot of questions but has a real humanity to it. And like every great play, it speaks outside of the period in which it was written, and speaks particularly to the current generation.”
Toby is talking about the mental health issues that are very much at the forefront of Equus. His character Dysart has been tasked with analysing why troubled teenager Alan Strang chose to violently blind six horses at the stables where he had a part-time job, but in questioning the boy’s sanity, Dysart starts to question his own views of modern societal conformity… and ultimately, his own perspective of himself.
“Both characters are going through their own mental crises at different parts of their lives, and they’re both trying to seek a way of being,” Toby explains. “The child’s way is misguided for sure, but the older man is asking questions of himself too, about his marriage, and his doubts about what he’s doing as a psychiatrist. His professional relationship with Strang starts off in a sort of cynical, jaded way – like, ‘oh Jesus, another one I have to deal with.’ And then. Shaffer’s brilliance kicks in: he creates a kind of thriller where Dysart becomes like a private investigator trying to unearth the cause of Strang’s actions. But in trying to unpeel that onion, he’s sort of unpeeling himself…” And when Dysart has taken us on this dark, strange journey, we’re left considering the questions that Equus raises away from the stage.
“One of the main arguments I find so fascinating about the play is, in curing somebody of their mental illness, are we taking something away from them too?,” Toby says. “Dysart may be attempting to take the boy’s discomfort and pain away, but at the same time is he making him just another boring, anodyne citizen? I remember when Prozac was a brand new drug, and there was a whole debate about artists who were choosing not to take it even if they suffered terrible depression because it robbed them of their creativity. Part of the human condition is that life is a struggle – but what is normal behaviour, and who is to define that? Shaffer’s writing on the subject has a poetic nature to it that asks all these questions.”
Indeed, the strength of a powerful play lies firstly in the writing. Alongside his fairly recent discovery of Shaffer, Toby ranks Harold Pinter on his Greatest Storyteller charts (“He’s unique in that I don’t think there’s a bad Pinter play out there!”, he says.) But while he readily admits to enjoying revivals, Toby’s currently finding himself in search of the new too. “I think we need more new writing for theatre – it’s something that should be evolving, but has become slightly anodyne. I feel that, in the last decade or so, theatre has become terrified of offending people, and you can’t be creative in an environment that is strident. Theatre shouldn’t be afraid of making people uncomfortable! Equus can make people uncomfortable but they feel all the more rewarded for it.”
Toby’s experience of theatre both ancient and modern started long before his own acting career began; he’s the younger son of actors Sir Robert Stephens and Dame Maggie Smith. Given that heritage, was his own direction of travel inevitable?
“People think I’m from an acting dynasty and I’m not!” Toby laughs. “Mum and dad were ground zero: mum’s parents were a secretary and a public health pathologist; dad’s dad was a builder and his mum was a cleaner – for my parents, pursuing life on the stage was like running away to the circus! Mum and dad divorced when I was very young so my dad wasn’t really around when I was little. But mum brought me up with the idea that acting was a craft that you worked hard at and not some kind of magical thing. I saw how hard she worked; her success wasn’t a given, ever. She always strove to improve, and each project was unique and required something else of her. I learnt a lot from observing her, and that very much informed me as to who I am as an actor today.”
Mum brought me up with the idea that acting was a craft that you worked hard at and not some kind of magical thing,” On Dame Maggie Smith
Was the formidable Ms Smith a tough critic? “She was always honest with me, but when she liked something she really liked it,” Toby recalls. “She had a real respect for people who could act, and I really respected her tastes; they didn’t always chime with mine, but we could disagree. But if she didn’t like something she didn’t like it, and that was the end of that!” And are Toby’s own children (he and his actress wife Anna-Louise Plowman have a son and two daughters born in 2007, 2009 and 2010 respectively) showing any signs of following in dad, mum and their paternal grandparents’ footsteps?
“I don’t think so, not really,” Toby says. “They like drama and they love the theatre, but whether or not they actually want to do it themselves, I don’t know. Obviously I would always support my children in whatever they want to do, but acting is a profession that’s getting tougher and ever more precarious. I’m lucky in that theatre is something that AI can’t and will never be able to do. But still, for people coming up in theatre today, it’s going to be tough. The assumption now is that AI is going to win, but I don’t know whether it will, ultimately, in the way people think it might; I think there’ll be a huge push back – it’s already starting.”
Toby and I began our conversation with my views on how he’s aced the ‘hero’ genre. As we start to wind down, I ask him if he has heroes of his own. “Paul Scofield – I loved everything he did,” he says, almost wistfully recalling a time gone by. “And I always admired people like Orson Welles, Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep – she’s extraordinary. But I’m not trying to imitate in any way; I’m trying to come up with my own version of what I feel is right. The only way that acting really works is when it’s honest – whether in comedy or tragedy, we respond to somebody on stage when you see them replicate something that you do or think, something that chimes with you, and an actor who is unafraid to lean into honesty even if it gets ugly. One of the great sins of certain actors is that they always want to be liked; in order to play things honestly, sometimes you need to be disliked.”
Disliking Toby Stephens? Now that’s a role that would be very hard to play.
Equus, Theatre Royal Bath, 14-25 July.
For details and to book tickets, visit: theatreroyal.org.uk