The Monthly interviews actor Paul Garrett – Part 2 – The Man Who Swallowed a Dictionary

How did you find out about the part?

My agent at that time contacted me and said that this part would be a very good fit for me. I knew who David Ervine was, and I had respect for him but I never met him. I liked that he could back up his use of flowery language, intellectually, and on the ground, and that said something to me, because if you can’t do that you get caught out. When he died I thought that was an incredible loss. To me he never seemed disingenuous and I know a lot of people felt that he was a great loss for Northern Ireland politics.

How did the auditions go?

I auditioned for the part and then I never heard back until I was contacted for the second audition. When I went to the second audition, Martin was in the room. Now, I do not get intimidated easily, but his legacy, his history, I was intimidated by that. But I always wanted to work with him

Once I had the part, we had to work with a script that was constantly changing and that made it very hard for me to learn the lines in sequence. It was driving me mad. Eventually they pulled the start dates and that was absolutely the right thing to do.

What happens after that?

The second time around, I knew I could do it. And the director, Matthew McElhinney kept telling me I could do it. But it was very difficult and we went right up to the wire, right up to that first night, and then once that first night was over and there was a standing ovation, and that was brilliant, I walked through the halls of the Lyric and got to the dressing room and I just slid down the wall, crying.  And they were tears of joy. It was similar to the feeling I had when my oldest daughter was born, just an incredible feeling of joy.

Looking back on the show how did you deal with the challenges of this performance?

There was the question of the script and I had to really work at it. A one man show with 27 characters, so it had to be relentless repetition. I started having recorded it as an audiobook and that just didn’t work. I just needed to have the script in front of me, 24 hours a day. There were periods where it just wasn’t going in, and Martin would take me aside and make suggestions and that was really useful. I just needed to have that script in front of me all the time.

And what about character development?

In terms of the character development, I brought to each character what I could to the best of my ability. But a lot of that was to do with Matthew, the director, and Martin Lynch. Matthew often talked about delineation, making sure each character is distinct, and you have to snap between one character and another. I had to find a specific thing, a tick or a tell, between each character. Again I found that extremely difficult.

Martin worked with me on that. I will be forever indebted to him for working with me on how we would develop the characters and that was very much a collaboration. There would be ideas, movements, specific things which would immediately allow the audience to identify who was part of the narrative all the way through the shifts and changes during the play. And it had to feel real.

That does sound very difficult?

It took me a long time to get it, and I think it really was well inti the run if the play that I had finally nailed all the characters and I could start to play with them, but it has to be said, I must have infuriated and frustrated both Martin and Matthew continually, because it was a laborious process.

I also think that the emotion of the story, particularly the last few scenes which discuss a very difficult situation which happened to the Ervine family, and something which I knew nothing about, was very challenging. I did eventually get it and I remember at one point Martin said to me that if I was able to deliver that particular emotional scene the way that I had delivered it in rehearsal, at the point when I finally got it, that the audience would respond to it. And he was right. There were nights where I could hear the audience crying, I could hear them responding to a tragedy.