Interview: Lee Mead, actor

Published on Sunday 21 February 2010 11:45

LORD Arthur Savile's in a bit of bother. At Lady Windermere's he's met a psychic who predicts that he will commit a murder. Being an upper-class twit of the highest order – he went to Eton and Oxford but refused to be improved by either – Savile decides he'd best get this bothersome inevitability out of the way before marrying his beloved Sybil. Otherwise, heaven forfend, he might accidentally murder her!

That's the premise of the Oscar Wilde play coming to Edinburgh this week, starring Lee Mead as the titular fop. It's a frothy bit of fun that's played for the campest of laughs by a cast that includes Gary Wilmot and Kate O'Mara, and which is staged like a bit of Victorian whimsy, complete with a jolly closing singsong.

In the glorious flesh – he is pretty, there's no denying – Mead is nothing like a fop, despite that head full of famously floppy curls. Oh sure, it could be said that he'd be ideally cast in The Importance Of Being Earnest, such is the seriousness with which he treats his career, but since when was that a bad thing? No, my verdict is final: he's a sweetie pie.

As everyone knows, he stormed Any Dream Will Do and garnered mainly good reviews during the West End run of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, though it has to be said the most rabid of the raves were about the way he looked in his loincloth. Not content to rest on those laurels, Mead took himself off to New York's renowned Lee Strasberg school for an intensive three-month course of acting lessons.

"After the success of Joseph, I got offered a couple of West End musicals," he says when we meet backstage at the Richmond Theatre, "but I really wanted to act. The way the business is now, your level of success can go very quickly, and I've always tried to think long term. I didn't want to be somebody who auditioned off the back of thinking that I had a bit of a profile. So I put the work in. We did lots of script work and work on camera, and in the process I discovered a lot of great American playwrights."

He's not sure where his urge to perform comes from. His dad was a postman, his mum a housewife and cleaner, though he notes that her dad adored classical music and was quite a cheeky character.

"From a young age I had a lot of ambition and passion, not just for performing – because I didn't start until I was 17 or 18, in amateur shows – but for meeting people as well. Part of my recent training was being taught that you need to have open eyes every day of your life, every second, everywhere you go. Real life is around us all the time and the job of an actor is to portray that, not just lines from a script.

"I think it's about the interaction between one human being and another. There should be no elitism or distance between you and the audience." He flashes a self-deprecating smile. "It all sounds very deep and quite actorish, doesn't it?"

Has doing this show taught him the truth of the adage: dying's easy, comedy's hard? "It's new ground for me, a completely different rhythm. With a musical you have a full orchestra behind you and the music is driving the show. You're acting through song. And with a play, the energy has to be at such a level, especially in the lead, where you're driving the whole thing for two hours and you have just your voice to rely on. It's important that you're heard and that you're engaging, and that people want to hear what you're saying. And more so since it's Oscar Wilde!"

He's enjoying being part of such a tight-knit company of seasoned pros. "Derren Nesbitt has done over 200 plays. As someone doing my first play, you really learn playing opposite someone so experienced. You learn by listening."

Is he ever tempted by the life of a pop star? After all, he's released two albums. "I'm not a pop star. I don't think I'd ever give up acting to just sing. It's very hard because I'm very passionate about both, but if someone said you could only be a singer for the rest of your career, I'd miss this."

It's lucky then that there are musicals – best of both worlds really. And there's a musical on the cards once he's finished in Savile. He'll go straight into a fortnight of rehearsals before stepping into the role of Fiyero in Wicked from 10 May. He jokes that he's always excited to be working at all – he doesn't take it for granted – adding: "It's a lovely role in a huge, successful show."

Still, one wonders how he'll manage to concentrate, much less keep his eyes open. Around the same time that he starts in Wicked, his wife Denise Van Outen is due to give birth to their daughter.

When I mention impending fatherhood, Mead's megawatt smile threatens to short out the building's electrics. "At the end of the day I have to work and provide for my family and look for that next job. It would have been nice to have had a few weeks off, but the business doesn't work like that. At least I'll be based in London. I feel this is very important. As my career goes on, and I hope we'll also have more children, I'm sure there'll be times when I'll be working away for a few months, or on tour. I wanted, at least for the first few months, to be around."

And if Denise had a great offer, would he swap the greasepaint for a spell behind the scenes as a househusband? "Yeah! I'm going to be a very hands-on dad. You're a team really. You try to balance both things. I don't want to flatten the experience of being in this play or doing Wicked; but being a father, it tops everything. It's incredible."

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime is at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, tomorrow until Saturday www.kingstheatre.org.uk

This article was originally published in Scotland on Sunday on 21 February 2010