It's so, it makes you so tense actually.

The great thing about this play, I think, is the fact that all the action has happened before the play begins.

So all the things that become revelations have already taken place.

He's already, you know, his dad is already sick.

In the original, it's a road rage incident.

The two, he meets his father, unbeknownst to him, it's his father in a cart and they have an argument and he kills the guy.

So in our version, it's a car accident.

But how does this, for both of you, stack up against some of the incredible film work, for instance, that you've done?

Mm-hmm

... you know, I don't know how far back, but no, actually never did, you know, look at that seat or even that pathway as, as kind of a, um, as an option.

Um, it was only when, uh, I mean, I don't know if you wanna call it during COVID, you know, as things started to really, you know, kind of change with, um, with the, with the entire industry.

Um, and that, that's when I started, I guess, to, you know, open up the opportunities in my own mind, you know? 'Cause before that I had a very straight progression, you know, and, and a pretty quick one too.

So, um, you know, from assistant pro, head pro, general manager at, at, uh, you know, the private clubs.

So there wasn't a lot of kind of outside consideration, you know, kind of at that point.

And only then when, I guess, you know, the world was kind of getting turned upside down, uh, you know, you think, look at things through a little bit of a different lens, and I always like to say that the big picture equation, uh, you know, of, of all of life is kind of the ultimate one, not just the, the career-

And- and that might, I don't think that's that much of an ambiguous question.

Really?

Yeah, we never stood there and said, "Look, how can we physically show their deterioration? How we c- how can we sh- physically show their mental condition?" It just happens automatically.

And I think Lesley realized that, uh, well, I can't speak for her, but that, that, that, just, you know, as you say, crumbling, um, is where Jocasta's at at that moment.

And Oedipus has this last big roar of wanting to know who he is, followed by that incredible sequence where we have to get changed.

You know, we still ha- he still has to make that speech.

There's a whole silent sequence where they're changing their clothes when the revelations happen.

And physically, I just thought it become-- it became obvious to me that he's not the same guy as he was at the beginning.

Right.

[piano music] I suppose what you're trying to get to the root of by talking to actors a lot, and a lot of the discussions I have with people is, what is it, in inverted commas? What is the thing? Is it that you find a character that you so obviously relate to that people believe? And, and I've played a lot of characters in my time, and some have been more successful than others.

Is that it? Or do, do certain people have an innate sense of performance and understanding of, in inverted commas, it? I don't quite know what it is.

But what's amazing is that that nebulous, difficult-to-understand concept of it is probably what we're all chasing.

[drum roll]

Do you have any worries about what's happening with AI and the, and the future of acting?

Yeah.

I was doing a show which was fortunate enough to have hundreds of extras, and we found out one day that those extras, once they'd come in for the first day, were then being taken off and they were being digitally captured.

And the reason we discovered was that then they wouldn't have to pay them to come back.

Mm-hmm.

And right at the very end of the play, he says, "I don't know who I am." And what these revelations do is make him realize that he's been living a life that he thought was one thing, but isn't.

So his children are not his children, they're actually, bizarrely, his brothers and sisters, which is why he rejects them at the end of the play, because it's too much to deal with.

And of course, his wife turns out to be his mother, which is also just...

His lover is somebody he can't be with.

That- that's what happens to him.

All these revelations basically make him realize that he-- all these family relationships and these loving relationships, and the world that he thought he was living in is just all evaporated.

Oh!