London Star David Bark-Jones on Having Wicked Fun in The 39 Steps

The 39 Steps starts its fifth year on the West End next month, which means six actors have now played the male lead of Richard Hannay, Robert Donat’s assignment in the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film of espionage and intrigue that Patrick Barlow’s stage version pastiches with such affection. (One of the London Hannays, Robert Portal, did two separate runs.) The role’s current occupant is David Bark-Jones, who first came to attention during the 1990s in new plays like Martin Sherman’sSome Sunny Day and Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice. Speaking by phone from the Oxfordshire countryside prior to doing the commute into town for a two-show day, Bark-Jones, 44, talked about keeping a long run going, chopping off his hair, and appearing opposite Dianne Pilkington, who brings with her the singular fan base that comes from having spent several years in Wicked.

You haven’t actually done a West End run in a long time, or so it seems.
Not since Dealer’s Choice came in [from the National to the Vaudeville]—what, 15 years ago? But this is very different, being essentially a job of replication. My job is not to create some amazing character but to a great degree to replicate what has come before, which is actually a fresh challenge and completely different to what I normally do.

And what you usually do is originate parts in new plays?
Yes. I’ve never previously gone into anything or taken over a role. Normally, if you’re doing something new, you don’t know what’s going to happen at rehearsals. The play is on the page and you create the event around it. To some degree, with this, I’m mimicking what John [Hopkins, his immediate predecessor in the part] was doing. I know inevitably it’s different because it’s me that says the lines and everything we do is unique and all of that, but if I got all precious about making it my own Hannay, I would skewer the production. In the end it’s just a job, and you have to fulfill the character that they want.

You have the benefit, too, of stepping into a hit show!
That is fantastic. To be honest with you, I’m very much enjoying other aspects of this on top of the job security. The strange thing is that because as Hannay I’m playing not just a character but an actor playing a character, I’ve found that very freeing. [The play comments on itself even as it tells of a suave London-based gent, Hannay, who gets enmeshed in an elaborate spy tale full of chases, romance and derring-do.] The other thing I’ve found liberating is that I knew [the play] was going to work. I knew that however badly I do this, the show will still work. You can’t screw it up [laughs].

Had you seen the production before coming into it?
By the time I auditioned, I think I'd seen it three times. Three weeks before the rehearsal period, I took a view on it that, sod it, I was going to watch it because the play is so physical and has so much to do with what happens around [Hannay]—so I then watched it eight more times!

This certainly seems to be “the little show that could” on both sides of the Atlantic: the New York production won two Tony Awards and is now on its fourth venue, this time off-Broadway.
It’s the Englishness of it, I suppose, that people find charming and appealing, and you can say that works not just for England but all over the world. It’s unashamedly entertaining. So often you go to the theater and things aren’t entertaining, whereas this is very simply done with only four people and the overall impression is of a show that just wants people to enjoy themselves and to laugh at themselves and at life. There’s a joy in it that I haven’t found in any other thing I’ve done.

You’ve always communicated a certain kind of Englishness, I think, starting with your name [hyphenated or, as the British say, double-barreled].
[Laughs] Well, the Jones bit is Welsh and Bark, no one quite knows—nobody’s really English, are they? They’re all a mixture of Scottish and Welsh and what not. But I know what you mean. Maybe it’s the fact that I went to public school [Rugby, in Warwickshire] that I certainly play a lot of characters from that kind of background. In the last London play I did, The Contingency Plan at the Bush, I played a Tory minister for climate change—someone whose mindset and background weren’t all that different from Hannay!

You attended drama school at Mountview, a place known for producing musical theater talent. Are you interested in doing a musical?
When I was there it was half acting and half musical theater. I’ve never done a musical. I did once audition for Les Miserables and some bloke shouted out at me, “Come back in six months when you’ve learned to sing!” [Laughs] I’m not really sure musicals are my game, though I would love to do a Sondheim.

You are co-starring with Dianne Pilkington, the longstanding London Glinda in Wicked. Are you noticing many Wicked fans in your audience?
Not just in the audience but also at the stage door! I had rather thought that they would all be painted with green faces and wearing these caps and things, but they’re not like that at all. They’re perfectly normal.

Can you tell when they’re in the house?
Sometimes. The Wicked lot have a certain humor—a wicked way of responding, if you’ll forgive the pun. In fact, I think our play benefits from a few quite strange laughs at the beginning: that helps other people relax and feel that they can laugh. English audiences can be quite stiff.

You used to have distinctively floppy hair.
Yes, though in Some Sunny Day [at the Hampstead Theatre in 1996, with Rupert Everett] I shaved it all off and got in terrible trouble. On this, I get a haircut about once a month, and I’ve got a pencil mustache. I’m lucky, I guess, in that I look slightly younger than my years, and my hairdresser says that’s good because you’ve got longer [in the profession].

Boyishness is not a bad thing, I suppose.
There are people who look 50 when they’re 30 who also look 50 when they’re 70, which means that with them, you know exactly what you’re getting. But in terms of how looks affect one’s career, I do spend an awful lot of time with facial hair—maybe because I tend to cover up the boyishness.

Is the current mustache your own or fake?
I started off fighting not to have one because I spent last year with a beard and got fed up with facial hair but with this, I found that it was taking me 25 minutes to put it on and then you sweat so much that it was starting to come off. Basically, the only one that would stay on was prosthetic, and that took me three hours to scrub off, so eventually I thought it would be easier to grow one.

How does it feel?
We had a Q and A recently after the show and some five-year-old child looked at me with absolute disgust and said, “Is that your own mustache?” He just looked absolutely appalled! [Laughs] Other than that it’s lovely.