Tony Winner Robert Lindsay Preps for a Startling Star Turn in the West End Premiere of Onassis

Robert Lindsay undergoes a remarkable transformation to play the title role in Martin Sherman’s Onassis, which begins previews at London’s Novello Theatre on September 30. Gone is the charming song-and-dance man who won theatergoers’ hearts—not to mention Tony and Olivier Awards for Best Actor—for his bravura turn in the 1987 musical hit Me and My Girl. Instead, the 60-year-old actor takes the stage as Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, the man who won the hand of the world’s most famous widow, Jacqueline Kennedy (to be played by Lydia Leonard). On the London stage, Lindsay has starred as Fagin, Richard III, and Cyrano, among many others, and is familiar as the TV husband to Zoe Wanamaker in the popular sitcom My Family. Broadway.com caught up with the friendly, ever-candid actor late in rehearsals to find out about going Greek—and about the roles he has played and those that got away.

You first played Aristotle Onassis out of town two years ago, when the play had a different title [Aristo] and supporting cast.
I would say it's almost a completely different play now, or certainly a different approach. We learned so much about the play at Chichester [in southeast England]. It was compulsive viewing and the characters were vividly drawn, but there was a little too much exposition. The narrative has much more of a flow now, and I think it really does transport you to another world, another time.

It’s probably not a world that you—as a musical theater Tony winner and classical actor from the north of England—ever expected you'd inhabit.
No, but I suppose if there's any driving force to the work I do, it's that I'm drawn to people who are a little bit larger than life, which Onassis, heavens knows, certainly was. I am by nature an extrovert, which is probably why I play parts where I can let something out. Also, for me, this feels like the right role at the right time. What happened was that I was reading Peter Evans' book Nemesis [about Onassis, and a primary source for Sherman's play] on an airplane and thinking, "Wow, what an extraordinary story." Almost a month later, this script turned up on my doorstep. It felt as if I was meant to do this.

But playing a Greek tycoon must, nonetheless, feel like a very different kind of gig.
What I've noticed is that I tend to play below my age because I've always felt like a young man [laughs]. But it's nice playing my age, because there’s something I understand about this character and about falling in love with someone younger and what that desire is all about. I mean, Onassis was 64 when he married Jackie. [Lindsay's own wife, performer and TV personality Rosemarie Ford, is 13 years his junior.] I have to say, also, that wealth fascinates me, it really does, because I've never had it—how people who are incredibly wealthy wield their power and manage people.

How important is it to physically resemble the man you’re playing?
Of course that matters, and people are concerned about it; when you see Michael Sheen playing Tony Blair, he looks like Tony Blair! But what's really important, I think, is what's inside, and if you've got a hold on that, then the rest of it is about the process of suggestion. In my case, on this play I've gone for padding, and I make sure I stoop. What matters most to me, though, is that I feel as if I'm inhabiting someone I kind of understand. It's weird: Peter Evans came into rehearsal and said that he felt as if he was in Onassis' company again.

This play is written by an American about someone who was married to one of the most legendary of all Americans. Could Onassis finally bring you back to Broadway?
Well, if I'm going to come back to Broadway, this might be it [laughs]. There's a lot of American interest. But I have had other opportunities to go to New York after Me and My Girl. I was asked to go to the Manhattan Theatre Club with The Entertainer and to do Cyrano on Broadway, and there was talk of me taking over from Simon Russell Beale [as King Arthur] in Spamalot.

And yet you keep saying no.
[Sighs]. Tell me about it—which seems very odd to me given that I find New York so magical!

Maybe it's because the experience you had [in Me and My Girl] playing Bill Snibson and doing "the Lambeth walk" was so widely hailed. How do you top that?
Absolutely. It was an overwhelming experience, and that might be one of the reasons why so far I have never really wanted to go back [to Broadway]. How do you re-create that? Here we were with what we thought was a silly British musical, and I had my bags packed to get on the first plane home if it didn't work out. Instead, the show turned out to be exactly what America loves, with all that vaudevillian shtick, and I was on the front of Time magazine and being enticed to stay on [in America] to do movies. Then I did one [Bert Rigby, You're a Fool] for Carl Reiner, and that didn't work out [laughs].

That's show biz in a nutshell. Speaking of show biz, I recall reading that you were going to play Max Bialystock in The Producers in London.
What happened was that me and Lee [Evans, who did end up playing Leo Bloom] went to see Mel [Brooks] in New York, and they offered us the roles there and then. I have to say, I got a bit of cold feet and pulled out at the last minute. Mel can be very difficult when he wants to be, and of course he's an entertainer himself, and a brilliant one. My agent said, "Maybe you should do something else," so I went to the Old Vic and did The Entertainer [John Osborne's play about a comedian in crisis].

I’ll never forget the press night of The Entertainer, with Joan Plowright and her son Richard watching you re-create a part [Archie Rice] originated by her late husband [Laurence Olivier].
No one told me they were there, fortunately, and I didn’t know until after the interval. That show was an extraordinary experience: There was I as Archie Rice abusing the audience, and they were sitting there completely nonplussed, eating their chocolates—except for the nights when hecklers would call out, “Be funny! Do something funny!” They had come to see the Robert they loved from the telly, and they wanted him to be funny.

What’s been your experience of the after-effects of playing Aristotle Onassis?
Well, you know that Onassis was an alcoholic; he drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney. Let’s just say that I have to have a shower every night [laughs]. It’s a dirty play.