Don Juan in Soho's Adrian Scarborough on Hitting It Off with David Tennant, Returning to the Stage & More

The Olivier Award-winning actor Adrian Scarborough was last on the London stage early in 2014 when he played the Fool to Simon Russell Beale's King Lear and will soon be seen as the sidekick, Stan, to David Tennant's Don Juan when a revival of the 2006 Patrick Marber play Don Juan in Soho starts previews March 17 at Wyndham's Theatre, in advance of a March 28 opening. Between his Shakespeare immersion and now, Scarborough has found time to appear alongside Patrick Stewart in the Starz TV series Blunt Talk, and he can before long be seen onscreen in the Saoirse Ronan starrer On Chesil Beach, adapted from the Ian McEwan novel. During a lunch break recently for playwright-director Marber's update of Moliere, the ever-amiable Scarborough talked about sharing a stage with a one-time Doctor Who, and why he prefers playing the servant to the master. 

How does it feel to be in the first London production of Patrick Marber's play since Michael Grandage directed the original?
The play feels to me like a contemporary classic. Patrick's done some rewriting and had some different thoughts about the play, and I think it's got a lot harder over the last 10 years—and also tougher as to how he feels about the relationships. He's also made it very politically up-to-date: there are all sorts of resonances with today's society. Watch this space!

Is it helpful having the playwright doubling as his own director?
What's great is that if ever there's an issue with a word or you feel something else is needed, he'll just come up with it and it's handed to you on a plate. Patrick thinks as much with his writer's head as his director's head, and you don't have to be too sensitive about it. 

Did you see its debut at the Donmar?
I did and liked it very much. I've always loved the play and thought it was terrific fun. It was lovely when Patrick quietly admitted to me that he thought I would make a very good Stan.

Will this production depart from the original?
Well, I can only hope that we're bringing our own freshness to it. Of course, Stephen [Wight, the original Stan] was very young, whereas I'm haggard and old [laughs], so that's a big difference, and David [Tennant] isn't as old as me but he's heading in that direction whereas Rhys Ifans was still in his 30s at the time, so I think it's a very different play when you've got these two blokes heading towards middle age. One gets the impression that these guys have been together a lot longer.

How would you describe Stan, who is a Fool-like figure, in a way?
I think he is a kind of Fool and he's the conscience of the audience, too, really: he's the one who keeps them in the know about Don Juan and warns them not to be too charmed by him—that there are terrible dark clouds on the horizon if this behavior continues. So, he's a soothsayer in a sort of way. 

What about acting alongside David Tennant: do you feel as if you're in the presence of a huge star? 
No, you really don't, and I mean that in the best sense. What is so lovely is that David's feet are firmly on the ground and because the majority of his formative experiences were on stage, he just speaks a language of the theater very clearly. I find that literally captivating and very easy to get along with.

Did you have any apprehensions? 
I was slightly worried, I won't deny it because I wondered whether there would be a spark—whether we would hit off. But we absolutely have, and it has just been hilarious, which is great. It would be a hard production to watch if there were no dynamism in that central relationship. 

What is it like performing a play set in London's Soho within spitting distance of the actual place?
The thing there is that Patrick's idea of Soho and especially Don Juan's idea of Soho are very romantic. He talks a lot about the Soho of the past that we knew and loved, and I'm not altogether sure that Soho is the same now as it used to be—a lot of the heart has been knocked out of it, and you could probably say the same about New York really. When I first came to London in the 1980s, Soho was this fantastically, gloriously sordid place, and a lot of that life is gone. Whereas we once had models standing in doorways, it's full of real estate developers these days. 

Am I right in thinking that three years for you is a long time between theater jobs?
It is, which is why I jumped at this, really: it was sort of a chance to get back on stage. It's been a joy and a pleasure to be hanging out with a theater crowd again, but what happens is that things sometimes get in the way. I tied myself up for two seasons of the [Starz TV series] Blunt Talk, and that was such a madcap adventure shooting January to May in L.A. that there was very little time to fit in a decent theater show or a long run of anything before you had to go back. That series was a two-season commission and we did 20 episodes: there, too, was another servant-master relationship, except that the servant I played there was a bit more outspoken and certainly more heroic than Stan! 

What was it like being in the film of Les Miserables, which reunited you with your director on The King's Speech, Tom Hooper? 
I had so much make-up on and my teeth looked so terrible that nobody knew it was me underneath, so that was a bit depressing! Here I was thinking, "Ah, finally, recognition from the musical world," but no, sadly not. Still, it was great to work with Tom [Hooper] again and to see him in action and to be knee-deep in mud and seaweed was just incredible. 

After all these servants, don't you sometimes think you'd like to play the master?
No, to tell you the truth: second rung down suits me very well. I think it's just more my character, really. I like being the support underneath without having the responsibility of being on top and selling the show. The servants make up quite a nice part of my CV, and I think that's where I sit most comfortably.