The Best Man's Jeff Fahey on Getting Political and Being an American in London

The American actor Jeff Fahey last opened in the West End late in 2013 in a starry revival of Twelve Angry Men. Now he’s back with the same producer (Bill Kenwright) and co-star (1996 Tony nominee Martin Shaw) headlining the director Simon Evans’ revival at the Playhouse Theatre of the 1960 Gore Vidal classic of American political gamesmanship, The Best Man. Broadway.com caught the ever-charming Fahey during previews one recent lunchtime for a chat about juggling humanitarian work with the theater and memories of dancing on Broadway in Brigadoon.

Four years or more after you last opened in the West End in Twelve Angry Men, you’re back in another American chestnut, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. Why do you think these plays endure?
Well, I think like all good plays they’re timeless; this one is so relevant now, of course, in that it’s about politics, but it’s also far more than just an American political drama. It’s also about religion and abortion and sexuality, gay or straight. There is a lot sprinkled through all this, and we keep discovering new things.

What’s it like playing presidential candidate Joseph Cantwell, a role you’ve been doing on tour prior to this West End run?
What’s interesting is that Vidal based these characters on people he knew. Martin [Shaw]’s character, William Russell, is pretty much based on Adlai Stevenson and Cantwell, the other candidate, is a mixture of a number of people including the Kennedys, [U.S. senator] Estes Kefauver, and even a little bit of Nixon, who was vice-president to Eisenhower at the time Vidal was writing the play.

Given that you and Martin are playing political rivals, and that you also appeared together in Twelve Angry Men, did you ever think this time around of swapping roles throughout the run?
We actually did talk about it and that would be quite something to do. But I think we’ve got quite a load now to get settled into our roles. As it is, the production is always evolving, and Simon [Evans], our director, is always tweaking.

How has politics changed from the era of the play to the present day?
The biggest difference, I think, has most obviously to do with all the social media and the immediacy of “information” that is so in our face these days. There’s no doubt that if Cantwell were around today, he would be using Twitter and all those possibilities.

How does Cantwell compare to Juror No. 3 in Twelve Angry Men, which also found you amid a starry ensemble?
Cantwell is certainly much more driven and self-educated: he understands the game of manipulation and human emotion and wants to be president, so will play every card that’s needed. I like to think with this play that if Cantwell and Russell were blended together, they would make quite an amazing team. Russell’s sensitivity to the people and his intelligence and education fused with Cantwell’s drive and passion and never-ending pushing forward.

How does it feel being the lone American actor in an American play overseas when last time out you shared a stage with the late Robert Vaughn?
I never even think of it, to tell you the truth. Our cast has a wonderful dialect coach, who also worked on Twelve Angry Men, and I can probably count on one hand the number of times that people have asked me anything. I really feel like I’m with a bunch of Americans.

How would you characterize Gore Vidal’s tone here, given that he could be quite the cynic?
He’s a bit of a cynic-romantic, if you will. He deals with relationships between individuals and people’s commitment to one another, but he can also be very clever and even tricky. He’ll lead you down one path as regards the strengths of a character and then he’ll drop something right in the middle that makes you question that person’s morals and principles and integrity and honor.

Amid this London theater activity, aren’t you missing the American stage?
I really feel with this as if we could be on Broadway or off-Broadway, so I guess my sense of myself is that I show up and deliver, if you know what I mean. That said, I do feel very at home doing theater in London, which dates back to first appearing here in Orphans with Albert Finney and Kevin Anderson in 1986!

How do you feel about the rise and rise of Laurie Metcalf, whom you were acting opposite around roughly that same time?
Yes, Laurie and I did a live teleplay for ABC in the mid-1980s called The Execution of Raymond Graham, and she was the one who introduced me to Gary [Sinise] and everyone from Steppenwolf, which in turn led me to doing Orphans. I haven’t seen her in Lady Bird yet, but I was so happy when I heard she got the Oscar nomination. She’s a wonderful person, an amazing actress and a good soul.

Speaking of good souls, how do you juggle acting gigs with your humanitarian and aid work across Europe and the Middle East?
I often find that I don’t know if I’m doing the work in the [acting] business between the other work, or whether I’m doing that other work between the work in the business. They just sort of blend together, and I’ve been wonderfully fortunate that they do.

Aren’t you ever tempted to throw the acting in and devote yourself fulltime to your fine work with NGOs and what not?
No, in that need the one to support me emotionally and spiritually, and the other to support me financially—except that in fact each one allows me to grow with the other. I look at both areas of my life as an adventure that comes with a sense of mission, and what’s great is that there are so many different ways for people to be involved.

Do you ever think back on the world of dance, given that you appeared on Broadway as John Curry’s replacement in Brigadoon, more than 30 years ago?
And you know who was in the chorus of that and helped me out with a lot of the moves that I couldn’t get at the time: Jerry Mitchell! That production was a baptism by fire and my dancing days are long gone, brother.

No chance we’ll see you in [Mitchell’s production] Kinky Boots?
[Laughs] Well, let me see it first!