A Life in Time and Space - The Biography of David Tennant. Nigel Goodall
interview. As part of the process, he convinces her to undress. The situation becomes more intense during Dr Prentice’s supposed ‘interview’ when Mrs Prentice enters, and he attempts to cover up his activity by hiding the girl behind a curtain.
His wife, however, is also being seduced and blackmailed by Nicholas Beckett, played by David. She therefore promises him the post as secretary, which adds further confusion. Soon, Geraldine is dressed like a boy and Nicholas is dressed as a girl, Winston Churchill is missing body parts and the doctor digs himself further and further into trouble by piling up more and more ridiculous lies. Dr Prentice’s clinic is then faced with a government inspection. Led by Dr Rance, the inspection reveals the chaos in the clinic and Rance, who talks about how he will use the situation to develop a new book, which he says will bring together incest, buggery, outrageous women and strange love-cults.
When the original production of the play was staged at the Queens Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, London in March 1969, almost two years after Orton was brutally bludgeoned to death by his ex-lover Kenneth Halliwell, with nine hammer blows to the head, there were some cries of ‘Filth!’ from the gallery, but the work was still considered enjoyable, even if it was, as some critics noted, a somewhat staid revival and survived as a largely shock-free Swinging Sixties period piece.
If David never thought he would get so far as to walk the boards at the National, perhaps he was equally surprised that year when he also landed a bit part and shared a scene with Christopher Eccleston in Michael Winterbottom’s big-screen adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s tragic Jude, a profoundly moving drama unrelentingly bleak in its depiction of love and poverty in the late-nineteenth century. Although it was the only time that he would share any on-screen time with Eccleston, it was, of course, from him that, nine years later, he would take over his childhood fantasy role of playing the key role in Doctor Who.
When he wasn’t working in theatre or film, David filled his schedule with bit parts on television. He appeared in such popular shows as The Bill, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) and Foyle’s War. Appearing so much on television in those days, even if it was only small parts, probably helped him to familiarise himself with the technical side of film-making because it hadn’t been part of his drama school training. Filming was not like acting, so yes, he admits, ‘I had to [learn] because it wasn’t part of my course then. There are all sorts of terms [like rolling, speed, slate, action] that can throw you if you don’t know them when you start out, but I found that film crews were always happy to help. You learn a bit about editing too, along the way, learning to save your best performance for a close-up and not a wide shot, that kind of thing. It’s about getting the right emotional state as raw as you can make it on the right take, which is just something you get right with experience.’
Part of that experience is learning how to get into character and becoming thoroughly acquainted with the story, something that’s hard for anyone when the tale keeps shifting, when the plot, continuous on paper, suddenly flies to all points of the compass, only to be reassembled much later on the cutting-room table. Even if it’s all part of the process, it must sometimes become tedious: from the early hours of the morning till late at night, watching scenes laboriously set up over hours of preparation, only to have them cut short or cut with barely a word spoken.
David also had his own technique for reaching an emotional point in a scene: ‘You need to take yourself by surprise a little bit. If you need to listen to a certain piece of music, for example, as a trigger, I think your reaction stops being potent. I personally just need a bit of quiet. But you know, there are no rules. If it works for you, then you should do it.’
But there is also a need, he admitted, to find time to wind down in between takes: ‘You need to be able to relax as filming days are long, often starting at six in the morning and going on until eight at night. You can’t be primed every second, you’d kill yourself by week three. You need to chill out, but be ready to take the time you need to prepare for a challenging scene. It’s all about choosing your moment: knowing when to get a bit of space to prepare and knowing when you can just have a chat or read the paper.’
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