THE ADVER speaks to Jack Fox ahead of his show Dear Lupin at the Theatre Royal Bath.

 

TRAVELLERS on the London Underground are generally a hardened lot, accustomed to witnessing any number of bizarre sights on the Tube. But there must have been a few puzzled expressions on the Victoria Line some weeks ago when a young man entered a carriage, absorbed in reading a script.

At first he laughed uproariously and then he burst into tears. Had his fellow-passengers snuck a glance at the pages of what he’d been reading, they would probably have had a similar reaction.

You’d have to be a pretty dedicated miserabilist not to find yourself chuckling at the contents of Dear Lupin, the Sunday Times Humour Book of the Year now cleverly adapted by Michael Simkins.

Even the redoubtable Jeremy Paxman fell under its spell, describing it in his Guardian review as “brilliantly written” and suggesting that bookshops “could offer a money back guarantee if you don’t laugh”. The young man on the Victoria Line was of course Jack Fox, the youngest of the five Fox siblings, who plays Charlie Mortimer in Dear Lupin. Initially Jack had his doubts about his suitability for the role but he changed his mind in a dramatic fashion, as he recalls.

“I knew that my dad had read the play and had liked it very much and when I had a meeting with my agent, he passed me a copy of the script. However, I had a costume fitting to do in Great Marlborough Street and at first I thought that I didn’t really have the time to read it. It was while I was on the down escalator in Oxford Circus that I started to read Dear Lupin and from the first page I was gripped. It made me laugh and it made me cry. I can’t imagine what the other passengers must have thought when they saw me in tears. By the time I reached Vauxhall, I was on the ‘phone to my agent to say that I had to have a meeting with the producers. It wasn’t at all a done deal and I knew that they had other people in mind to play Charlie. Eventually the news came through that the producers and the director Philip Franks were willing to see me and the meeting went well. Philip was charming and he could see how enthusiastic I was and how he could get the best out of me. I turned down a couple of jobs because I wanted to do Dear Lupin so badly. After about a week and a half of waiting, I heard that I’d got the part.”

What had made Jack respond so positively to the play?

“It is so beautifully written that you can’t help but read on and it really moved me. Charlie wants it to be a tribute to his Dad - a kind of permanent In Loving Memory to him,”

One of the themes of the play is the clash of generations. Jack shrewdly points to the contrasting backgrounds between the senior and the junior Mortimers.

“Roger was born in 1909 and so he grew up at a time of war whereas Charlie, born in 1952, was growing up in the 1960s in an atmosphere of hedonism, of indulging yourself in drink or drugs or losing your virginity at sixteen. During the course of the play Charlie discovers that Roger was proud of him, despite his misadventures. They offer each other advice, although it’s debatable how much an ‘unrepentant spiv’ as Charlie described himself actually listened to his father.”

Two-handers such as Dear Lupin, apart from requiring a capacious memory from the actor, also depend on a profound trust between the participants. How have the Foxes coped?

“Dad is such a seasoned pro that I’ve learnt a million things from him,” says Jack. “It’s been like having an intensive workshop on working with your Old Man. I haven’t done much theatre - most recently a production of The Picture of Dorian Gray and I discovered that you can really lose yourself in a play and that there’s more of a team spirit than you’ll find on a film-set. You get nervous, of course, but you get nervous because you want to be as good as you can be and I expect a lot of myself.”

Jack is full of praise for the adaptation of Dear Lupin by Michael Simkins.

“Michael, an actor as well as a writer, is a very gifted man and he’s done a stunning job in taking the stories as conjured up by Charlie and narrating what Roger and Charlie went through together and how their relationship grew. In the course of the play, we see how life often teaches you lessons when you least expect it.”

Jack admits to certain parallels between the scrapes into which Charlie inevitably falls and his own youthful misdemeanours.

“Like Charlie, I remember behaving like an idiot, with those moments of being naughty when you worry about the repercussions for your parents of whatever sin it is that you have committed. All of Charlie’s misdeeds are exposed in the play but he’s unashamedly open about what he has done. As well as getting into trouble, I played a lot of sport at school and it was after being made Head of House that I decided to put my head down and get on with my A-Levels. I think that everybody has to learn from their mistakes but they need to be allowed to make them in the first place.”

Mortimer pere is a master of the ironic comment.

“You wish you could write like him,” says Jack. “He has a letter for every occasion whether he is admonishing Charlie or trying to put him back on track. Roger had a wonderful irreverence which I think had an echo in Charlie’s lack of respect for authority. The play is about family and about treasuring the bonds between family members. They are the ones who will stick by you and so you should appreciate what you have in terms of family. That’s one of the points the play is making.”

It can’t be easy playing not a fictional character but a living human being whom you know on a personal level.

“I feel a genuine responsibility to do justice to the man who’ll probably be sitting in the front row. I’m trying to see the world through Charlie’s eyes and I have to convey his effervescence, his sparkle. Charlie and Tim are funny people and nothing is not talked about when you are with them, brilliantly. I’m attempting an interpretation rather than an impersonation and my job is to home in on what makes Charlie Charlie. He’s a very honest man and he’s shown a lot of balls in making the letters public.”

According to Jack, he resisted joining his siblings and his Fox cousins in the profession. He tried a number of options including the Law and the City before the pull of the Fox acting genes apparently proved too strong.

“I don’t think that there was a Damascus moment as such when I decided to become an actor. It’s such an unstable and volatile profession that you have to make a pact with yourself, a kind of Faustian pact, if you like. I think I finally realised what it entailed when I was invited to sit in on a series of auditions and I saw that you can’t go into acting and do it in a half-arsed way.”

Jack and older brother Laurence both appeared in an episode of Lewis, although they had no scenes together, and it seems that the Foxes may prefer to work alone away from the family. However, you can always turn to Dad for some wise words.

“I think that my father’s judgement is better than mine and he is a wonderful source of advice,” says Jack.” Dad has been around the mill a few times and you should always listen to people with the experience. I’m very fortunate to be included in this production and all of it has been terrific. It’s wonderful to be working with Dad, with Philip, with the producers and the whole team. I love learning and I love new things and so I’m looking forward to absorbing the culture of all the different places we’ll be playing Dear Lupin.”

Dear Lupin will run at the Theatre Royal Bath from Monday, April 20 to Saturday 25.

Tickets are available from the Theatre Royal Bath Box Office on 01225 448844 or online at www.theatreroyal.org.uk.