The latest offering from Bill Kenwright’s Classic Theatre Company has a stellar cast which includes Mark Wynter who made his professional debut as a recording artist in the 1960’s and went on to have nine Top 20 singles, including Venus in Blue Jeans, It’s Almost Tomorrow and Go Away Little Girl.
He has also enjoyed an acting career that has spanned nearly 50 years, appearing on radio, television, film and stage, where he has featured in many plays and musicals, and seven Agatha Christie Company productions. Just before a recent matinee performance of A Judgement in Stone, I was lucky enough to get to talk to him about his latest play, his music career and celebrating such a long time in showbusiness.
Before we talk about A Judgement in Stone Mark, I’d like to take you back to 1986, if I may, and to the Victoria Palace Theatre in London. That is where you and I first met when you were starring in the musical Charlie Girl.
Oh yes, with the lovely Cyd Charisse. What an amazing person she was. Even to this day I am always thrilled when I get to say that I danced with Cyd Charisse. It was only a little bit, at the beginning of act two, but I put my arm around her waist and we glided across the stage and it was simply wonderful.
It was a great show and a lot of fun. It’s a simple tale, almost a Cinderella story. We did about seven months in London and then we took it to Birmingham and Manchester for three months in each city and it was completely sold out for every performance. We had such a great company and it was just a joy to do.
And, talking of great companies, look who you’re working with now in A Judgement in Stone!
I know, I’m so lucky to work with such great people. It’s a super cast with Andrew Lancel who’s a very big TV name, Ben Nealon who’s starred in Soldier Soldier, Deborah Grant and Sophie Ward who are wonderful actresses, Antony Costa from the pop band Blue, who is a great character actor, and, of course, Shirley Anne Field. It’s a really good mixed chemistry of people that works so well in this particular play.
Without giving too much away, can you tell us about the play?
A Judgement in Stone is a Ruth Rendell novel of 1977 but this is the first time that it’s been adapted into a play from that book. It’s been done in a very clever way by the adapters because, in the book, the detectives who solve the crime don’t appear until the very end but, in the play, they are on right at the beginning, interviewing possible suspects. Then it keeps flashing back to what happened before the event, and that’s where I come in.
I play George Coverdale who is the head of the family who live in Lowfield Hall, a rather stately manor. I have a daughter, and a stepson, with my second wife who is much younger than me. We are a very happy family when, into this scenario, comes a new housekeeper who is rather peculiar. Slowly but surely the fabric of the happy family becomes disturbed and disintegrated as there are things wrong with this new housekeeper that we didn’t initially realise.
Although she’s a wonderful housekeeper, who polishes the brasses to within a inch of their lives, she’s actually got lots of psychological issues and when she gets mixed up with somebody else in the village, the whole thing turns into a disaster which completely wrecks the entire family.
We’re really looking forward to bringing the show to Tunbridge Wells as we know that they really do love a good murder mystery, and it’ll be nice for me to be back on the stage there, but acting not singing.
I was going to ask you, do you still get to do much singing?
Well, I hadn’t done a lot actually, until last year. I’d been in a lot of plays, and a few musicals like Crazy For You, Phantom of the Opera, Cats and South Pacific but I’d moved a lot more into the dramas over the last eight years. Then, at the beginning of last year, I was asked if I would like to go on a 28 night tour, including Tunbridge Wells, with Marty Wilde, Eden Kane, and Mike Berry and The Wildcats and I thought, why not?
We had such a great time, and it was so successful, that we’re going out again this autumn, from the October 10th right through to December 2nd. It’s Marty Wilde’s 60th year in showbusiness and he’s just been awarded an MBE, so he’ll have a lot to sing about, and I have a 3 CD definitive box set of all of my recordings coming out in the summer, called the Mark Wynter Venus in Blue Jeans Anthology and that contains a lot of unreleased material so I’ll be singing some tracks from that.
A lot of actors and entertainers would give their right arm for the longevity that you have had with your career. How have you made that happen?
Well, it all came about through having 9 hit records first, and then the record buying public accepting me in these different guises. You know, I have played all kinds of other character roles since, and been in the musicals that we’ve mentioned before, and worked in America, South Africa and all over Europe and I think I’ve been exceedingly lucky. I can’t sometimes believe my good fortune.
In British Actors Equity terms at any one time there are 84% of performers out of work and, although I have had a couple of lean periods, most of the time I have been in work, so I suppose I am just part of the, very fortunate, 16%.
A Judgement in Stone appears at the Hawth, Crawley from Monday 22nd May until Saturday 27th May with nightly performances at 7.30pm and Wednesday & Saturday matinees at 2.30pm. Tickets can be booked online on www.parkwoodtheatres.co.uk/The-Hawth or by calling 01293 553636.