Actor Richard Armitage spoke with the Associated Press about the connections between ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Crucible’. Photo credit: Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press via the Washington Post.
Richard Armitage is well known to fans of The Hobbit films as Thorin Oakenshield, leader of the exiled Dwarves of Erebor and heir to the throne of Durin. The actor is currently appearing in the lead role of John Proctor in the Old Vic‘s new production of The Crucible by Arthur Miller.
In a recent Associated Press (AP) interview that appeared in the Washington Post, the actor acknowledged that the play is quite a change of pace from the experience of working on The Hobbit. According to the interview, “The Hobbit is ‘a big machine that you get to play a little cog in.’ In The Crucible, Proctor — decent, tormented and flawed — is the center of the audience’s attention.”
At first glance, it would seem that Tolkien’s Middle-earth and 17th-century colonial America are worlds apart. But Armitage doesn’t think so. He told the AP that “there are threads and arteries” that connect those worlds. One such connection is the operatic scale of the stories. In the interview, the actor cited a surprising parallel between the two works:
At the end of the second act of that opera (The Hobbit), my character says, ‘If this is to end in fire then we will all burn together.’ And in exactly the same place in Miller’s work — and it definitely wasn’t plagiarized — I say, ‘We will burn, we will burn together.’
You can read the full AP interview here, and find more photos in the photo gallery for the story on Yahoo news.
Richard Armitage will be setting audiences’ emotions ablaze in The Crucible at London’s Old Vic through September 13, 2014.
Here are some recent Middle-earth News stories about Richard Armitage:
Richard Armitage: “I think I’m quite a frightening person.”
First Look at Richard Armitage in ‘The Crucible’
Richard Armitage ‘Thorin Thursday’ Interview, Part 3
Richard Armitage Talks ‘The Battle of the Five Armies’
Catching Up with Richard Armitage
