Photo: Robert Perry for The Scotsman
Sylvestor McCoy will play Radagast the Brown in The Hobbit, but he’s currently taking time away from Middle-earth to play Mr. Peters in the play Plume at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow. McCoy said to Mark Fisher of The Scotsman, “I loved this play so much when I read it, I thought, ‘Yes, I’ll move mountains.’ And I did.”
The mountain he’s referring to might as well be The Lonely Mountain, because he had to ask Peter Jackson to change his filming schedule on The Hobbit. “I asked Peter Jackson if he could move my filming dates so I could come to Glasgow and do this,” he explained. “My agent said, ‘I don’t think they’ll do that.’ But having worked with him – and he’s such a lovely, smashing guy – I had a feeling they might just do it.” And they did!
Peter Jackson is a familiar friend to Theatre, having recently purchased Wellington’s Bat’s Theatre with his partner Fran Walsh. McCoy was also impressed by Hobbit castmate Cate Blanchett. “As far as I’m concerned, Cate Blanchett is a goddess, but she’s really down to earth. She’s got all those Oscars, she’s made all those amazing films and she could spend her whole life doing that, but what does she also do? She gives birth to three boys and creates her own theatre in Sydney. Those are the people I admire immensely.”
Whether it’s theatre or film, McCoy is in it to tell the audience a story. “As far as I’m concerned, an audience is an audience,” he asserted. “Whether it’s an audience in Hull or the National Theatre, that’s who you play to. It’s not money – it’s good to get some, but that’s not why I do it. You do it because you have to, to tell a story.”
Sylvestor McCoy will be performing in Plume at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow from March 1 through March 17, 2012.
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