The Final Quest: Yesterday's Man
In the ITV drama The Final Quest, Rachael played the part of Annabelle, who performed with a band as a vocalist. This is a clip of the song she performs at her wedding.
27 December 2004
The Final Quest
Reunited at their old rock 'n' roll haunt, Dave, Ronno and Charlie re-live the time they made a desperate attempt to seek fame as pop stars, falling for the same woman in the process.
19 December 2004
Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage
The murder of Colonel Protheroe is a shock to everyone in St. Mary Mead, though hardly an unpleasant one. Now the vicar, who had declared that killing the detested Protheroe would be a service to the world, as well as his young and flirtatious wife, could be considered suspects. And what about the faithless Mrs. Protheroe, or her lover, the young artist Lawrence Redding? Jane Marple is at her shrewdest in this delightfully intricate mystery.
16 December 2004
Anna in the Tropics
A new lector is employed at Santiago and Ofelia's traditional Cuban-style cigar factory in Tampa, Florida, in Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer prize-winning play Anna in the Tropics. It is the late 1920s, and the lector is an important fixture in the industry: he reads to the (often illiterate) workers as they labour — from fiction, news, even political tracts that sing sedition to the ears of the bosses.
The socio-political importance of the figure, as not only entertainer but educator, is to be gleaned here only from a programme note. What is left behind on stage is Juan Julian, a swoon-worthy man in a white suit, who drives all the women wild (one fan wets herself at the mere sight of him) and all the men to surly inadequacy.
Julian (Enzo Cilenti, who has little to work with but becomes a winning presence) elects to read Anna Karenina — from an edition with a suitably lurid dustjacket. From there, it is inevitable that he should become Tolstoy's Vronsky and beat a path to the smouldering Anna figure of Conchita (an outstanding Rachael Stirling).
The factory becomes a sort of book group, with the women's imaginations and passions aroused by Tolstoy. Under his — and Julian's — influence, poetic lines begin to waft from even the most unlikely characters, but are too often left to hang in the air that we may admire them.
The director, Indhu Rubasingham, moves the busier scenes well — in the penultimate, party scene several vignettes are exposed deftly, with clarity and lightness of touch — but many scenes are ponderous. The whole is weighed down by an over-realistic approach, an approach that is itself further encumbered by the unfortunate decision to burden the English cast with Hispanic accents. If James Naughtie was agog at the stage Oirishness of By the Bog of Cats, who knows what he would have made of these stage Latinos?
Once the ear has tuned out the interference of the accents, Stirling's defiant Conchita commands every scene she is in. Diana Quick, as Ofelia, is a twinkly, sensual presence. And just as Peter Polycarpou's cartoon bumbler Cheche is beginning to grate, he succeeds in pulling back the mask to deliver a couple of nasty shocks, to great dramatic effect.
But where Tolstoy leads the reader through his epic story, making no judgement and calling for no blood, Cruz cannot resist editorialising, and these moments draw the play perilously close to the soap suds. A monologue on the death of hand-rolled cigars being emblematic of the passing of a gentler, better way of life blithely ignores the sweat-shop conditions and long hours of early mass production that kept the workers illiterate and in need of a lector in the first place.
I seem to remember one review of the original Broadway production of 2003 damning it with faint praise as "moderately fascinating". That pretty much covers it: close — but no cigar.
14 December 2004
Rachael's Quest to be better
Rachael Stirling is missing out on festive fun this year. While others are making merry, the 27-year-old actress daughter of Dame Diana Rigg is busy starring in a play in London.
She grumbles: "Christmas at the theatre is not fun — I only get two and a half days off."
Viewers, though, can catch her in David Jason's feel-good drama, The Final Quest (ITV1, Monday, December 27).
The third Quest, the two previous ones told stories split between the present and the sixties, and saw three lads on a mission to rid themselves of their collective virginity.
Clever direction from David Jason brings to life the adolescent antics of Dave, Ronno and Charlie when the old gang reunite and reminisce.
David Jason has previously said that some of the action is based on his own youth — something which seems to be backed up by the fact that he stars as Dave in the story and his younger alias (played by Greg Faulkner) is a dead ringer for the multi-award winning actor.
But David has always remained non-specific about which parts are non-fiction. And sadly, Rachael has no further insight.
"David didn't reveal whether this story was based on his life and I didn't ask. Greg Faulkner is extraordinarily like David," she agrees. "The first time I saw an episode I thought David had dubbed it so that it was his voice. Greg's such an amazing mimic."
One thing Rachael can confirm is the final piece of the story. She reveals: "My character, Annabel, and the boys start a band together. The three lads all fancy her — she's a woman and less naive than them, which is what they find rather attractive."
Joining Greg as young Dave are Ronno and Charlie (Max Wrottesley and Jim Sturgess). In the present day, Hywel Bennett and Roy Hudd join David to play the older men.
"It's a really good bit of telly," says Rachael, proudly. "It's comfort-viewing."
A lot of the tale is set in the Isle of Man and Rachael says she had a great laugh on and off set.
"The three boys and I had such fun mucking about on the island. We were stranded in this hotel in the middle of a golf course, miles away from the sea where all the pubs and clubs are.
"I think it was the producer's way of making sure we didn't get into trouble because the four of us did get on really well," she giggles. "And it worked. There was nothing at all to do except play golf at midnight, which I was rubbish at it.
"David is wonderful. He's so funny, modest and charming. He's incredibly professional and talented and I have enormous respect for him.
"He's been in the business for so long, he has the same cameraman, the same sound mixer, so when you're working in his company you're very much introduced to a close-knit community, similar to Woody Allen's.
"It's a real honour to be involved in The Final Quest. There's a reason David's at the top of his profession — he only has to spit and 12m people tune in."
Despite having acting in the blood and having starred in well-known dramas such as Poirot, Marple and Tipping The Velvet, which earned her a lot of column inches due to its racy and explicit content, Rachael says she still has a lot to learn.
"Mum is part of my life and who I am and what I am, so I don't hide from it. I'm hugely proud of mum and we have our profession in common, which is great.
"Tipping The Velvet afforded me a lot of exposure, but it made me realise I need to keep learning and keep working in low-profile things so I can find my feet and become a better actress."
Look forward to the US release of both films.
