First Alchemist Interview

The Independent (7 September) has a short interview with Alex and Simon Russell Beale on the upcoming production of "The Alchemist".


The interviewer is Paul Taylor, who describes Alex as tall and debonair. In the piece Jennings states that: "my career has been based entirely on seeing Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines at an impressionable age."

On The Alchemist:
Yes, you're about to get my nearly-50-year-old Eminem," threatens Jennings. There are dizzying changes of tack. "We've played around with the idea of getting muddled and suddenly swapping performances", he explains.

On his absence from the theatre for a while:
"Nowadays, I suggest, the clients would all long to be made famous. "Yes, fame is the modern drug of choice," agrees Russell Beale. And fame (in the sense of becoming a household name) is something that has managed to elude these two superb actors. "Well, we've been slogging away in the theatre, I suppose," says Jennings. After Stuff Happens (the David Hare drama in which he portrayed George W Bush), Jennings decided to have a break from the stage and get in front of a camera again. He has played Diaghilev in a television drama about The Rite of Spring, and he is Prince Charles to Helen Mirren's monarch in the forthcoming The Queen."