I hate to say we told you so, but we did. Back in 1987 we spotted Paterson Joseph’s burgeoning talent. That was before Peep Show, before Elmina’s Kitchen, before he was nearly Doctor Who and before he was playing Brutus in Julius Caesar.
It is always encouraging to know you have had an effect on someone’s life, that your actions, however small, have made an impact and maybe even helped dreams become reality.
Now I, personally, have never aided Joseph in any way. For years I’ve admired his performances, from playing suave manager Johnson in cult hit comedy Peep Show to starring in Kwame Kwei Armah’s Hackney-set drama Elmina’s Kitchen, but I’ve never met him.
“That was the sort of Brutus-like integrity I had at that time. I don’t think I would have said the same thing now.”
The Society of London Theatre (SOLT), however, which runs Official London Theatre, has previously crossed paths with the actor who is currently playing Brutus in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Africa-set Julius Caesar. It is the first thing he asks about when we chat, before I can even start the interview proper.
Back in 1987 when he was still an aspiring actor training at LAMDA, Joseph applied for a Laurence Olivier Bursary, a student prize awarded annually by SOLT. Having wowed the judging panel with his audition piece, Joseph endured a brief interview where he was asked what he would do with the money. His answer was… unlikely: “I don’t really need it, because I’m living at home with my Mum. You should give it to someone who is really brasic.” SOLT didn’t give Joseph the bursary. Instead they awarded him a special commendation, marking him out as an actor to watch. “I don’t know if they would have awarded it to me anyway,” he muses, “but they gave the money to somebody else. That was the sort of Brutus-like integrity I had at that time. I don’t think I would have said the same thing now.”
I’d like to think he would. As we talk, he comes across as bright, intelligent, honest and articulate, a world away from the grunting teenage boy who left school at 15 and hadn’t properly attended for years previously. Drama, as it so often can do, brought Joseph out of himself when he joined a youth theatre group aged 17, and Shakespeare helped him find his voice.
He has since done his very best to repay the Bard. The actor, who was tipped to follow David Tennant as Doctor Who before Matt Smith was unveiled to the world, has appeared in no less than 10 Shakespearean shows across stage and screen, and has brought the world’s most famous plays to both teenagers in Harlesden and prisoners in Brixton, emulating his own life-changing experience.
A quarter of a century after that award, he is back in London and working with the RSC on a production that dared to take the political intrigue of ancient Rome and move it to modern Africa. It all began with a symposium that, Joseph laughs, he “thought was just a fancy RSC word for read through. It was much more than that.”
African scholar Martin Meredith, Shakespearean scholar Richard Wilson and Caesar expert Tom Holland were all on hand at the production’s conception to shed their own light on the project, cementing Joseph’s eagerness to be involved. The “final cherry on the cake” was the play’s association with Nelson Mandela.
A copy of the Complete Works Of Shakespeare was smuggled into Robben Island when Mandela and other ANC leaders were imprisoned there. Julius Caesar was the most annotated of all the plays, while Mandela famously placed his signature by the line ‘Cowards die many times before their death, the valiant never taste of death but once.’ “That, for me, told me everything I needed to know,” he says.
The shift of setting from Rome to modern Africa, Joseph says, fitted like a snug toga from the minute that afternoon when he suggested to director Greg Doran that he could add an East African accent to the second read through. “It seemed to be perfect.”
“If every time somebody does a Shakespeare play and they want me in it, it’s an all black cast, I think that would be insulting, frankly.”
With Ray Fearon, Jeffery Kissoon, Joseph Mydell and Cyril Nri also in the cast, the production, which runs at the Noël Coward theatre until 15 September, brings together a host of Britain’s best black actors in a notably all black cast.
A production of Julius Caesar set in Africa was always likely to use a predominantly black cast, but it is, whether it should be or not, notable because there are so few productions in the West End that offer such a wealth of roles to black performers. It will be followed, incidentally, by an Asian production of Much Ado About Nothing, which will be similar in its notability.
Yet Joseph, who faced the same questions and thoughts when he brought Kwei Armah’s Elmina’s Kitchen to the West End, doesn’t read too much into the casting of such productions. “They’re just blips,” he says. “They’re things that happen and then the flavour goes and they’re left to black theatre companies to do.”
Besides, he says, he “doesn’t want to be in all black productions all the time. It wouldn’t be of any interest to me. If every time somebody does a Shakespeare play and they want me in it, it’s an all black cast, I think that would be insulting, frankly. The only thing I hope for is that people say we can try these plays, if they work, in a different context, and we can have casting that is fair and interesting and innovative.”
That, of course, is the crux of the thorny matter, that roles should be cast regardless of skin colour. Now, in 2012, I wonder, can I stop asking questions about colour-blind casting? Joseph’s answer is simple and short: “No.”
“In America there’s legislature. You have to mix your cast where appropriate. I’d hate that to happen here. On the other hand, that’s relying on good will, open-mindedness and imagination of the casting process, which is down to producers being brave enough to push the boat out, to directors to stand firm on their favourite actor and to writers to keep writing about the contemporary world that they live in and the mixed world that we live in. I hope that is what will carry us through to an era where we don’t have to talk about it, but we’re not there yet I’m afraid.”
“I have a very British, slightly cynical, sensibility.”
While other black British actors have headed across the Atlantic in search of work, Joseph has done rather well staying here. His CV boasts work with acclaimed theatre companies including the RSC, the National Theatre and Cheek By Jowl, and screen appearances ranging from off the wall comedy Green Wing to kidnap drama Blood And Oil and from comic drama William And Mary to Danny Boyle-directed big screen hit The Beach.
As glad as he is of being British – “I’m proud of the fact that I come from this country and that I was educated here. I have a very British, slightly cynical, sensibility.” – Joseph now lives in provincial France, where his nationality, rather than his work, has made him a minor celebrity.
He would miss England, he says, were he not working here so much. While he is, of course, he misses his family, but, “It’s the price that we’ve paid for the life that we can have there, which is much less fretful and stressful.”
He’ll be paying that price a little longer. When Julius Caesar leaves London, it’s off on a small UK tour before heading to Moscow. After that, who knows? There’s definitely a further life, ironically, for Caesar, though Joseph is staying tight-lipped about exactly where. My guess would be that US Shakespeare fans won’t have to worry that they can’t access the TV movie version on iPlayer, but that’s just a guess. You’d have to be some kind of time-traveller to know for sure, and neither I, nor Joseph, are that. If he was, we might not have had the opportunity to see him in this production, which was a “no brainer” when he was asked to do it.