Early Theatre Deep Dive: David Tennant in 'Wanted, One Body!'
...and a few other of his early St. Mark's Players productions
Today’s post about some of David’s earliest plays is going to be something special. But before we dive in, I think it best to clarify that “special” bit right up front, hm?
So, while I can promise you it’ll be special, what I can’t promise you is a really in-depth look at everything I present today. For most of the plays I’ll be talking about today there’s not much (if anything at all) out there with regards to David’s direct involvement, and also, I’m almost certain he did more productions than I currently know about and/or what I’m sharing today. But what I can promise you is that I know David was in the ones I’ll highlight because I’ve got firsthand knowledge from various sources who were also involved in them.
So - if for no other reason - today’s post will be special because you’ll be able to get a peek behind the curtain into some of the earliest examples I have of David Tennant’s thespianism!
Is thespianism a word? Well, it is now!
Oh - one more thing. Today’s post isn’t about the super early performances David’s mentioned himself: The Town Mouse and The Country Mouse (mentioned in his Feb 2024 interview, ‘Film Firsts with BAFTA’) and Gypsum’s Journey (mentioned in his Apr 2016 ‘SAG-AFTRA Foundations Conversation’). Both of these performances are from his primary school years (TMCM from c1980 or Primary 3 or 4, and GJ from c1982 or Primary 6 or 7) and therefore quite a lot earlier than the productions I’m talking about today. I have information on both of these, but that’s for another day.
For now - on with the show!
Come with me now, back to Paisley in the mid- to late 1980s. Teenager David McDonald was attending Paisley Grammar school during the week, going to the RSAMD for Junior School acting classes on Saturday afternoons, and attending church at St. Mark’s Oldhall (where his father Sandy was the minister) on Sundays. It was a full and busy schedule…but no matter how full, David always managed to fit drama into it somewhere.
Luckily, he had the perfect outlet right under his nose - the St. Mark’s Players!
The St. Mark’s Players was an amateur church drama group with its base at St. Mark’s Oldhall. The group performed both faith-based and secular productions, and any proceeds the group earned were either donated to the church or to charitable organizations. In the late 1980s, there was a particular charity the group preferred: the ACCORD Hospice Fund. ACCORD was a local charity whose remit was to ease the pain of dying and help patients die with dignity and peace. It provided pain-relieving medications, and for nurses who made home visits to terminally ill patients.
(As an aside, it’s notable that both Sandy and Helen McDonald worked tirelessly to fund raise for ACCORD Hospice. The charity became instrumental to the McDonald family when Helen was diagnosed with terminal cancer and passed away at the hospice in Paisley. Doctor Who fans donated thousands of pounds to the charity, and it exists to this day.)
The first of the three plays we’ll chat about today is one David’s also mentioned that he once was a part of: a “farcical chiller” called Wanted - One Body!, written in 1956 by Charles Raymond Dyer (1928-2021), a playwright, actor and screenwriter born in Shrewsbury. The play’s been performed countless times, and Dyer even directed a BBC production of the show in 1958, but sadly, according to the British Universities Film and Video Council, no archival copy is known to exist.
The three-act play’s plot centered on the amateur efforts of a family solicitor and his nephew to solve a murder mystery of twin sisters and their rich stepfather. Basically a farcical whodunit, the action takes place in the lounge of Greenacres, the fog-bound home of the late Mr. Barraclough. In the midst of a thunderstorm and with beneficiaries dropping like flies all around them, the solicitor and his nephew must read the will and try to figure out who amongst them is the killer.
The main characters are the Barraclough sisters, their maid, their cook, their secretary and her boyfriend the chauffeur, the undertaker, a doctor, and the solicitor and his junior solicitor nephew. The housemaid has “crawling premonitions”, there are blood-curdling screams off stage, and it features disappearing bodies and sliding panels. And was apparently full of comedy!
I wish I could say I knew a lot more about Wanted - One Body! than I do. I don’t know which part David played, though I do know it wasn’t the chauffeur. I also don’t know whether the play’s proceeds were donated to ACCORD, or even exactly when the St. Mark’s Players put on the play (all my efforts to find out have so far went nowhere). All I do know? It was before March 1988.
I’m happy to say I know a bit more about the other two featured productions I’ve got planned for today’s post.
The first of those two is an Easter play entitled The Vigil, written by Hungarian-American author and screenwriter Ladislas Fodor in 1948. Here’s a lengthy description of the play from Biz:
The Vigil is set in a modern courtroom, but the theme is far from modern. The action occurs between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The defendant is one Elias Jacobson, the gardener from the Garden of Gethsemane in which Jesus of Nazareth was entombed. He is charged by the Romans with stealing and hiding the body in an attempt to make people believe he has risen.
Numerous witnesses involved in the great drama are called to the stand, all with critical facts to add to the story of what did happen on that night. Each tells in everyday language what he saw and the way he reacted. With a large cast of Biblical figures contributing evidence both for the prosecution and the defense, the familiar story achieves stirring suspense.
In an electrifying, scene, Mary Magdalene steps down from the stand and reenacts her meeting with Jesus in the Garden. The climax is a dramatic showdown in court between the two opposing factions. The audience is in the role of jury, and is left at the end to consider the verdict. Was the body stolen, or did Jesus rise?
If you’d like to read the play, you can check it out here at the Internet Archive.
The St. Mark’s Players performed The Vigil as their Easter 1988 production. There were a total of three performances of the three-act play, held on March 23rd to March 25th at 7:30 pm at St. Mark’s Church Oldhall in the Church Hall on the corner of Glasgow Road and Corrie Drive. Tickets were £1.50 for adults, and £1 for seniors and teenagers. All proceeds were donated to ACCORD.
David, age sixteen, was one of the cast members in the St. Marks Players production of The Vigil. While I’m certain he portrayed a disciple, precisely which character was that disciple is up for debate. Of the two best possibilities (Simon Peter, a fisherman, and Saul/Paul of Tarsis), it appears the latter - who was “born again” and vowed to take the Word to all four corners of the Earth - may be the most logical choice.
But The Vigil didn't end there - it was performed one last time. Robert A. Gill, the reverend of the New Jerusalem Church on George Street in Paisley, called upon members of the drama club of his former church (in Bolton, Lancashire) to come "on tour" to perform The Vigil with some members of St Marks. This performance was held at 7:30pm on 9 Apr 1988 at the New Jerusalem Church, with collections monies going to ACCORD. Whether David was one of the cast members in this particular performance isn’t known.
The last of the productions I’ll discuss today is also from 1988: Neil Simon’s Fools. And nooooo, this isn’t the production of Fools some of you may have noticed is listed on David’s Wikipedia page, as that production was done in 1990, when David was in drama school. This is an earlier production, by the St. Marks Players!
Now the 1988 and 1990 productions have a little bit in common, insomuch as David played the same role in both: the lead role of the schoolteacher, Leon Steponovitch Tolchinsky. Oh, and both productions were performed in Russian accents!
According to a 2011 review in the Topeka [KS] Capital-Journal:
Fools is set in the late 1800s in the fictional Ukrainian village of Kulyenchikov, where a eager young schoolteacher, Leon Tolchinsky, arrives to take on a new post.
Leon soon discovers Kulyenchikov is a town full of stupid through his encounters with Something Something Snetsky, who is so dumb he can't remember his full name and is such a bad shepherd he is known as “Snetsky, the sheep loser”. The other townsfolk are equally idiotic: The Magistrate, Mishkin the postman, Slovitch the butcher and Yencha the vendor.
When he meets with his employer Dr. Zubritsky and his wife Lenya, he learns the reason for the rampant stupidity is a 200-year-old curse imposed by a nobleman, Vladimir Yousekevitch. Yousekevitch’s son fell in love with a maiden named Sophia Zubritsky and was set to marry her until her father discovered the boy was illiterate and forced his daughter to marry another man.
As a result, Vladimir's son cursed the entire town with idiocy in a spell that can only be broken two ways by Sophia's descendants, also named Sophia Zubritsky. One way requires Sophia to marry a Yousekevitch, but she turns down the twice-a-day proposals by the current Count Yousekevitch. The other way is for Leon to educate Sophia within 24 hours before the teacher also falls victim to the curse.
Fools made its debut on Broadway in 1981 to mixed reviews, and closed after only 40 performances. It was one of Simon’s lesser-praised works, and it’s a long-standing rumor that Simon didn't intend for Fools to be a hit. Reportedly, Simon had promised the profits from his next play to his soon-to-be ex-wife in their divorce proceedings, so he wrote Fools to make sure it wasn’t.
To this day, it remains more appreciated and performed by community and educational theatre than it is by major companies. If you’re interested, you can read some of the play at Google Books.
In 1990, when the RSAMD’s Made In Glasgow company (which I’ve discussed in more detail in this previous post) did its production of Fools, articles about its upcoming premiere claimed it was the first Scottish production of the play.
But it wasn’t. The St Marks Players got to it first!
The St Marks Players’ production of Fools laid out a full night’s entertainment at a reasonable price. For the price of admission, each attendee not only got to see the play, they were also given a production programme (which you can see above) designed by Innes Smith, who also co-starred in the show in the role of Snetsky. Oh, and on top of that, they were provided supper - all for the basement bargain price of £1.50 for adults, and £1 for seniors!
Their two-act play’s three performances were held on November 24th to November 26th at 7:30 pm at St. Marks Halls on the corner of Glasgow Road and Corrie Drive. And while it doesn’t say it on the programme, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn the proceeds of the show were donated to ACCORD.
And that’s that for the St Marks Players’ productions of Wanted-One Body!, The Vigil and Fools.
Sooooooo……
If you’re keeping track, you can now add two more heretofore-unknown plays David did in the 1980s to the list of those I’ve already revealed in previous posts. But if you’ve lost count of them or haven’t kept track at all, allow me to assist.
Here’s a collated list of both the entirely new productions I’ve featured so far (with links to the articles where I revealed them), as well as any known productions of David’s in which I’ve done deeper dives:
Wanted - One Body! - before March 1988 - St. Marks Players
The Vigil - March 1988 - St. Marks Players
Fools - November 1988 - St. Marks Players
The Square Who Couldn’t Rock’n’Roll - August 1989 - Made In Glasgow (RSAMD)
Passion - August 1989 - Commedia (RSAMD)
The Hired Man - September 1989 - X-Academy (RSAMD)
The Ghost Of Benjy O’Neil - December 1989 - Phantom Productions
The Cake (as director) - c1989 - RSAMD
Wax Fruit - November 1990 - RSAMD
Chamber Music (as director) - c1990 - RSAMD
MacBurger’s - Real Neat Scotch Fare (as director) - March 1991 - RSAMD
Stakis Masterclasses, as Hamlet - March 1991 - RSAMD
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And there you have it!
That is fascinating! Thank you for digging so deeply! By the way did you get the headline about DT topping Stephen Fry? https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/stephen-fry-topped-by-doctor-who-star-in-new-uk-poll-of-brits-favourite-storytellers/ar-AA1uYA4y#:~:text=Mythos%20to%20Troy.-,Coinciding%20with%20the%20launch%2C%20YouGov%20has%20polled%20over%202000%20Brits,Fry%20on%2036%20per%20cent.