Early Theatre Deep Dive: David Tennant and the dilemma of 'The Hired Man' (1989)
David's talked before about his role in this drama school production. Let's take a look!
A few weeks ago, I introduced the David Tennant fandom to two plays David did as an drama student at the 1989 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in student companies at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD, now the Royal Conservatoire). These two plays were Brian McCann’s The Square Who Couldn’t Rock’n’Roll, and Edward Bond’s Passion.
If you haven’t read that post, I’d suggest you do so, and then come on back:
In the post above I mentioned David had done two other productions with student companies - Scrooge and The Hired Man - and promised I’d talk further about them at a later date.
For one of those productions - The Hired Man - today is that date!
Before we delve into the history of the play and its production at the RSAMD, I think there’s no better way to introduce The Hired Man than to listen to what David himself had to say about it. When he made an appearance as a guest on the 31 May 2008 episode of BBC Radio 2’s Jonathan Ross show, Ross asked him if he'd done any musical theatre. "Not since drama school," David replied, and then went into a rousing rendition of the opening music number, one of the songs he remembered singing in the production:
With regards to musicals, it’s worth noting David could've mentioned productions where he played a much larger role - like his starring roles in The Square Who Couldn’t Rock’n’Roll or The Ghost of Benjy O'Neil, both also from 1989 - but he mentioned The Hired Man instead. The show certainly seems to have stuck in his memory.
Given that it has - let’s find out more about it, shall we?
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The Hired Man was written by Melvyn Bragg in 1969 as the first part of his Cumbrian Trilogy of books (The Hired Man, A Place in England and Kingdom Come). Bragg united with famed composer Howard Goodall in 1984 to produce a musical based on the first book in the trilogy. According to Goodall’s website, the musical’s first 1984 West End run saw it “awarded the Ivor Novello Award for Best Musical, earned four Olivier Award nominations, and was voted Best Musical of the Year by the critics of Time Out, The Guardian, Punch & The Stage.”
Here is a clip of some of the musical numbers from the 1985 Olivier Awards:
You can read a detailed synopsis of the play here, but for a quicker explanation, this is taken from the description of the musical in the 1989 RSAMD Events Programmes:
Adapted by Melvyn Bragg from his novel based on the life and times of his own grandfather, it tells the story of the Tallentire family across two generations, from the turn of the last century to the 1920s, as its menfolk move from farm work, to coal mining, to the First World War. It is unique among musicals (and rare in theatre generally) in being wholly about working people, and showing their work as well as their personal lives. Howard Goodall's magnificent music sweeps the action from hiring fair to pub, to union meeting, to battlefield, to pit disaster, by way of rousing choruses and superb operatic love-duets.
Fast-forward a few years with me now to February 1989 at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
At some point in late 1988 or early 1989 the RSAMD’s School of Drama decided to put on a production of The Hired Man, starring the school’s Final Year DDA (Diploma of Dramatic Arts) students. It would become the musical’s Scottish premiere. Head of the School of Drama Edward Argent was in the director’s chair, and Maggie Kinloch (who would later become the Deputy Principal of the RCS) was his assistant director. The cast prepared for their roles by researching the living conditions of the common man in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and talking to veterans of the First World War. They also prepared in more hands-on ways: they went underground in a coal mine, and learned first-hand about working on a farm.
For reasons I’ve yet to ascertain, the premiere of The Hired Man was not put on at the RSAMD. Instead it debuted at the Cumbernauld Theatre on February 1-4, 1989. It didn’t go to the RSAMD’s Chandler Studio Theatre until February 7-10, 1989.
The Cumbernauld Theatre - which in 2014 was moved to a new purpose-built facility and is now part of Lanternhouse - was a 250+ seat theatre with a three-sided stage thrust into the audience originally housed at the rear of a set of 18th century cottages and called The Cottage Theatre. After a 1975 fire, the theatre was rebuilt and expanded and re-opened in 1979 as the Cumbernauld Theatre (the venue which was used in David’s time). The older parts of the building are now designated a historical site.
Anyway, the show was a big hit. It was a highly-acclaimed production which played to capacity in Cumbernauld and did the same when it transferred to the Chandler Studio Theatre on the RSAMD campus.
During my first research trip to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Archives in 2016, a friend and I found this February 1989 programme of The Hired Man - and a photo of the production:
As you can imagine, I was very excited indeed about finding the programme and the photo! I poured over the cast list looking for David’s name amongst the “various parts” listed at the bottom of the programme…and came away disappointed. I had to admit I found it odd he wasn’t listed (as either Tennant or McDonald) because I knew David had been in a production of The Hired Man in drama school. He’d said it himself on Jonathan Ross! Besides, one of the few resources on the Internet about this period of time in David’s career was the fantastic (now-defunct) website, The Play's The Thing: A Dedicated David Tennant Theatre Site, run by Diane Medas - and she said David had been in the February 1989 production, too!
But something wasn’t right. I just didn’t know what it was.
It wasn’t until later on that research trip that things began to clear up a little. During the many stops I made conducting research, I came across two of David’s early professional CV’s! Both stated two specific and vitally important details about David’s involvement in The Hired Man that he hadn’t mentioned on Jonathan Ross: the roles he played, by name (Josh/The Recruiting Officer), and that the production was produced by something called X-Academy.
At the time I didn’t know what X-Academy was or how it tied into The Hired Man, but I was intent on finding out. Over the course of the following year I stepped up my research and began talking to a few of the other actors on the BA and DDA courses at the RSAMD at the time. They told me what X-Academy was - and it was more tied into The Hired Man than even I could have guessed.
X-Academy had been founded in mid-1989 by several of the recent Diploma of Dramatic Arts (DDA) graduates who’d been in the original hit in February 1989. They’d put on a shortened performance of the musical during their graduation in June, which was probably the catalyst for their decision to stage a September revival. They formed X-Academy and began scouting students still on course to drum up enough cast for supporting roles and chorus. David was one of those recruits.
Now I knew why the programme I’d found didn’t have David’s name in it. He hadn’t done The Hired Man in its initial run. He’d done it during its revival in September!
I went on a hunt for anything referencing X-Academy’s run of the play - and now that I knew the name, the company, and the time frame, it was simple:
I made another research trip to Scotland in 2017 and again (now that I knew what I was looking for) I located a little bit more about the musical’s revival.
I poured through all the RSAMD Events Programmes for the latter half of 1989, and there it was:
During that research trip, I was even happier David’s CV made his roles in this musical (and the company he was with) very clear. Otherwise, we may have continued to think he was in the first run! But sadly - although the RCS Archive has that copy I posted above of the programme from the first run of The Hired Man - it doesn’t hold one for the X-Academy production. Therefore, we (so far) have no official record of the cast of the production David was in. However, I’ve spoken to at least one person who was in the September run, and I was told many of the original cast members reprised their roles in the second run of the show. So there’s that.
David says he did “various parts” on Jonathan Ross. He actually did two parts - Josh and the Recruiting Officer - both of which had only a few seconds of stage time. Josh doesn’t appear until the sixth scene of Act I, and the Recruiting Officer has a very short speech in the fourth scene of Act II. For the rest of the play, David spent his time singing with the company.
The X-Academy revival of The Hired Man debuted on Tuesday, 12 September 1989, at 7:30 pm for a five-night run at the RSAMD’s Chandler Studio Theatre. It wrapped up its last show on Friday, September 16th. Tickets for the show were £3.
The show was a popular one, most likely because it had played to such acclaim the first time around. The cast of the original had researched background information about the time period of the musical, and because Edward Argent (the director of the first run of the show) was pegged to direct it again, it was highly likely he used the same sort of preparation for its second run. And while it didn’t go to the Cumbernauld Theatre like its predecessor, the revival did play to a full house in the Chandler Studio Theatre as part of a series of shows put on for incoming Freshman called FRESH 1989.
So to recap: all the other sparse resources I’ve seen out there about The Hired Man consistently represent the first February 1989 run of the play as the production David was in. I’m here to tell you - they all suffer from a case of mistaken identity.
And now you know…the rest of the story!
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ETA (8 Sep 2024): A sharp-eyed commenter brought up another possible clue as to why David couldn’t be in the Feb 1989 production of The Hired Man - because the production’s programme states it was produced by Final Year DDAs…and David wasn’t one!
A very valid observation, yes? It makes perfect sense. When I started my research I thought so, too, but I haven’t used it as a measuring tool in years (which is why it slipped my mind when I was writing up this post). It should have occurred to me to explore the topic in my initial post, anyway, so I’m super happy the commenter mentioned it!
So here’s why that “Final Year DDA” thing isn’t as much of a tell as it seems:
In researching his RSAMD years, I’ve conducted extensive talks with many of David's fellow students on both the BA and DDA courses. From them, I learned classes often swapped students on other courses and years in and out of productions when they needed to fill out a chorus, or for smaller parts - and sometimes, even for larger parts! And though they often did document this sort of swap on any programmes or leaflets they published....they didn't always.
Take a look at The Hired Man’s programme. You'll see that though the main cast is filled out with Final Year DDAs, the "Farmworkers, farmers, miners, soldiers" area has some 1st year DDAs and BA students listed, too. This is an example of crediting the students, but there are other times they didn't. What's more, sometimes even main cast members were filled by students in other courses: one of those times is on another production David did called The Fruits of Enlightenment (which I'll cover in another post). Though that production's programme specifically says, "School of Drama presents Final Year DDA Students", David is a prominent cast member!
Luckily, talking to those fellow students helped straighten me out. I've since learned not to draw too many definitive conclusions on whether David did or didn't do something based on what class of students (BA/DDA, or 1st/2nd/Final Years) were involved.
Hi.
I created X Academy and produced the revival of the show. Hired Man was in our final year and David was in the years below so did not participate.
I did bring David into the revival as he had loved the original and was happy to join.
Neil Shackleton.
Love this..... what part did you play? I played various parts. :-)