18 January 2005: January 9, 2005 TIMES interview about upcoming performances in LOOK BACK IN ANGER and BBC's CASANOVA.

DAVID TENNANT Performance History

TRAINED: Royal Scottisn Academy of Music and Drama AWARDS: 2005 Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland, Best Male Performance as Jimmy Porter in LOOK BACK IN ANGER Nominated for 2003 Olivier Award as Best Actor for Lobby Hero Nominated for 2000 Ian Charleson Award(Best classical actor under 30) for RSC's Comedy of Errors Theatre Management Association Best Actor Award for The Glass Menagerie at Dundee Rep BIO AND VOICE SAMPLE AT CASTAWAY CRITICAL QUOTABLES IN HIS OWN WORDS FILM & TELEVISION See Internet Movie Database RADIO/AUDIO TAPES

THEATRE

Year	Theatre Company	Name of Play	Character
.	.	The Princess and the Goblin	Curdie
.	7:84 Theatre Company	Antigone	.
.	7:84 Theatre Company	Jump the Life to Come	.
.	7:84 Theatre Company	The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui	.
.	7:84 Theatre Company	Scotland Matters	.
1996	Almeida at Albery	Vassa	Pavel
1998	Comedy Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford	Black Comedy	Brinsley Miller
1998	Comedy Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford	The Real Inspector Hound	Moon
2002	Donmar Warehouse	The Lobby Hero	Jeff
.	Dundee Repertory Company	The Glass Menagerie	Tom
.	Dundee Repertory Company	Long Day's Journey Into Night	Edmund
.	Dundee Repertory Company	Tartuffe	Valere
.	Dundee Repertory Company	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf	Nick
.	Edinburgh Royal Lyceum	Hay Fever	Simon
2005	Edinburgh Royal Lyceum	Look Back in Anger	Jimmy Porter
.	Edinburgh Royal Lyceum	Merlin	Arthur
1999	Globe Education Centre	Edward III (staged reading)	Edward, Prince of Wales
2002	Royal Court	Push-Up	Robert
1999	Manchester Royal Exchange	An Experienced Woman Gives Advice	Kenny
.	Manchester Royal Exchange	King Lear	Edgar
1997	Queen's Theatre Peter Hall Company	Hurly Burly	Mickey
2003	Royal National Theatre	The Pillowman	Katurian
1995	Royal National Theatre	What the Butler Saw	Nick
1996	Royal ShakespeareCompany	As You Like It	Touchstone
2000	Royal ShakespeareCompany	Comedy of Errors	Antipholus of Syracuse
1996	Royal ShakespeareCompany	The General From America	Hamilton
1996	Royal ShakespeareCompany	The Herbal Bed	Jack Lane
2000	Royal ShakespeareCompany	The Rivals	Jack
2000	Royal ShakespeareCompany	Romeo and Juliet	Romeo
.	Theatre Positive, Scotland	Twelve Angry Men	.
2001	Oxford Stage Company	Comedians	.
.	The Young Vic	Slab Boys Trilogy	Alan

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RADIO/AUDIO TAPES

IN HIS OWN WORDS/LINKS January 9, 2005 Interview with Mark Fisher in THE TIMES about BBC's CASANOVA and Edinburgh Royal Lyceum's LOOK BACK IN ANGER January 5, 2005 Interview with Susan Mansfield in THE SCOTSMAN about LOOK BACK IN ANGER January 1, 2005 Interview with Elisabeth Mahoney in THE GUARDIAN about LOOK BACK IN ANGER October 12, 2004 interview at icRenfrewshire.co.uk November 9, 2000 Interview with Kate Copstick in THE SCOTSMAN ONLINE In PLAYERS OF SHAKESPEARE 4 (Cambridge University Press, 1998) Tennant describes how "the wee boy frae Paisley" auditioned as a "brilliant, intelligent and - dare I say - revelatory" Orlando and was cast instead as Touchstone.

CRITICAL QUOTABLES/LINKS

. . . Cooped up in their dismal attic bedsit, like the animals (bear and squirrel) into whose personalities they periodically escape, the Porters are brought brilliantly to hellish life by David Tennant (soon to star in the new Harry Potter film) and Kelly Reilly . . . Tennant's rants may have a coruscating effect on the audience, but Reilly's apparent indifference, her loud silence and her detached body-language suggest another story. Is she numbed into passivity by his misogynistic bullying? Or exhausted by her claustrophobic existence, cooped up with such a brittle bundle of seething energy and radical opinions?

Tennant treats Trevor Coe's realistic set like a gym, working out his frustrations as he jumps, perches and runs around in circles, his movements as feverish as his mind and as spiky as his tongue. But there's a sensitive side to his portrayal, too - a touching vulnerability as he recounts his presence at two deathbeds, and traces of the charismatic charm that make him irresistibly attractive. . . .

. . . Played with customary zest by David Tennant, Porter is a compellingly detestable character delivering speeches of virtuoso rage, vicious humour and dazzling invective. His rants are made even more remarkable by the indifference of his companions, an icy, elegant Kelly Reilly as Alison showing Teflon resistance to her husband's provocations and a superbly understated Steven McNicoll as flatmate Cliff, dutifully occupying the no-man's-land in this bed-sit warzone.

Tennant perches on the furniture, juts out his lower jaw, lobs around teapots, newspapers and food, gleefully exposing Porter's misogyny and insensitivity, even as he turns on the charm to show the charismatic lover or the vulnerable child beneath. It's a tremendous performance, given touching and credible support from the rest of the cast and finally revealing, behind the strangeness and vitriol, a sweetly conventional love story.

. . . The energy is all but psychotic when it comes to David TennantŐs Jimmy. He is like a caged animal with the petulance of a child and articulacy of a natural orator. Yet he oozes sexuality in a way which justifies the whole strange manage a trois with Alison and fellow lodger Cliff. And makes HelenŐs later passion towards him inevitable. . . .

. . . A recent "new university" graduate Porter is angry at a world he sees as lacking in strong causes and the changes it needs. David Tennant, in a most welcome return to the Scottish stage, imparts a fierce, febrile energy to Porter as he berates the awfulness of a British Sunday prior to colour supplements, 24/7 opening and our present day highly mobile world. He's a young, bitter cynic about the world retreated to his small universe - wife, job running a sweetie stall and his life in a one-bedroom attic flat. He rages at those around him but does nothing to make things change. . . .

. . .Tennant is everything Jimmy Porter needs to be, odious but irresistible, idle but driven, angry but powerless, selfimportant but self-loathing.

Endless energy leaks from every inch of his long, lean, angular frame which he throws like a weapon around Monika Nisbet's perfect recreation of the Porters' shabby Midlands bedsit.

Tennant's performance is matched in the other four parts. . . .

. . .Director Richard Baron and his handsome cast have duly ditched whatever originally passed as half-cocked ideology, concentrating instead on the self-destructive love/hate affair between Jimmy and his cut-glass wife, Alison, played with breakneck fluidity by David Tennant and a dynamic Kelly Reilly.

The result is electric, a gut-wrenchingly brutal assault course through the emotional wreckage of fractured intimacies.

Here, Jimmy and Alison are equals in an ongoing war of attrition, and Tennant and Reilly's scenes together are heartbreaking. As noise gives way to love play, pet names and the tears of the final scene, all Jimmy's rage is revealed as just a smokescreen to protect a little boy frustrated at having to acknowledge the power someone else has over him.. . .

THE PILLOWMAN

Susannah Clapp, OBSERVER, 16 November 2003

. . . In a police cell in an unnamed totalitarian state, a writer, played by David Tennant, sits blindfolded. His crime is not what an audience might suspect: subversion. It's more intimate. His unpublished stories, which describe maimings and murders, mostly of small children, seem to have been imitated. Infants have been killed in the manner he has described. Is he to blame? . . .

Amanda Hodges, LONDON THEATRE GUIDE, 16 November 2003

. . . Torn between obligation to his brother and a passionate desire to preserve his opus for posterity, Katurian- superbly played by Tennant- is a storyteller to his fingertips, his sinister, savage fairytales weaving a hypnotic spell on the audience that culminates in the personal revelation bringing the first act to a close; his autobiographical story brilliantly brought to life in Scott Pask's ingenious set. . .

Philip Fisher, BRITISH THEATRE GUIDE

. . .David Tennant gives a flawless performance as the writer. . .

Michael Billington, GUARDIAN, 14 November 2003

. . . good work from David Tennant as the imprisoned writer . . .

LOBBY HERO

Matthew Fay, LONDON THEATRE GUIDE, 16 April 2002

. . .Chief among the evening's delights is Jeff, quite brilliantly played by David Tennant, whose American accent, unlike some of the others in this all-British cast, is flawless. He exudes a kind of well-meaning hopelessness, talkative, yet, as he says, sometimes he feels he was 'born worn-out': the classic slacker. . .

John Peter, SUNDAY TIMES, 14 April 2002

Lay down the law

Lobby Hero may seem laid-back at first, but the play is far from ordinary

. . . It is the accuracy of rhythm and phrase that holds your attention. Geoff (David Tennant) is a doorman in a New York apartment block: he prefers to be thought of as a security guard. This is not because he is self-important or snobbish. Geoff is an odd man out in a society structured by competition, anxiety and heroic example. His father was a naval hero who had carried out an act of astonishing bravery, and for the rest of his life depressed the hell out of his family by talking about it.

Geoff himself was a failure in the navy. In his present job he vegetates affably. Tennant has got to perfection a certain type of urban American body language: an expression of vague but intense sincerity, big, friendly hand gestures, and a tendency to nod gently while talking, as if to reassure everyone that his words are health-giving and truthful. Geoff would like to fit in, but he does not quite know how; and Tennant draws a lovingly accurate portrait of innocence functioning as a loose cannon. . . .

Nicholas de Jongh, Hot Tickets, EVENING STANDARD ONLINE, This Is London, 11 April 2002

Truth fights with loyalty

Conscience, that still, small voice which struggles to be heard in these immoral times, becomes the goading force in Lobby Hero. This fascinating comedy raises questions about truth, morality and loyalty. And sexually motivated power games are played out in the process. The lives of two security guards and two police officers are entwined when a secret is revealed. The ironically described "hero" of the title is Jeff, a bored, young doorman of a Manhattan apartment block who idles away the empty, small-hours. But he is soon up against the nagging facts of morality and sexual desire.

. . . Jeff, whose un-American relish for irony is nicely pointed in David Tennant's deadpan, delightful performance, has spent his twenties missing out and messing up. Expelled from the navy for smoking marihuana, poor, girl-hungry and rootless, he has only his charm and intemperate honesty on which to depend. . .

Mark Brokaw's beautifully judged production hits all its comic targets . . .But it's Tennant's endearing Jeff, in his battle of conscience, who supplies Lobby Hero with its shots of cerebral excitement. . .

Charles Spencer, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 12 April 2002

A moral tale with rare wit

The action is set, over several nights, in the lobby of a middle-income, high-rise apartment building in Manhattan, where our hero Jeff (David Tennant) works the graveyard shift as a security guard. He is hardly a suitable man for the post, firstly because he is too intelligent, and secondly because he was drummed out of the US Navy for smoking a spliff while on guard duty. He is not exactly over-conscientious about his mind-numbingly boring new career, either.

At first it looks as though the piece is going to be little more than an amiable comedy. In Tennant's winningly nervy performance, Jeff comes over as a Woody Allen-style geek, unable to open his mouth without putting his foot in it, and constantly cracking jokes that other people respond to with baffled incomprehension. . .

Michael Billington, THE GUARDIAN, 11 April 2002

. . . His hero, Jeff, is a laid back, easy going security guard who, largely out of loneliness, talks too much, which is what gets him into trouble. . . . fine performances from David Tennant as the bumblingly decent Jeff . . .

ROMEO AND JULIET Royal Shakespeare Company, 2000 Stratford, 2001 London

Dominic Cavendish, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 2 February 2001

David Tennant's Romeo is youthful, radiant and dashing, as impetuous as a child but also as untainted, standing at one remove from the tedious bawdy humour that so delights his companions. The thrilling clarity of his delivery makes you sit up sharp.

Katherine Duncan-Jones, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, 21 July, 2000

A whimsical note in the programme for Romeo and Juliet . . . reassures us that, even though "The orchard walls are high and hard to climb", Romeo will have no problems. Like all the other performers, David Tennant has been working out regularly at a local gym . . .

. . . David Tennant brings depth to a part that has often seemed shallow. Not only is he extremely willowy and handsome; he is an intelligent, complex young man whose personal growth seems both as necessary and as interesting as Juliet's. For once, we can entirely understand why Romeo's friends like hanging out with him. And despite the reassurance offered in the programme, Tennant's Romeo is intensely vulnerable, emotionally if not physically. His emotional breakdown in Friar Lawrence's cell in Act Three, Scene Three is the most affecting scene in the play.

Charles Spencer, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 7 July, 2000

. . . Michael Boyd's new production on the Stratford main stage gripped me almost throughout, largely thanks to a sensational performance from Alexandra Gilbreath as Juliet, and a very good one from David Tennant as Romeo.

. . .There is no such maturity about Tennant's whippet-lean Romeo. With his sharp haircut and his leather jacket, he's the eternal adolescent: moody, cynical, self-absorbed - Hamlet, in fact, 10 years before Hamlet starred in his own play. Tennant, an instinctive comedian, is also beguilingly funny, but there is a worrying lack of sexual ardour here, and a deliberate snubbing of the very idea of tragic dignity. Unlike Juliet, this Romeo doesn't grow up - he snivels instead, as teenage males do.

Patrick Marmion, EVENING STANDARD, Hot Tickets, 7 July, 2000

. . . Romeo and Juliet are both cast as a couple of twentysomethings, belying the sweet naiveté of their teenage years. David Tennant is a wan, skinny Hamlet of a Romeo - given as much to linguistic pedantry as to dreamy love-sick idling. In her turn, Alexandra Gilbreath is a huskily mature Juliet whose self-possession is at odds with her vulnerability to romantic mood swings. Both grow in stature as the play progresses, with Tennant becoming an angry young man and Gilbreath becoming a lustier lass, but their final date with death is hardly a slaughter of innocence.

Benedict Nightingale, THE TIMES, 10 July, 2000

. . . You can accuse Alexandra Gilbreath's Juliet and David Tennant's Romeo of lacking gentleness, delicacy, even sweetness, but you can't doubt their intensity or commitment. If he comes across as more immature than she, screeching shrilly on the ground when he's facing exile, that's the way Shakespeare created the role. But Gilbreath still seems lacking in adolescent vulnerability. She may bang her head or her fists on a wall in frustration, but the very way she walks suggests she's likelier to organise an elopement with Romeo to Mantua than stay at home with those high-dose sleeping pills . . .

Georgina Brown, MAIL on SUNDAY, 16 July, 2000

. . . I liked David Tennant's stripling Romeo. He's a bit whiney and - like most self-respectingly stroppy public schoolboys - if a word ends in a T, he can be relied upon to drop i', but he reminds me of a young Hamlet; a moody adolescent, gangly and in giddy thrall to his turbulent hormones and fascinated by every new feeling. . . .

Patrick Carnegy, SPECTATOR, 15 July, 2000

. . . In casting David Tennant, whose flair for comedy is triumphant in the RSC's concurrent Comedy of Errors, as Romeo, and the husky-voiced Alexandra Gilbreath as Juliet, Michael Boyd's new production is going for an anti-romantic reading that has yet to find its form.

Tennant, with close-cropped hair and leather jacket, is a moody youth roughed-up for Love. Gilbreath's spirited defiance of her Capulet parents rings truer than the muted music of her affection. If you fancy your Romeo as a would-be James Dean and Juliet as a Natalie Wood, this could be for you. . . .

Ian Shuttleworth, FINANCIAL TIMES, 7 July, 2000

. . . Tennant's Romeo dispenses quickly with the adolescent whine of his opening lines to hit plausible stride as an impassioned but confused young man. . . .

John Gross, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 9 July, 2000

. . . Tennant has vigour and dash without being quite romantic enough in the love scenes. He is a brilliant comic actor, and his sense of the ludicrous sometimes peeps through inopportunely: where he would have been ideal, you feel, is as Mercutio . . . .

Stephen Fay, INDEPENDENT on SUNDAY, 9 July, 2000

. . . David Tennant, . . . lean, with spiky, dark brown hair, in black leather jerkin and boots, is an innocent and despairing lover, not especially poetic, but expressive (his face crumptles persuasively), and suprisingly matter-of-fact about his emotions - lacking tenderness, for example, as he leaves Juliet for exile. . . .

James N. Lochlin, SHAKESPEARE BULLETIN, WINTER 2001

. . . Tennant makes a pensive, Hamlet-like Romeo, slender and dark-haired, wittily ironic in his sparring with Benvolio, but subject to genuine melancholy. . .

The balcony scene has some of the warmth and humor absent from the rest of the production. Juliet speaks "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" in comic exasperation, annoyed that her lover should be denied her simply because of his name (2.2.33). When she later forbids Romeo to swear by the moon, he gets a big laugh by pausing awkwardly before 'What shall I swear by?", still trapped in a conventional notion of courtship (112). Their love scene is funny and sweet but not especially passionate or sexy. When Juliet bids Romeo "Good night . . . good night," she is pointedly urging him to stop hanging about and be on his way (185).

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COMEDY OF ERRORS Royal Shakespeare Company, 2000

Ian Johns, THE TIMES, 4 December, 2000

. . . The gangly David Tennant is a constant delight as the newly arrived Antipholus of Syracuse, registering increasingly horrified bewilderment with his whole body as he’s showered with money, trinkets and the affections of his long-lost brother’s wife and her sister. As his diminutive servant, Ian Hughes makes a drolly resourceful Dromio, conjuring a picnic out of a suitcase with a flick of a hand. Together they make a great double act. . . .

Charles Spencer, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 25 April, 2000

The best performance undoubtedly comes from David Tennant as Antipholus of Syracuse who visits Ephesus for the first time only to find that everyone recognises him and he appears to have a wife he has never previously met. Tennant is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most endearing comic actors in the business. It helps that he's very tall and very thin (as is Anthony Howell as his plausible twin); both their dealings with the much shorter servants, the Dromio twins (marvellously played and differentiated by Ian Hughes and Tom Smith) hit the heady heights of comic delirium. The scene in which Tennant and Hughes turn the description of the vast kitchen wench Nell ("she is spherical, like a globe") into a brilliant variety turn is alone worth the price of admission.

Nicholas de Jongh, EVENING STANDARD, 26 April, 2000

. . . David Tennant's Antipholus wandering through a dizzy wonderland where confusion ends in a mad goose-chase. . . . Tennant's ingenuity and understated comedy are the production's making. His face speaks volumes and is changeable as a weather-vane. He registers almost 57 varieties of surprise, with swivelling eyes, double-takes and a back-tracking run. Astonishment dawns upon him in slow motion as a wife, true love and a gold chain are thrust upon him. He reacts to shock with acrobatic flashes of daring: he slides down spiral stairs, somersaulting over the fountain. . . . .

Benedict Nightingale, THE TIMES, 24 April, 2000

But it's David Tennant as Antipholus B who gets the better chances. Here he is, a polite young tourist, and suddenly women are taking him to their bosoms, unknown friends are hailing him, his servant is making inexplicable errors, and tradesmen are showering him with everything from money to fish. Soon he's haring about the stage and flinging away ducats as if they are poisoned, a hilariously distraught figure convinced he's fallen among witches and madmen.

Patrick Carnegy, SPECTATOR, 29 April, 2000

The visiting Syracusan partnership of David Tennant's Antipholus and Ian Hughes's Dromio is a faultless double-act of a loose-limbed playboy and a quick-witted gentleman's gentleman who can spring a picnic and a pair of stools from a suitcase in the twinkling of an eye. As unlooked-for-mistresses, gold chains and the odd fish accrue about his person, Tennant's face is a sight for sore eyes. His repartee with Hughes reaches its hysterical climax when he quizzes his man about the geography of the latter's would-be seductress, a greasy scullion 'spherical, like a globe', and it deservedly brought the house down.

Carole Woddis, HERALD, 25 April, 2000

If David Tennant's Antipholus and Ian Hughes's dapper Dromio of Syracuse have stumbled into strange lands with dire and desperate results, we, the audience, seem to have stumbled on to all the chaos and anarchy of a Hollywood film set.

It's a brilliant device, if taking time to flare into life (gone the days of turning a line by irony, I fear) but ultimately hugely enjoyable and, slapstick-wise, timed to perfection by Tennant and Hughes and Tom Smith's hilariously manic Ephesian Dromio.

Shaun Usner, DAILY MAIL, 28 April, 2000

David Tennant and Ian Hughes make the interloping twins at once individuals and national stereotypes.

Tennant, tall and languid, is a sharper Wooster in dire need of a Jeeves to steer him through foreign parts.

Instead, he has Hugues - a gentleman's gentleman with flashes of Cheeky Chappie. Amusing solo, they're a masterly duo.

John Peter, SUNDAY TIMES, 30April, 2000

David Tennant gives a riveting, distraught performance as Antipholus of Syracuse . . .with the immensely long legs, angular,loping gait and goofy charm that used to characterise the finest products of English public schools. There is a gem of a performance from Ian Hughes as his beleaguered servant, a combination of a mad dervish and a high-precision watch. This is a treat.

Michael Billington, GUARDIAN, 22 April, 2000

Davud Tennant's Antipholus of Syracuse at one point does a slide down a staircase-rail and across the stage that Barrault might have envied..

Dominic Cavendish, INDEPENDENT, 24 April, 2000

Tennant is splendidly gangly and goofy, eyes widening with childish wonderment as an unasked-for wife, mistress and sundry valuables come his way. The scene in which he and Ian Hughes's breezy Dromio cease their master-servant bickering for a waggish discourse beside a picnic-hamper not only memorably fixes them as two hapless Englishmen abroad, but also suggests an interdependence that has the same love-hate dynamic as a sibling bond.

THE RIVALS Royal Shakespeare Company, 2000

BLACK COMEDY and THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND

Charles Spencer, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 25 April, 1998

John Gross, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 2 May 1998

HURLY BURLY

Charles Spencer, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 30 August 1997

John Gross, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 6 September 1997

Original production at Old Vic - March 1997

THE HERBAL BED

Charles Spencer, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 24 May 1996 . . . David Tennant, at once repulsive and oddly endearing as the lecherous Jack. . . . Alastair Macaulay, FINANCIAL TIMES, 24 May 1996 . . . David Tennant establishes and develops the rotting charm of Jack Lane very well. . .

John Gross, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 26 May 1996

. . . David Tennant makes Lane's charm as credible as his vicious streak. . . .

Sarah Hemming, FINANCIAL TIMES, 8 November 1996

. . . David Tennant is delightfully lewd as Jack Lane, yet managing to protray the fear beneath the bravado. . . .

Charles Spencer, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 7 November 1996

John Gross, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 10 November 1996

. . . David Tennant's Jack, whom in spite of everything you can't dislike for long . . .

THE GENERAL FROM AMERICA

Robert Butler, INDEPENDENT on SUNDAY, 28 July 1996

. . . the alert, intelligent David Tennant as Hamilton, Washington's secretary, who firmly interrogates Arnold while holding a quill in one hand and a cup of tea and a piece of cake in the other.

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