Christopher Timothy stars in The Grapes of Wrath

Oct 15 2009 By Roz Laws

The small screen’s most famous ‘vet’ tells Roz Laws about a treat in store for Rep audiences.

It might have unnerved other actors, but Christopher Timothy was delighted when his latest work was met by complete silence.

He is starring in a tour of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes Of Wrath, which opens next week at Birmingham Rep.

And several performances have stunned the audience into silence.

Christopher plays Pa Joad, the head of a family of Oklahoma share-croppers in the 1930s, who lose everything when their farm is repossessed after a drought. Driven from their home, they trek west to California. It’s a very powerful play with a shocking ending.

Chris, star of All Creatures Great And Small and Doctors, says: “At a few performances, we have been met by absolute silence, not even one or two tentative claps. It’s extraordinary. I’ve never known anything like it.

“The ending is jaw-dropping and very moving. I think everyone just thought ‘bloody hell’. The silence is very exciting, it tells you what you have done has really had an effect.

“I have to say that the play isn’t uplifting and doesn’t offer much hope. An actor friend of mine saw it and was saying ‘there might be hope for the children’, desperately clinging on to the possibility.

“It is beautifully written and performed by the whole cast. I haven’t seen the film or properly read the book. I decided to stick to the script, as it is regarded as one of the best stage adaptations of a novel.

“I heard that a few people have walked out in the interval, saying ‘I can’t take any more and I know it gets worse’. I think they meant the story and not the performances!

“It’s an indictment of man’s inhumanity to man and it couldn’t be more topical. It does make you think that nothing changes, which is exceedingly depressing.

“But I don’t come out thinking ‘there’s no chance for mankind’. I like to think I’m a pretty positive person.”

Christopher, who lives with this second wife Annie in Sussex and has seven children, admits he has been personally affected by the current recession.

“I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had to tighten their belt,” says the actor, who turned 69 last week. “When I was earning a great deal of money we drank much better wine, but now I don’t spend much on fripperies.

“I can’t afford to retire as I don’t have a viable pension scheme, but then I don’t want to. The wonderful thing about being an actor is that, with any luck, they let you carry on as long as you can act. I’m praying I don’t get debilitated so I can continue to work.”

Birmingham is a second home for Christopher, who has spent years in the city working first as vet James Herriot on All Creatures Great And Small and then Dr Brendan McGuire in Doctors, which he left in 2006 after six years.

“I have been at the Alexandra Theatre a couple of times before on tours, but this is the first time I have acted at the Rep,” says Christopher, who was also educated at the Priory Grammar School in Shrewsbury.

“While I was in Doctors I went to the Rep plenty of times to see plays, so I’m looking forward to appearing on the stage.

“Actually, I might ring up Doctors and ask if I can come back! I don’t have any regrets about leaving. I would love to go back to direct some episodes, as I did when I was in the cast. But the feeling from the hierarchy seems to be ‘oh, everyone wants to direct’.”

“I am fascinated by movies. They’re certainly better than most of the rubbish on television these days. There’s hardly anything on TV that makes me go ‘wow’ any more, and that does distress me. Maybe I’m becoming a grumpy old man!”

Despite appearing in adverts for Birmingham-based firm Dignity and endorsing their funeral plans, he hasn’t thought that far forward himself.

“I’ve made a will but I haven’t made any funeral arrangements yet. Perhaps I will do it, very dramatically, on my deathbed.

“I just want people to have a good time at my funeral and think ‘he was a good bloke’. And I’d like something on my gravestone to make people laugh, like Spike Milligan’s ‘I told you I was ill’.”

* The Grapes of Wrath is at the Birmingham Rep from October 20-31 (box office 0121 236 4455).