The Madness of King George III

Actor Simon Ward, best known for his role as James Herriot in the 1970s television series All Creatures Great and Small, is tackling the tough role of King George III at the Devonshire Park Theatre early this month. Playing a man who is aware of his slipping sanity while very much in the public eye was a role the acclaimed actor jumped at. Speaking to East’s Cat Neilson, Mr Ward conveyed his admiration of the real King George and esteem for the play’s author.

East:  Hi Mr Ward, thanks for talking to East, we’re looking forward to your time in Eastbourne.
Simon Ward:  I was just talking about Eastbourne, saying what a nice place it is. And the theatre there, they do such bloody hard work. We have a whole week’s rehearsal there and the crew are so helpful. It makes one feel more at home and you can relax.

East: How quickly did you accept the role of King George III.
SW:  I’d say with great alacrity. I think this play is one of the most extraordinary for real tragedy and real comedy. There are huge laughs in it and yet it breaks your heart - a very difficult thing to pull off. And the language is extraordinary.

East: What research did you have to do for this part.
SW: Well, there three good books. One of the things about George III is that everybody kept diaries around him. One is the Fanny Burney diary, one of the most illuminating journals of court life – at any time, let alone during the Georgian period. So there’s that and then there are also political books. William Hague wrote a marvellous book on this particular period. And then there are the medical books. There is a book called George III and the Mad Business which is by two psychiatric historians which is interesting because psychiatric historians don’t go back a long way.

East: Did you find anything you didn’t know about?
SW:  There is an argument to be made that this illness – from which he recovered – did actually change the attitude towards mental illness in many ways. Because people knew he was ill, it was public knowledge, and the fact that he recovered did change people’s attitude in their treatment of the mentally ill – well, up to a point because we still treat the mentally ill very badly. What’s changed really, by degree of course, is that we have drugs now.

East: How do you go about playing a mentally ill person.
SW:  The point about his illness, which was called porphyria, was that it was genetic. It came down through every single line of his family. Now, one has to wonder what you’re dealing with here. You have to start saying to yourself, ‘Am I playing a lunatic? No, I’m not playing a lunatic, I’m playing a man with appalling physical symptoms’. I mean the medical treatment they handed out then, like the blistering and the bleeding and restraining chairs ...  so I’m going for the physical symptoms rather than rolling my eyes. No one wants to play him as a loony, he was far from being a loony. He knew all the time that something was not right. He’d see things, his vision in a mist, scratching his skin off ...

East: His condition sounds horrible, how do you avoid not going down a dark route in the performance.
SW: Everything in life is both tragic and comic. If you are able to step back from a dreadful experience, then you can see the view from the outside and it could be seen as funny. In fact there is a Henri Bergson quote on comedy where he describes laughter as a ‘momentary anaesthesia of the spirit’.  It’s like the banana skin joke. You see it happen on television and think it’s funny. But not if you actually see someone fall because that person could be hurt, or break his leg, which isn’t funny. The banana joke is our stereotype of physical slapstick humour. It shows in some way we are able to laugh because we can cut off our empathetic judgement. In this play there are some wonderful moments. During his reign, George was a popular king whereas during this period across the channel they were busy with Madame Defarge and the guillotine.

East: And the character’s relationship with his wife, is that uplifting?
SW: His love for his wife is very touching. They had 15 children which is an awful lot, and he was never unfaithful to her. It’s terribly touching and moving in the play. They were a cosy couple, they called each other ‘Mr and Mrs King’. It’s frightfully moving. You don’t see that – a well married couple portrayed with such warmth.

East: You’ve played a lot of real life characters, is this something you’ll keep doing or are drawn to?
SW: I think as long as your characters are dead, you’re alright! It’s when they’re alive and they turn up on the set and give you a baleful gaze, then there could be a problem. But I think we’re safe with this role.

The Madness of George lll
Devonshire Park Theatre
Saturday 4 - Saturday 11 September
£13.50- £19.50