Simon Russell Beale on parade

By Irving Wardle

Captain Terri Dennis, the military drag queen in Peter Nichols’s “Privates on Parade”, is a debonair figure, at ease with his body whether sporting regimental blues or plunging into a sequinned sheath. As such he will mark a leap into the unknown for Simon Russell Beale, who plays him in the opening production of Michael Grandage’s new season at the Noel Coward Theatre.

The story of Beale’s career is that of a character actor turning into a heroic actor. Never has anyone achieved such success in roles for which he appeared spectacularly unsuited. “I hate my body,” he once declared; but the impression over the past 30 years is that it was his body that unlocked his creative energy. In early Royal Court and RSC performances he defiantly set out to make it look hateful, prompting critical comparisons to a “dung-beetle voyeur”, and “glittering porcine brat”. Then, amazingly, he began internalising the process so that the great Chekhov and Shakespearean roles became available; and entirely on Beale’s own terms—Ariel as mutinous menial who finally spits in his master’s face; Chekhov’s Konstantin as an icily untouchable outsider; a Falstaff who is terrified of silence. He can draw all parts towards him, and they turn out to be a version of himself.