One third of the Three Musketeers, Hal Fowler talks about swords, singing and swapping roles.
The Rose Theatre is abuzz with excitement as their new musical The Three Musketeers by Olivier Award-winning composer George Stiles has started previews and opens on Friday night. One third of the musketeers is Hal Fowler who I braved the snow for.
What's it like, I ask, working as a three? “We're a boy band. A man band!” He laughs. “Paul Thornley, who plays Athos, described it as a 17th century Il Divo. We do sound great together, even if I do say so myself. I'd always heard of Paul and I'd known Matt Rawle (Aramis) for many years and never worked with him, so to suddenly be in a group it very exciting. You have to put your trust in each other and there's no room for egos. Our dressing room is a nightmare, full of quips and witty comments.”
But things haven't all been going smoothly. “Last night” (the second night of previews) “Milady was off, C J [Johnson] lost her voice. We haven't got any covers or understudies so the director, Francis Matthews, read the part whilst George Stiles sat at the side of the stage and sang it. The audience went along with it. We've got Claire Moore singing tonight.” A seasoned actor, he says this all casually – it's all part of being in theatre.
But theatre often changes...
“On this show,” he tells me, “in the first workshop seventeen years ago I played D'Artagnan”. Seventeen years on, he's playing “big fat Porthos!", for which he has to put on loads of padding.
“Usually, in the films, when you first see the musketeers they're in fine form – they may be a bit wayward in their life choices, but they're a fighting frenzy; in this version we start and they're really not at their best. We see them at the Pine Cone Inn and they really are pissed as rats. The first fight is a proper brawl with punches and kicks and head-butts – and we get floored. It's an interesting start to the show I think because everyone goes 'Oh my god, these are meant to be the musketeers and they're all on the floor.' And that's what springs us back into action, gets us back into training and then of course we find our form again later on in the act.”
Those who like big fight scenes won't be disappointed. Hal tells me they went through a week of fight training, which was “exhausting”. He says, “Without it we would have been struggling because there is a lot of fights in it and sometimes there's nine or even twelve people on stage all with a sword.” Previously, Hal's worked with the fight director, Malcolm Ranson, when he played Javert in Les Miserables and, slightly bizarrely, when he played one of the Ugly Sisters in the Old Vic's Cinderella.
We start talking about the creative team. “The music is gorgeous,” says Hal. “It's lovely coming back to the show. The score is absolutely heavenly. It has moments of sheer beauty and also some really rousing numbers. You get a real sense of being in France.”
He goes on to talk about Paul Leigh's lyrics and the book, which is by Peter Raby and Francis Matthews. “There are some master lyrics, the book's very clear. It's a big story and can be confusing, an epic tale like that. The lyrics are beautiful when they should be beautiful and funny when they should be funny.”
I ask him what it's like to be creating a character for a new show. “It's completely different to working on a set show,” he says. “When the production is set, they know where A and B and C is and they know how you get from A to B, so it's just a process of passing that information on. But in this production you have the option to say 'I think at this moment it would be great if Porthos did XYZ' and if your argument is convincing enough then that can happen. You can bring a lot to the table while creating a new role in a new show. And hopefully it will be successful enough that everyone after you will have to do what you do. You've left your stamp then.”
The Three Musketeers is on at the Rose Theatre until 2nd January
Images by Chris Pearsoll and Alastair Muir
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