Jonathan Broadbent is currently starring as De Lorde in the Theatre Royal Plymouth’s revival of Grand Guignol. He also appeared in the play’s original run four years ago.
Grand Guignol has completed a run in Plymouth ahead of beginning performances at the Southwark Playhouse this Thursday (23rd October 2014). Grand Guignol is written by Carl Grose and directed by Simon Stokes, the Theatre Royal Plymouth’s Artistic Director.
Fresh from playing Guy in My Night with Reg at the Donmar Warehouse, Jonathan’s theatre credits include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Lyric Hammersmith), Hamlet (Rose Theatre), Ghost Stories (Duke Of York’s), Chekhov in Hell (Soho Theatre/The Drum) and Three Sisters (Lyric Hammersmith).
I recently spoke to Jonathan about Grand Guignol’s unique style, the beauty of Carl Grose’s writing and why audiences seem to love this play as well as the technical side of ripping someone's tongue out on stage...
Described as wild, funny, strange and gothic, Grand Guignol sounds really different to anything else on at the moment. You first did the show a few years ago, do you remember what your first impressions were?
Well the writer (Carl Grose) asked me to do a very early read-through of it in his flat. We were reading it out loud and I remember it was very funny. It was quite mad and crazy, depicting a world that was very particular – the world of this horror theatre in Paris that came from the sort of brainchild of Andre de Lorde who was the writer. It is very loosely based on a very real past piece of theatrical history and this horror theatre in Paris. I just loved it! I thought it was funny, it was dramatic, it had tension and I wanted to read the next page. You don’t get that often with scripts, so I wanted to do it and then I got the job which was terrific.
