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Paul Higgins at the Tricycle in Damascus |
Good Scot, bad Scot
Simon Wroe meets Paul Higgins as he plays a role far removed from the foul-mouthed No 10 press officer he’s best known for on television
ACERBIC Scots with language to make a Newcastle manager blush are Paul Higgins’s stock-in-trade.
The Lanarkshire actor has turned the air blue in some of the finest productions of recent years, most notably Armando Iannucci’s whip-smart TV satire The Thick Of It and the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch.
In David Greig’s play Damascus, currently at the Tricycle Theatre, however, Higgins plays someone totally different: a mild-mannered, well-spoken English teacher – also called Paul – who is trying to sell textbooks to the Syrian education department.
Jamie, Higgins’s psychotic Number 10 press officer in The Thick of It, would tear him apart.
“It’s a very different kind of character,” says Higgins, 45, who trained as a Catholic priest before he studied at the Central School for Speech and Drama in Swiss Cottage.
“I do feel quite close to him. Unfortunately, I also feel quite close to Jamie in The Thick of It, although I’m not as uninhibited in my rage as he is.”
Higgins’s liberal Scot far away from home has some cultural barriers to cross.
“No one in Damascus understands the difference between English and Scottish – everybody thinks he is English. There are lots of misunderstandings. His expectations are turned on their head. He discovers something in Damascus: about how people should live their lives and take opportunities when they arrive, particularly romantic ones.”
Damascus premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2007, the year after the Iraq war tour de force Black Watch, which Higgins also starred in. “We were amazed by the response,” says Higgins. “People were crying every night and people were clamouring for tickets. One night we had Rupert Murdoch on one side and Lou Reed on the other.”
The foul-mouthed side of Higgins returns later this year for In The Loop, the feature film “relative” of The Thick of It, starring The Soprano ’s James Gandolfini.
The amiable side of Higgins will be writing on attachment for the National Theatre of Scotland and looking after his two young girls while his wife, the actor Amelia Bullmore, stars in The Norman Conquests on Broadway.
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