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Alex Waldmann |
Duels with Jude
EVERY morning Alex Waldmann wakes up, goes to work and kills Jude Law.
Law, a Hollywood star of some staying power, does not go quietly; it usually takes an elaborate swordfight to dispatch him. Once he managed to stab Waldmann in the neck.
Waldmann, an actor “on the right side of 30” who hails from Queen’s Crescent, was delighted. “It means I’ve got money in the bank for the next time I stick him,” he says.
Waldmann plays Laertes opposite Law’s Hamlet in the forthcoming Donmar West End production, previewing at Wyndham’s Theatre from the end of May. The two men have been practising the final fight scene for months now, long before rehearsals started on the rest of the play.
The experience of fighting Jude Law, whose every bone is probably worth a few banks, was nerve-wracking at first, he admits, but he has now “got all the star-struckness out of the way”.
This is Waldmann’s second production – and second Shakespeare – in the current Donmar West End season directed by Michael Grandage. His previous role, as Sebastian in Twelfth Night, was a very different beast. “A lot more people die in Hamlet,” he explains drily.
Laertes is at the centre of much of the death: he returns halfway through to find his father, Polonius, killed by Hamlet and his sister, Ophelia, gone mad. It’s a difficult part, says Waldmann, made bearable by the “phenomenal” direction of Grandage. “He understands an actor’s process, their insecurities. He’s got the most incredible attention to detail,” he says, adding: “He doesn’t want to put any particular spin on it or shoe-horn it into a particular period. He’s interested in the human condition in Shakespeare’s play.”
SIMON WROE
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Your comments:
The Lenkiewicz exhibition is stunning from the remarkable St Eustace sculpture to the drawings featuring unicorns, tigers and Elvis! The skeletons and skulls were my particular favourite along with the octopus drowning the Titanic. The surroundings are fabulous; the Pite architecture lends itself so well to the mood. I admit I have a particular fondness for
the building having worked there for 26 years.
J. Trend-Hill
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