Star wars made simple

Daniel Rosenthal meets Ian McDiarmid, master of the Almeida and the Universe

Daniel Rosenthal December 2, 1997 The Sunday Times `Photograph: ALAN WELLER

Strange business, asking Darth Vader's boss about the finer points of subsidised theatre. As an actor, his face hidden beneath four hours of make-up, Ian McDiarmid was Return of the Jedi's demonic Emperor Palatine, a role to which he returns in the forthcoming Star Wars prequel. As joint artistic director of the Almeida Theatre in Islington, he shares the helm at one of the country's most important venues. Hence the need for questions about lottery funding, corporate sponsorship and the Death Star.

First, however, comes the Almeida's Russian December. Part One of this double whammy requires McDiarmid to shake and howl as the mayor in The Government Inspector, directed by the other half of the top brass, Jonathan Kent.

Gogol's classic 1842 comedy about Khlestakov (Tom Hollander), the opportunistic clerk who fleeces the corrupt burghers of a remote town by allowing them to mistake him for a sleaze-hunter from St Petersburg, has been rendered into broad Scots in a hilarious translation by John Byrne, author of Tutti Frutti.

"Jonathan and I felt the play's provincial character would work well in Scots," explains McDiarmid, as mild-mannered as Gogol's mayor is irascible. "John's writing has a wonderful vulgarity, and vulgarity is a great asset because the play is not psychologically dense: there is no subtext to these wild characters."

The Government Inspector received its second production at the Maly Theatre, Moscow, which brings us to Part Two of the double bill. Last April, after a sell-out run of Ivanov in Islington, Ralph Fiennes (the eponymous hero), McDiarmid (the insufferable bore, Kosykh) and the rest of Kent's cast gave four performances at the Maly - the first time Chekhov's play had been staged in English on his home turf.

At the beginning of Ivanov Goes To Moscow, an enjoyable documentary about the British Council/AT&T-sponsored trip to be shown on Channel 4 next Sunday at 9pm, McDiarmid suggests that this "coals to Newcastle" expedition is "theatrically perverse, almost surreal". But it turned out, he says now, to be "exciting and moving".

"The Russians were fascinated by David Hare's translation and how, in combination with Jonathan's direction, it brought out Ivanov's farcical elements. Some found that revelatory, others said we were cheapening Chekhov."

In London Ivanov had been a phenomenon, with hundreds camping overnight outside the Almeida to secure a ticket and a glimpse of Fiennes. The recipe was the same as for the other most notable successes of McDiarmid's and Kent's eight years at the theatre. No Man's Land with Paul Eddington, Medea with Diana Rigg (both 1992) and last year's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Rigg and David Suchet, were also revivals (newly translated if a translation was required) of works by major dramatists. Using a phrase that becomes something of a refrain,

McDiarmid insists these triumphs are "really very simple". "We only choose plays we're absolutely passionate about. Actors, designers and technicians respond to that commitment. Secondly, because the company owns the site, the theatre belongs to everybody who works here. That creates a family atmosphere which actors enjoy." There have been disappointments. Some of the new plays premiered at the Almeida have underperformed at the box office, and in 1991 McDiarmid, an award-winning (if temporarily lapsed) director, made "a big mistake" by acting in as well as directing Lulu.

Hits and misses are made possible by the Almeida's "fabulous" development team, which attracts £550,000 a year in private and corporate donations to complement the £480,000 public subsidy. Nevertheless, the finances remain as "simple" as the artistic policy. "If two successive shows don't sell at least 75 per cent of their seats, we're in crisis. If three in a row don't, we're on the edge of bankruptcy."

Their local MP, one Chris Smith, has been "very supportive" in the past, but McDiarmid knows "there would be no point banging on his table and demanding preferential treatment", either for increased subsidy or on the current £2.9 million lottery bid to improve the theatre and purchase and renovate the dilapidated rehearsal rooms.

The Almeida's record in persuading Rigg, Fiennes and Co to work for the Equity minimum of £225 a week was remarkable even before they announced their first productions for 1998: Juliette Binoche in Pirandello's Naked, Kevin Spacey in The Iceman Cometh and Liam Neeson as Oscar Wilde in David Hare's The Judas Kiss.

West End producers would pawn a close relative to sign up one member of that trio, never mind all three. Yet McDiarmid quietly explains that Liam, Juliette and Kevin all saw Ivanov, loved the 300-seat auditorium's intimacy between actors and audience, and all wanted to get back on stage after years of film work: "It was relatively simple."

McDiarmid the actor invariably invests his characters with immense intelligence, be it benign (Einstein in Terry Johnson's Insignificance, a forensics professor in Gorky Park), or monstrous (the title role in Volpone, or the psychotic who tried to murder Inspector Morse).

He is not at liberty to reveal whether Palatine (100 years old in Return of the Jedi, closer to McDiarmid's own 50 in the prequel) will add to his gallery of villains. Draconian confidentiality clauses mean he can say only that filming with George Lucas at Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire over the summer was "extraordinary". And he offers a striking observation.

"There was a wonderful concentration of purpose on set: Lucas runs a relatively small operation, with everyone utterly determined to get everything right. Financially it's nothing like the Almeida, but those principles are not unlike ours." Star Wars in Leavesden, star draws in Islington. You could say the Force is with him.

• The Government Inspector is at the Almeida, London N1 (0171-359 4404) from Thursday to Jan 31, and the King's Theatre, Edinburgh (0131-220 4349) Feb 3-7

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