DUBLINER Stanley Townsend has some 40 years in the acting business under his belt.
At the age of 63, he has been based in south London for more than 25 years, where he and his wife, fellow actor Orla Charlton, live in Kennington.
Despite early plans to become an architect, his time studying maths and engineering at Trinity College Dublin would see him pivot rather dramatically – excuse the pun – to the world of the performing arts.
Without really looking for it, in the pocket money stage-related jobs Townsend undertook while studying he found a place to indulge his true love of entertaining and, well, he went with it.
Stanley Townsend in rehearsals for Retrograde (Pic: Marc Brenner)The actor has barely had a chance to look back since, winning roles at every turn and enjoying multiple career highlights along the way.
You will have seen him in numerous films, including Into the West and In the Name of the Father, as well as many television shows, like Ballykissangel, Casualty and Spooks, and on stages across Britain and Ireland in the likes of Guys and Dolls, The Plough and the Stars and A View from the Bridge.
Retrograde director Amit Sharma is Artistic Director of the Kiln TheatreFour decades later, the work continues and so does Townsend's love for his craft.
His latest job brings him back to London’s West End in the transfer of Ryan Calais Cameron’s acclaimed Retrograde.
Directed by Amit Sharma, the play first opened in 2023 with a sellout run at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn.
Retrograde opens at the Apollo Theatre in MarchTownsend plays lawyer Mr Parks in the play, which captures the moment a young Sidney Poitier is about to sign a career-defining contract.
The agreement could be life-changing but it comes with a significant catch, and that is the crux of this one-act, three-hander, which is set to open at the Apollo Theatre this month.
Ivanno Jeremiah and Oliver Johnstone also star in the production, which is based on true events in Poitier's life, and, with rehearsals now well underway, Townsend admits the opening night “butterflies” have started to flutter…
What drew you to this play?
It’s just a great play.
Just before Christmas they came and said they might be interested in me for this transfer and would I like to meet.
Very rarely would you read a play and three pages in it becomes a compulsive page-turner.
It is incredibly entertaining and compelling, so I just read it and thought ‘oh, man. I really want to do this’.
I met the guys, the writer, the director and one of the producers, chatted to them then went away and had to wait to see if they were going to offer it to me.
But they did and look it’s just a wonderful, wonderful thing to be involved in.
What can you tell us about the story?
It is set in an entertainment lawyer’s office in New York in 1955, so we are pretty high up looking out over the city.
It’s a corner office, with windows, you can look out of the windows and out at the audience, which is great.
I play Larry Parks, the lawyer, then there is Bobby, a writer who has written a brilliant script and is in signing the contract for his TV drama.
They have a bit of banter, then Sidney Poitier comes in.
Now this is his big break, he comes in to sign his contract for the show and it’s not quite as straightforward for Sydney.
There’s a few preconditions and it becomes a moral/ethical dilemma for him. It’s kind of Faustian I suppose.
He is offered huge riches and wealth if he will compromise his principles, and what will he do?
Will he sign on the dotted line or will he stand back and stand up for his principles?
Ivanno Jeremiah and Townsend in rehearsals (Pic: Marc Brenner)How would you describe your character?
If you go out for a night with Larry Parks you are going to have a really good time.
He is a highly entertaining character. He's great with language, he is street but also, he can mix with the elite.
He's a lawyer, he's connected, he is the sort of entertainment lawyer that goes to the Oscars.
He is the age of the century. At 55 years old he has lived through the two world wars, he has survived and thrived, he is charismatic, he is a pragmatist and he is very much a pursuer of the American dream in how it is expressed as the freedom of the individual to pursue any course that they see fit.
He is a capitalist, he is an individualist, and he is vehemently anti-communist as he sees communism as a massive threat to that individual pursuit.
He also understands the rise of civil rights is a threat to the established patriarchy as well, that’s his world so he doesn’t want that threatened.
Is he a good guy in this story?
He thinks he is.
The audience will have to come and see the play and make their own decision.
Nobody looks at themselves in the mirror and thinks they are a villain, but as far as the ethics and morals of the piece are concerned, well, I would not share his ethics and morals.
What has been challenging about this role?
The argument of the piece and expressing the argument through character, I suppose, it is very easy to become emblematic.
Larry Parks doesn’t carry the ethical or high ground, but you must humanise him, you must not judge your character, its very easy to do that.
I have to put my humanity into him, behind Larry, despite the fact that I disagree fundamentally with him, so that is a challenge.
To offer up all your humour and any charisma you might be able to assemble, and any life and light that you bring to the world, to offer that to a character whose morals you don’t believe in is challenging.
Oliver Johnstone and Townsend in rehearsals (Pic: Marc Brenner)Do you prefer preparing for your role alone or in rehearsals with other cast members?
It is a social art, acting, particularly in the theatre.
It’s more of an individual pursuit in front of the camera, most of the time.
As a young actor I really wouldn’t have opened a script much before the first days of rehearsals but as you get older, well, you know maybe you are not quite as nimble as you used to be intellectually.
Also the characters have lived longer, they are more complicated, so you do need to invest more deeply.
That’s my experience of it anyway.
I would have done a lot of prep before starting rehearsals for Retrograde, a few hours a day.
Also, you watch films and pretend you are working, that’s the joy of it really.
You watch fantastic films about McCarthyism and the civil rights movement in the US and you are learning.
You do all that work, and you bring it to the theatre and then it’s about what happens between myself and Oliver and Ivanno.
From that base things develop.
Are you feeling confident ahead of the show opening?
Coming into the theatre is very exciting but also a bit ‘oh, here we go, oh my gosh’.
You get those butterflies and the jangles, but without that it’s all very mundane.
So we are confident but you have to have doubt, you must have nerves, otherwise there are no stakes, and the stakes bring electricity and magic.
So, yeah, it’s a mixture of feelings.
Oliver Johnstone and Ivanno Jeremiah in rehearsals for Retrograde (Pic: Marc Brenner)The play is set in the 1950s, does it have a message for today?
The play certainly rings for today in so many ways really.
Not only for the black community’s disenfranchisement but also for the liberal folk in America and the rest of the world in how they are going to respond to the challenge that President Trump issues.
How are you going to respond to that, are you going to keep your head down, kowtow and try and survive?
Or are you going to stand up and say ‘no, I stand for this and if I lose business or I get disadvantaged because of that well that is what I must do’.
So that certainly rings for today.
How long have you been in the business now?
I got my equity card when I was 22 or 23 and I am 63 now, so I am working in the industry some 40 years.
I don’t really feel like I know anything or have any expertise, but I have been at it a while.
And I still love doing it, particularly when you have a play like this, that is so full of humour and is so compelling, but it has real social purpose as well.
That is amazing and to be doing that in the West End well that is the dream job.
Oliver Johnstone, Ivanno Jeremiah and Stanley Townsend in rehearsalsWhat drew you to a career in acting?
I am a founding member of Rough Magic, a theatre company borne out of people who wanted to be in the business who had been at Trinity [College Dublin] and UCD.
I studied sciences, maths and engineering, at Trinity, but I was also in the amateur dramatics society.
Each summer we would set up a little company and use the theatre to put on lunchtime plays for the tourists and do the modern English and American plays in the evenings, to make a bit of money for term time.
Then when I left college, because I used to build the sets for all the productions, I set up a set construction company which I called Proscenium - I still can’t believe I called it that.
Anyway I did that for years, and one day I did a deal on a set for [King] Lear - if I got to play [the Duke of] Cornwall in that production.
So, I got to play Cornwall. And from Cornwall to here.
Originally Stanley Townsend had plans to become an architectSo you never had plans to go into acting as a career?
Absolutely not, no.
I liked doing it, but I didn’t think it was possible for me as a career.
However, through my experience in those companies which we set up, then I was in the mix. I was in amongst it, and I started to think maybe I can be involved in this.
Maybe I can build some sets and still be involved that way. I really ached to do it.
Then when some of the university lads said they were starting Rough Magic I got involved. And that was 40 years ago, oh my god, 40 years.
My aspiration had been to be an architect really but the theatre beckoned and I followed it.
What have been your career highlights so far?
There have been lots of highlights over the years.
Shining City, a beautiful play by Conor McPherson, and Incantata, a long poem by Paul Muldoon, they were amazing.
I would love to do both those one-man shows in London.
Any time you get to be involved in really good quality storytelling that enflames the debate in society that is a highlight.
And so [with Retrograde], this is a highlight.
What's your favourite thing about Retrograde?
My favourite thing about this started with the script.
There is such life and vitality and fun in the script and you kind of go 'this is great, but no this is awful'.
So, it makes you laugh and it makes you think, that’s the best thing about it.
But, of course, the people too.
We are going to have a great time playing it and the fact that it is in the West End and we are hopefully bringing a new audience into the West End, well that is very exciting.
Catch Stanley Townsend in Retrograde at the Apollo Theatre from March 8 until June 14. Click here for tickets.
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