(History) Boy to Man (with Two Guvnors)
He went from being the toast of Broadway to being the man critics loved to hate. Now he’s getting the applause again, James Corden plans to do things differently
WORDS SOPHY GRIMSHAW
PORTRAITS PAUL STUART
‘PRINCE CHARLES WAS IN LAST NIGHT,’ says James Corden. ‘Aaron Ramsey, who plays for Arsenal, was in the audience too. Rio Ferdinand has come to see the play. Gary Barlow. Robbie Williams. Emma Thompson wrote me the nicest email I’ve ever received. I love that the show can attract these different people.’
The show he’s talking about is One Man, Two Guvnors, at London’s Adelphi Theatre until the end of this month. We’re sitting in Corden’s upstairs dressing room a couple of hours before he’s due on stage for the evening performance. He’s easy to like, opening the conversation with, ‘Thanks a lot for doing this’ and offering to make some drinks, before remembering that all he has in the room is a small bottle of water. Famous as a chubby-cheeked actor ‘of size’ (his first TV gig was playing a teenager attending a slimmers’ club in the ITV drama Fat Friends), in person Corden doesn’t cut such a large figure, and he answers questions quietly and thoughtfully.
One Man, Two Guvnors is loosely based on a 1746 farce by Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni, usually translated as The Servant of Two Masters. The 21st-century production transplants the action to 60s Brighton. Corden carries the show as the cartoonish Francis Henshall, a rotund and hapless hero in a loud suit, who’ll do anything for anyone if it results in some cash for a slap-up meal, or the chance to take a pretty girl out for the night. And so he comes to be working for two different bosses at the same time, who happen to be in love with one another and attempting to exchange secret messages, a situation of which Henshall remains unaware.
As ever, the plot of the farce isn’t really the point. Here, it functions to ensure that Corden’s character is suitably confused at all times. In his bafflement he frequently breaks character, ad-libbing with such ease that you’d think he was a seasoned stand-up. (In fact, he’s never tried it, and dislikes being called a comedian rather than an actor.) He calls out audience members to come on stage, carry props and interact with the cast. ‘That’s consistently my favourite part of the show,’ he says. ‘Something different happens every night.
I’ve been given quite a long leash, but the trick is not to let it become indulgent, not to let the play lose its rhythm and pace.’ The night I’m there, he invites two men on stage, supposedly to help him carry a heavy trunk, then teases them about their retro knitwear: ‘Amazingly, you both dressed for the 60s!’
As Henshall, Corden has a genuine, easy rapport with the audience. He aims to have them laughing ‘until they look like they’re in pain’, he says. The plot may be ludicrous but the play crackles with energy, and has won a sweep of five-star reviews. (‘The mixture of improvisation with immaculate planning is perfectly exemplified by James Corden’s brilliant Francis,’ declared The Guardian‘s Michael Billington.) The show has also proved a phenomenal commercial success, following its debut at London’s National Theatre with a tour of the UK before transferring to the West End. Next comes New York’s Broadway.
‘If you look at the history of the West End or Broadway or films, in times of economic uncertainty and downturn comedy and light relief will always perform better,’ says Corden. ‘If you’re having a bad time at work and things are tough at home, then on your one night out what you don’t want is to watch something depressing. You want some respite. So this is the perfect time for this show.’
Even so, he says he was not expecting the Broadway transfer. ‘It’s the icing on the cake and it was already a brilliant cake. No one could ever have predicted that the play would be this successful. I’m told it’s the fastest selling straight play in the history of the West End. Ever. It was supposed to have finished two and a half months ago, and here we are on show 175 and we’ve got about 90 more to do here before April and New York. It’s overwhelming.’
It won’t be the first time that Corden, 33, has appeared on Broadway. In 2006 he was there as one of the eight ‘History Boys’ in the smash-hit Alan Bennett play, which later became a movie – also starring the theatrical cast, at Bennett’s insistence. The History Boys, Corden says, was an incredible experience. ‘We were eight young guys at the same early stage in our careers and there was never a cross word between us, never any professional jealousy. It was the rarest thing. We just became a family. When we were on Broadway, we’d go out to bars after the play, then take the whole of the next day to recover from the situations we got ourselves into. New York is a wonderful city if you’re young and you only work three hours a night. We didn’t really see daylight.’
His cast mate Dominic Cooper, now carving a niche in Hollywood, became a particularly close friend and the pair moved in together on their return to the UK. Cooper played matchmaker to Corden and his friend, charity worker Julia Carey. Today the pair have a baby son, Max, and are engaged. ‘Dominic lives four doors down from us, and we still live on the same road in Primrose Hill that we lived on when we used to share a flat,’ says Corden. ‘He’s the godfather to my son and I love him dearly.’
Corden’s theatrical success is remarkable given that he has only ever appeared in two plays – three, if you count a small role in the chorus of the musical Martin Guerre when he was 18. What he’s best known for isn’t theatre at all, but the hit BBC sitcom he wrote and starred in, Gavin & Stacey. Corden’s Fat Friends alumni Ruth Jones and Alison Steadman also had roles, and Jones was his co-writer. ‘I always thought it would be amazing if just one person said Gavin & Stacey was their favourite TV show,’ he says. ‘It ended up with five million viewers an episode. I’m so proud of it, and to have written it with Ruth, one of my best friends.’
Mathew Horne played the eponymous Gavin, an Essex boy in a long-distance love affair with the Welsh Stacey (Joanna Page), while Corden and Jones played the couple’s crass, chubby best friends, Smithy and Nessa. Wilfully suburban and unglamorous in tone, Gavin & Stacey revelled in being ‘real’. It won a bunch of awards, including the 2008 Bafta for Best Comedy Performance for Corden.
The character of Smithy was revived in well-received sketches for Sport Relief and Comic Relief, roping in cameos from Paul McCartney and Gordon Brown. (Corden promised he’d name his firstborn after the Beatle if he appeared in the sketch and so his son now goes by the name of Max McCartney Corden.)
Things began to sour in 2009 with comedy sketch show Horne and Corden. It was universally panned by critics (‘about as funny as credit default swaps’). The pair co-hosted the 2009 Brit Awards and peppered it with indulgent comedy sketches, which few found funny, and followed it up with starring roles in the dire Lesbian Vampire Killers, which The Observer‘s Philip French proclaimed ‘the worst movie of the year’.
‘The truth is that the work I was doing at the time just wasn’t good enough,’ says Corden. ‘I saw again the Brits that I presented with Matt and I was cringing. Lesbian Vampire Killers was nowhere near good enough. But I’m not the first person who has ever been in a bad film. And I’m no more responsible for it not being very good than I am for the play I’m in now being perceived as brilliant. I took a chance.
I wasn’t going out of my way to make bad work.’
He regards accepting the offer of a TV sketch show with Horne as a rookie mistake. ‘To form a duo, you’ve got to pay your dues. What we should have done is spend a year working on it, taken it to Edinburgh for a month and really found out how to position ourselves as a double act. But it’s easy to say that in hindsight.’ (When I ask whether he still hangs out with Horne, he offers: ‘We speak.’)
Corden, who grew up in suburban High Wycombe and loved the attention that acting brought him, admits that he let the first rush of fame go to his head. ‘I had an intoxicating time. If you’re not rooted to the people who know and love you best, if you for whatever reason cut your ties with people who have been really significant in your life, then you get a bit lost.’
When he came out of a relationship with the actress Sheridan Smith – who had played a supporting role in Gavin & Stacey as Smithy’s sister – he consoled himself with a lifestyle of bar-hopping and one-night stands. ‘I’d go out and get drunk or end up in bed with different people. I did things that a lot of people would do at the end of a relationship, but it coincided with the very moment that I became a little famous. I wasn’t behaving in a way that I was proud of. If I were able to go back and meet me three and a half years ago, I would probably think that I was a bit of a dick. I know why – it was because I was feeling lost and heartbroken. But those aren’t excuses; they’re just reasons.’
Alan Bennett wrote him a postcard telling him to keep his chin up; close family and friends rallied round. ‘I went through quite a turbulent relationship and experienced a tough time, but I’m kind of grateful for that because I feel very confident that I won’t make those mistakes again. There was no snap moment when I felt better, but what helped was staying in – that’s the truth. I realised at the age of 29 or 30 that I’d never really stayed in on my own before, ever. I was so used to just going out all the time. When you’re on your own and lie in the silence of your flat, it’s weird until you get used to it.’
Corden hosted the Brits again the following year (‘and some people actually thought I was quite good’), and will do so again in February 2012. At the same time as starring in One Man, Two Guvnors, he’s creating a new TV show, and various bits of coloured card bearing marker-pen scrawls of character names and locations are tacked onto his dressing-room wall. ‘At the moment,’ he says, ‘I’m writing with my friend Mathew Baynton a six-part comedy-thriller series for BBC Two called The Wrong Man’s. We’ll shoot it when we get back from New York. Fingers crossed it will go well. You just never know how things will go.’
So will he miss his drinking buddies when he’s back in the States for the second Broadway run of his career? Not at all, he says. These days, his priorities have changed – and this time, he’ll be going with his partner and baby instead. ‘I couldn’t go without them,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘It wouldn’t be any fun.’
One Man, Two Guvnors is at the Adelphi Theatre now; www.onemantwoguvnors.com
