Douglas Hodge

Hodge has achieved success on stage in plays by Harold Pinter, including No Man's Land at the Comedy Theatre in February 1993; Moonlight at the Almeida Theatre in September 1993; A Kind of Alaska, The Lover and The Collection at the Donmar Warehouse in May 1998; as Jerry in Betrayal at the Royal National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre, in November 1998; and as Aston in The Caretaker at the Comedy Theatre in November 2000, co-starring Michael Gambon (Davies) and Rupert Graves (Mick), directed by Patrick Marber – for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award.

Hodge admired Pinter and has spoken and written very highly of the man and his work, and offered himself as a "birthday present" on his 70th birthday, among many other things offering "My own complete friendship, loyalty and thanks. Manners, civility, celerity, precision, class and clarity."[5]

As his directorial debut at the Oxford Playhouse in 2004 Hodge chose a double bill of The Dumb Waiter and Other Pieces (the 1957 one-act play plus six of Pinter's sketches). In 2015, Hodge made his debut as a Broadway director, helming a revival of Pinter's 1971 play Old Times. The production starred Clive Owen, Eve Best and Kelly Reilly. It opened at the American Airlines Theatre.

For the National Theatre in May 1994 Hodge played the title role in Phyllida Lloyd's Olivier Theatre staging of Shakespeare's Pericles; and Al' in Stephen Poliakoff's Blinded by the Sun directed by Ron Daniels at the Cottesloe Theatre in May 1997.

He played Leontes in an RSC revival of The Winter's Tale at the Roundhouse in April 2002.[6] Directed by Matthew Warchus, it was set in a world of film noir and country music, in a version of the play originally planned for American production. "Shaven-headed Hodge, a tyrannical Leontes chopping up the verse into tiny spiteful pieces, is a dead-ringer for Orson Welles, bald and fuming, in the penultimate reel of Citizen Kane – even when he comes on in flat cap and plus-fours as a Chicago heavy, dressed for a round of golf."[7]

In April 2003 he portrayed Andrei in Michael Blakemore's revival of Chekhov's Three Sisters at the Playhouse Theatre. The following year he made his Royal Court debut as Barry in Joe Penhall's study of entrapment journalism Dumb Show, directed by Terry Johnson, which opened in September 2004 to positive reviews, particularly for Hodge's performance as a television comedian whose career is on the skids.[8]

Hodge appeared in the 2005 revival of Guys and Dolls at the Piccadilly Theatre playing Nathan Detroit opposite Ewan McGregor playing Sky Masterson.[9] He received an Olivier Award nomination for his performance.

During the summer of 2006, he took the title role in a bloodstained revival of Titus Andronicus, at Shakespeare's Globe.[10][11] Simultaneously he was also making his West End directorial debut with See How They Run, a 1940s wartime farce by Philip King, preceded by a successful UK tour.[12] When his production opened in the West End Nancy Carroll took over from Hattie Morahan in the role of the vicar's young wife.[13]

In May 2007 he revealed a fine lyric tenor voice as Frank, the neurosurgeon in A Matter of Life and Death with the Kneehigh Theatre company at the National Theatre, a spectacular production with music, based on events in the film of the same name.[14] Also in 2007 he guest starred in the Doctor Who audio dramas Urban Myths and Son of the Dragon.

In 2008, Hodge starred as Albin in the hugely acclaimed London revival of La Cage aux Folles which played originally at the Menier Chocolate Factory.[15] He later reprised this role at the Playhouse Theatre in the West End to great critical acclaim and won the 2009 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

Maddy Costa noted in her Guardian profile of Hodge:

Before he became a bona fide actor, Douglas Hodge did impersonations of comedians and other famous people in working men's clubs, an act he once toured round NATO bases in Europe. There, he shared the stage with a troupe of dancing girls, the memory of which makes his blue eyes glitter. "The girls running off stage, with their fishnets and high heels and spidery eyelashes, chucking their clothes on the floor, the smell of them, the coarseness of it, was the sexiest thing." He pauses, frowns. "And now I'm backstage with the dancing girls doing all that."

The London production transferred to Broadway, opening on 18 April 2010 at the Longacre Theatre, with Hodge and Kelsey Grammer as Albin and Georges, respectively. Hodge won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for his performance.

A 2011 revival of John Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence at the Donmar Theatre, London, offered Hodge another challenging role, as Maitland, the lawyer in crisis. Critics were unanimous in praise of Hodge's portrayal, "a great actor doing complete justice to a dark masterpiece", but some found Osborne's characterisation overdrawn and unrealistic, a flaw that Hodge's "enormous" performance could not redeem.[16] Hodge received an Olivier Award nomination for his performance.

In 2012, Hodge headed back to Broadway when he starred as Cyrano de Bergerac in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of Cyrano de Bergerac which played a limited engagement at the American Airlines Theatre from 14 September 2012 – 25 November 2012.[17]

In October 2012, it was announced that Hodge had been cast as Willy Wonka in the new musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the Musical on the West End, which previewed on 18 May 2013 and opened on 25 June 2013 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane London.[18]

Hodge wrote a musical with Aschlin Ditta, temporarily called Meantime. Josefina Gabrielle, Denis Lawson and several others participated in a cast recording, and actors including Rory Kinnear, Indira Varma and Cillian Murphy participated in a reading of the book.[19]

He was commissioned to write a new musical for The Stable, a UK-based musical theatre company dedicated to bringing new works to the stage.[20]

He wrote the music and lyrics for the new musical 101 Dalmatians, based on the novel by Dodie Smith with a book by Zinnie Harris. It was due to open in May 2020 at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre before being postponed to the 2021 season, then subsequently cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The theatre stated it was hoping to announce new plans for the musical in due course.

He has parallel careers as a writer, director and composer, most recently directing Torch Song Trilogy at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2012.[21] He was Associate Director at the Donmar Theatre directing Dimetos in 2009,[22] Absurdia in 2007,[23] and running numerous readings and workshops for new and classic work.

He directed the world premiere of Last Easter by Bryony Lavery at Birmingham Repertory Theatre,[24] and See How They Run[25] which went straight to the West End after a sell-out tour.

Olivier Awards include 2012 Best Actor for Inadmissible Evidence[26] (nomination), 2009 Best Actor in a Musical for La Cage aux Folles[27] (winner), and 2006 Best Actor in a Musical for Guys and Dolls (nomination).[28] He was also nominated for Best Actor in the 2005 Evening Standard Awards for his role in Dumbshow at the Royal Court.[29]

Douglas starred as Albin in the Broadway transfer of La Cage aux Folles, for which his performance won him a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical,[30] a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical,[31] and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical.[32] He originally played the role in London in 2008 at the Menier Chocolate Factory and then at the Playhouse Theatre in the West End.[33]

With Peter Searles he co-wrote Pacha Mama's Blessing and Forest People, about the Amazon Rainforest, performed by the National Youth Theatre on BBC Television in 1989. Hodge received critical and popular acclaim in 1994 as Dr. Tertius Lydgate in the BBC's award-winning production Middlemarch, adapted by Andrew Davies from the novel by George Eliot and directed by Anthony Page. In the US it aired on Masterpiece Theatre in 1994.

His other TV appearances include leading roles in Behaving Badly (1989); Capital City (1989–1990); A Fatal Inversion (1992); Bliss (1995); Only Fools and Horses (1996) The Uninvited (1997); The Scold's Bridle (1998); Shockers: Dance (1999); The Law (2000); the BBC serial adaptation of Trollope's The Way We Live Now (2001), as Roger Carbury; The Russian Bride (2001); Red Cap (2003–2004);[34] Spooks (2005); ITV's 2007 adaptation of Mansfield Park, as Sir Thomas Bertram; and the made-for-TV film Lift, directed by James Hawes, a 2007 Hartswood Films production for BBC Four, as Paul Sykes, "a constantly exasperated, highly-strung middle-aged businessman with commitments.".[35]

In 2010, he appeared in the episode "The Restaurant" of the third series of the popular BBC sitcom Outnumbered as Brick Bolenger, an American therapist who is married to Auntie Angela (played by Samantha Bond). The character is involved in a story line of the fourth series in 2011, but never appears on screen. In 2012, Hodge had a prominent role in the BBC drama One Night, he appeared in the conspiracy thriller miniseries Secret State, and the ITV-1 drama The Town.

In 2016 he featured as Rex Mayhew in the BBC adaptation of John le Carré's The Night Manager. In 2017, he appeared in "Black Museum", an episode of the anthology series Black Mirror.[36] He appeared as Inspector Bartholomew Rusk in the series Penny Dreadful.[37]

As Doug Hodge, has released two albums of his own compositions: "Cowley Road Songs" in 2005,[38] and "Nightbus" in 2009.[39] He won the Stiles and Drewe 2012 Best New Song Award for his song 'Powercut' from "Meantime", the musical he co-wrote with Aschlin Ditta.[40]

"I've been writing songs all my life but — apart from the occasional girlfriend late at night — I'd never sung them to anyone. Then last year 2006 I finally started playing at various venues in and around Oxford. Each time I wrote a new song I'd go down the Ex [on Cowley Road] and sing it... Then rightback records asked me to record them. We went into the Blue Moon Studios in Banbury for just four days. This [Cowley Road Songs] is what we came out with..." – Douglas Hodge[41]