BWW Interviews: David Hunter Of THE HIRED MAN

Welcome to BWW:UK, David - you must be absolutely thrilled with the fantastic reviews you've been getting for The Hired Man.

It's been great. I don't think we expected it to be received perhaps quite so well - you can never know how your audience is going to react - but it's been wonderful.

Although The Hired Man isn't a new show, it's perhaps not the best-known, so it must be exciting for you to be able to put your stamp on a character.

Yes, it's quite rare to have a role like this, especially in musical theatre; it's unusual to be able to play a part that hasn't already been played several times before, so we approached it like a new text.

Did you know the show before?

I knew some of the music. Actually, a friend of mine from Warrington [Joe Maxwell] played the role when the show ran at the Landor Theatre at the Landor - um, I didn't see it, though, because I'm a terrible friend! Anyway, I spoke to him about it, and I spoke to the director of the Landor production [Andrew Keates]. He warned me to prepare for a comedown after the end of the run, and warned me that I might never have a role like this again soon, or perhaps ever - there's such a range of things to do, it's set over two decades, and you cover a huge range in the space of two hours, from singing to shouting to dancing to fighting.

I was going to say - you must have been exhausted by the time you finished rehearsals, even before you got as far as the performance.

It's the most challenging process I've ever been through. There's such a depth and scale of material, and all in a Cumbrian accent! There's so much to think about, and of course there's huge emotion in it as well. But there's only so much you can do in rehearsal, there's some things you can only access when you get to performance. So when we first got it on its feet, at a point where perhaps we were just hanging on to our lines at times, we were stunned at the reaction we got. It was a real boost to our confidence.

Do you find it difficult to leave your character at work, or do you find you take him home with you?

It's strange - when I was in One Man, Two Guvnors at The National Theatre, which is obviously a big comedy, backstage was quite serious. This is so serious, but we do mess about backstage! We have loads of silly games, and all sorts of tricks, some of which are completely disgusting and BWW:UK readers just won't want to know about them. I blame Mark Stobbart, who plays Isaac - he's the ringleader. We've got such a great company together and we have a huge amount of fun.

But you only have about a week and a half left at the Curve - the whispers are that there might be a future for this production in some form, but what's next for you?

Well, I'm auditioning at the moment, running up and down between Leicester and London. It's always a mad time at the end of a run, auditioning in the daytime then getting back for an evening show. We'll see.

Watch this space?

Yes, exactly!

David Hunter stars as John in The Hired Man at the Curve Theatre, Leicester, until April 27.