BWW Interviews: THE LADYKILLERS' John Gordon Sinclair, Talking West End, Wimbledon And Andy Murray!

It's a sunny day in central London, and your author is spending her day running between interviews and watching the men's semi-finals at Wimbledon on the television.

Not so for actor John Gordon Sinclair. He's been in a rehearsal room for most of the week, and previewing The Ladykillers in the evening.

"I haven't seen any of the tennis this year," he says gloomily. "I only knew it had started because it started raining, and it always rains when Wimbledon starts."

He's missing the tennis in a good cause, though; Graham Linehan's adaptation of the classic Ealing comedy is back in London, at the Vaudeville Theatre.

"It's going really well," he enthuses. "It's a blast. In fact it's a bit of a corker - it's such a great show."

It's a stage adaptation that exaggerates the comic elements of its filmic source. "It's an Ealing comedy ramped up. The comedy is heightened. I watched the film before we started rehearsals, and it's very dark and melancholic. The show has kept that, it's still quite dark, and Mrs Wilberforce is a melancholic figure, so we hang on to that and ramp up the comedy. It's not just a chuckle - there are belly laughs.

"The thing that's good is it's a serious comedy, which is much more suited to my style of playing - it's quite real. If you try to be funny, you're not being funny. Sean Foley's direction is along those lines - play it for real, and the response from the audience is fantastic."

He's extremely complimentary of his colleagues, praising the "great comedy credentials" of Simon Day and Ralf Little as well as the cleverness of Con O'Neill, and the "great mix" of the company as a whole.

Meanwhile, as he dashes between rehearsals and shows, he's putting the final touches to his second novel, following the success of his debut 'Seventy Times Seven' last year, which he confesses received a response "better than any of us ever hoped".

And he'll be keeping his ears peeled for news from Wimbledon. "Let's hope Andy Murray gets to the final!" he concludes cheerily.

John Gordon Sinclair stars in The Ladykillers at the Vaudeville Theatre.

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