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Those who have followed the career of the Welsh actor Michael Sheen might expect to encounter a chatty charmer, the “bare-footed buffoon” of his Twitter bio, a full-throated stage animal.
But when he meets Guardian Australia, “harried” is the word that springs to mind – a Sheen closer to the exaggerated version of himself he plays in the Covid lockdown TV hit Staged, not given to suffering fools. At one point I swear he rolled his eyes.
“It’s crunch week,” he says. “Very intense.”
Best known for his roles in The Queen, Good Omens and Masters of Sex, he meets me straight from a wig fitting for his role as Italian composer Antonio Salieri, in a new production of Peter Shaffer’s Tony award-winning play Amadeus at Sydney Opera House. He’s shaved his pandemic beard and is wearing jeans, sipping tea from a mug with his name stuck to it. His blue-brown-green eyes are shining. (He once said on Twitter that his eye colour changes “rather annoyingly.”)
“Crunch week” is the frantic rehearsal period leading up to a production’s first performance. This one has been made more crunchy than usual by the Christmas break, and an extra three days Sheen lost to a “really rough” stomach bug that also took down his partner, actor Anna Lundberg and three-year-old daughter Lyra; along with their six-month-old baby, the family are with Sheen for the season. They are not getting much sleep.
This should be a time of joy for Sheen: World Cup season for a fan whose love of the sport went viral last September, when he gave a rousing speech to the Welsh team. But due to the time difference, illness and new father duties, he says, “It’s the World Cup I’ve seen the least of.”
Perhaps they were “a bit mad” to come to Australia with a new baby at Christmas time – but it’s his first time in Australia, and Sheen couldn’t resist. “There might not be another opportunity and the children are young enough to travel,” he says, adding that Anna’s family are about to fly in from Sweden.
At least Sheen comes to Amadeus thoroughly grounded in its workings, having played the young Mozart in Sir Peter Hall’s staging nearly a quarter of a century ago. That production took him from the West End to Broadway and Los Angeles, and opened the doors to a film career that has included his flawless playing of British PM Tony Blair in The Queen, David Frost in Frost/Nixon (opposite Frank Langella, who played Salieri on Broadway in 1982) and the prestige TV series Masters of Sex. And let’s not forget Last Train to Christmas.
Sheen was 30 at the time; David Suchet played Salieri, the role Sheen steps into now.
“Peter [Hall] was an absolute legend. To get to know him a bit and listen to him talk about the play, that was so great,” says Sheen. “It was also my first time with the Old Vic and I just loved being a part of that. While we were on Broadway, Barry Humphries was doing his Dame Edna show. I saw him and I was absolutely blown away by the danger and the genius of it. He invited me to lunch, which was just lovely – and now Barry is here in Sydney and coming to see me again.”
Sheen remembers his Broadway and Los Angeles experiences fondly – mostly for their idiosyncrasies. For instance, on Broadway, “people clap you at the end of a speech, or clap you when you walk on stage after you’ve had a good review. The oddness of that!”
Playing Mozart remains the longest single theatre engagement of Sheen’s career. “It lasted about 18 months. It was quite hard going at times.” He played Mozart “like he had nuclear reactor inside him,” Sheen recalls. “It’s a positive creative force but it’s also destructive. He’s driven by it and has to try and keep up with it. All that scatological stuff he says, all the personality quirks, they are all coping mechanisms for someone being hurled through space at 1000 miles an hour.”
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Playing the older role is no cakewalk either. Salieri is the storyteller, the main focus. One monologue charting the rise and fall of Mozart runs for several pages.
“The play is very demanding and I’m not in the shape I used to be,” says Sheen, who is 53. “I’ve had two children in the last few years, and what with work and everything that’s happened with Covid, it’s been hard to do all the exercise you need to do. I remember David [Suchet] was going to the gym all the time, he was in really good shape. And I … am not!”
That said, this relatively short Sydney season will allow Sheen to let rip to some extent, he says.
“There is much more freedom to explore when you’re playing Salieri … there’s a lot more room to try things out.”
Directed by Craig Illott, the Opera House production features western Sydney actor Rahel Romahn, 28, as Mozart.
“The thing with Mozart is that he’s a mirror to Salieri,” says Sheen. “Before Mozart came along, Salieri considered himself a risk-taker, a pioneering creative artist. Mozart introduces colours he hadn’t known before, concepts he wasn’t aware of. Mozart is an artist. Salieri is someone who has had a career.”
Which is why, Sheen explains, “Salieri has to smash the mirror.”
Is it inevitable that artists lose touch with the creative spark as careers burgeon and responsibilities grow? Does making great art get harder as you grow older?
“I actually don’t think it’s about age, so much,” Sheen says. “We all start off with a sense of an ideal and what we would like to achieve and strive for. It’s about balancing your career and your life responsibilities, but staying true to your original impetus. Are you satisfying yourself creatively? Are you challenging yourself? Are you developing and getting better? I think anyone creative worth their salt is asking themselves that every day.
“When you work on this play, you explore those insecurities and fears, and I have them just like anyone else does. In any part you explore, you look for the bits you connect with and then you amplify them and splash about with them a bit, and that’s what brings the piece to life. It’s not comfortable, but I quite enjoy that. In the end, if you don’t want to explore those things, you shouldn’t play Salieri.”
