Regeneration starring Stephen Boxer is coming to Oxford Playhouse

‘It makes a wonderful change from having my eyes gouged out on stage every night,” Stephen Boxer chuckles, when asked about his part in Pat Barker’s Regeneration.

That he is best known for his Shakespearian roles, recently completing a stint in Sam Mendes’ King Lear and the RSC’s Titus Andronicus, he is nonetheless delighted with the softer nuances of the WW1 drama, recently adapted for the stage and coming to Oxford’s Playhouse.

“Shakespeare uses so many muscles,” he continues, “but this gets the message across in a much more delicate way and I like the contrast.”

Instead, Stephen is revelling in the psychology of the WW1 play, a part he has been coveting since first reading the classic book. “When I came across Regeneration back in the 1990s, there was a spark at the back of my mind that I would love to play Rivers if the opportunity ever arose, so when the script for the play arrived on my doorstep I jumped at the opportunity.”

For those of you still in the dark, Regeneration is set in Craiglockhart War Hospital in 1917, and explores the relationship between shell-shocked poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon and army psychiatrist Dr William Rivers.

“Sassoon was protesting about the way the war was being conducted and in danger of being sent to prison or shot so instead they sent him to Craiglockhart as a mental patient. He feels he is a soldier but that the war was being conducted by idiots so his sense of duty is at cross purposes with his liberalism. So although it’s a very subtle play you have to be just as sharp, because this is about the consequences of war, and how to deal with it, and from Sassoon’s point of view he is an honourable man,” Stephen explains.

The 64 year-old’s character River has his own demon’s to fight: “Rivers’ dilemma is that he is so successful he regenerates his patients back to the front to become cannon fodder. There is a horrible electroshock treatment scene which was effective with mutism, a common form of shellshock, which meant they could then be sent back quicker. So while we don’t actually go to war in Regeneration there is a strong sense of what it was like.”

Coming back to Oxford will bring back all sorts of other memories for Stephen, a choir boy in New College Choir for four years between 1960-64 and a Magdalen College School scholarship pupil. “I had such an amazing education, singing while staring up at the Joshua Reynolds’ painted window in New College Chapel. Wasn’t I lucky?

“My parents were good lower-middle class and aspiring for their children. My mother grew up in a council house and took elocution lessons to become a telephone operator but she also produced the Cookham pantos every year which my father wrote, so I didn’t have to fight hard too get into my chosen profession and I’m very grateful for that.”

Singing was the young Stephen Boxer’s first priority though, so how did he choose between his love of music and theatre? “Opera was my first love, that’s what got me interested in the stage, but then I joined the National Youth Theatre and it was all about my voice until I realised it was much more interesting to explore human nature.

“That’s what I love about plays and drama and what keeps me hanging in there, because for me it’s not about being an extrovert, it’s about having something to say, and gives you a wonderful structure for expression, much easier than in life itself, because you are telling story, whether it’s a kitchen sink drama or Shakespeare.”

So he doesn’t mind that Wikipedia notes his role in TV’s soap Doctors above his thespian leads? “I don’t give a stuff. It’s fine by me. That’s what this business is about, it’s about being recognised, and besides I loved doing Doctors — we were like a little family and I like variety. If I was in it for the money I would have stayed there,” he adds.

So what is he in it for then? “Constant new stimulation. I have become a historical magpie really. The last time I was in Oxford I was in the play God and Stephen Hawking, so for six weeks I knew all about black holes and the sting theory. A play therefore about psychology during WW1, the Stazi 80s in Lear, or the father and son relationship in Titus, is all interesting, especially as a father with a son.”

Stephen lives in London with his wife, the playwright Tamsin Oglesby, and their two teenage children. So is there room for two artists in one house? “Two actors are more problematic I think. We are empathetic without being competitive and I’m lucky because Tamsin, as a playwright, can work from home, and manage the childcare when I’m away, albeit through gritted teeth sometimes.”

Tamsin was at Teddy Hall. Is that where they met? He laughs. “No she is 15 years younger than me. We met at The National when I was doing a four play stint in the ’90s.”

No wonder she was impressed. He laughs again: “Well, it took me until 40 to get to The National and the RSC so I’m a slowburner, one from the long haul school of progress.”

Shakespeare is the common theme throughout his career though? “Not really because in between I’ve done a lot of other stuff. For example I’m currently in the series Toast of London on Channel Four which is anarchic and unPC and I play an appallingly behaved art director, and a disgusting old rake,” he says with glee. “I can’t give too much away but put it this way my wife won’t be watching it,” he chuckles in delight. “So I really enjoy TV comedy. It’s much more fun swinging between the two.”

Not that his children will be following in Stephen’s shoes by the sounds of things. “They take absolutely no notice of me at all. My son is a runner in films and my daughter is far too busy partying — she’s 16. Although I asked if she wanted to come to the King Lear party, knowing there would be lots of famous people there, and she said she’d rather go to a party in Muswell Hill.” Did he mind? “I just thought ‘good for you’.”

Sounds like a chip off the old block after all.

Regeneration, a powerful anthem about World War One, comes to the Playhouse from Tuesday November 18 to Saturday November 22. Box Office on 01865 305305 or www.oxfordplayhouse.com