In town with his one-man hit show “Being Shakespeare,” British actor Simon Callow took time out recently to recall his days at Queen’s University Belfast.
“I didn’t finish,” Callow told the Echo at the show’s opening-night party at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “After a year, I ran away to become an actor.
“I was studying English, but the idea was to do acting. I got scared when I saw how good people were, and I ran away.”
First, he did a stint in his student days as Micheál Mac Liammóir’s dresser, when the legendary actor was touring Ireland with his solo show “The Importance of Being Oscar.”
Callow, a prominent gay-rights advocate, later played that very role and went on to write a book about Oscar Wilde, one of several to his credit.
Although very well known in the UK for his theater and television roles, Callow is probably best known in the U.S. for his appearances in movies such as “Amadeus” (1984), “A Room With a View” (1985) and “Four Weddings and a Funeral” (1994).
The Catholic-raised and -educated actor jokingly referred to finally treading the boards at BAM, America’s oldest performing arts center, as “a benediction.” (He is a long-time patron of the choir at his alma mater, the London Oratory School.)
Callow’s critically acclaimed show ended its brief BAM run at the weekend after a long national tour and West End run in the UK.
The one thing “Being Shakespeare” does not get into is the possibility of him not being Shakespeare, that is the bard from Stratford-upon-Avon. The controversy over Shakespeare’s authenticity was ignited afresh with the release of the movie “Anonymous” last year.
Asked if the show’s creators had factored in revisionist theories, Callow gave a dismissive wave of his hand and said flatly, “We didn’t.”
He added: “Weirdly enough, I believe William Shakespeare was William Shakespeare.
“Jonathan Bate who wrote the play wrote a book called ‘The Genius of Shakespeare’ and he is an expert on Shakespeare,” he said.
The play shows how Shakespeare’s writing reflects events that occurred during his lifetime (1564-1616).
“People say: ‘we know so little about Shakespeare’ and we thought, well, let’s look at what we do know,” the 62-year-old Callow said. (This includes fun trivia, such as that Shakespeare invented the word “puking” and was one of the early contributors to the lawyer-joke genre.)
The fact that Shakespeare’s wife and children were illiterate doesn’t say much, Callow said, since, “most women and girls at the time were illiterate [his one son died young].
“His father certainly wasn’t illiterate. He was the mayor of Stratford,” he said, “and there are lots of documents that he wrote.”
