The joint RSC boss is on unstoppable form, making a blistering return to the stage with a 4:48 Psychosis performed in the small hours – and an Edward II that will be a ‘screw you’ to his school bullies
Daniel Evans, whose sparkling performances in Stephen Sondheim musicals have earned him two Olivier awards and a Tony nomination, has been meaning to get back on stage for some time. Chalk up the delay to little things such as running Sheffield Theatres for seven years, followed by another seven at the Chichester Festival theatre before being appointed co-artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company with Tamara Harvey in 2023. Aside from a spot of emergency understudying on the RSC’s queer musical western Cowbois, it has been 14 years since Evans acted on stage. Even during his award-laden early years, he would sometimes get home after a performance and think: “Is this it?”
The 51-year-old sitting in the corner of a London rehearsal room today is singing a different tune. “I had this need to act again,” Evans says. “And I can’t quite explain it.” He looks lean and taut, his head as smooth and shiny as a Belisha beacon. “I started losing my hair in my early 20s. I’ve been shaving it since I was 25.” Wait: he definitely had a healthy mop when he played Peter Pan at the National in 1997 opposite Ian McKellen as Captain Hook. “A wig,” he confides gently, as though breaking bad news to a delicate child.
That star-making turn came after the RSC had poached him during his final year at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, whisking him off to New York for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Now he is not only co-running the company but returning to acting as the king who insists on ruling alongside his male lover in Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II. There are some obvious differences between the RSC of his youth and now. Earlier this month, for instance, he was producing content for TikTok, to support £10 RSC tickets for 14-to-25-year-olds. “Day one of rehearsals we were filming the trailer,” he says. “Lots of snogging in the crypt at St Martin-in-the-Fields.”…
