From sketches to the screen to the stage: Wonderland hear from actor and comedian George Fouracres about his role in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.
From half a decade in one of Britain’s much loved sketch collectives, Daphne, George Fouracres has progressed into a multi-median polymath — as comfortable in a sitcom as on the stage. He’s shone in roles in various TV hits — from Drunk History: UK to Whisky Cavalier and recently HBO’s The Franchise — and brought his own flavour to Lloyd Webber in Flo & Joan’s One Man Musical on the West End.
In his latest role, Fouracres tackles the infamous role of Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Globe’s new production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. One of the playwright’s liveliest comedies, under navigation of Globe Associate Artistic Director Sean Holmes, the classic tale sees Fouracres’ character at centre stage, concocting a plan of seduction and deceit. It’s marvellously mischief.
Below, Wonderland hear from Fouracres — reflecting on his career to date and dissecting his current role.
Hey George! Talk us through your early acting memories — who provided inspiration for you?
Hello! Depends how early you mean. Disney villains mainly. I really vibed with Frollo, the all-singing, all-dancing repressed Catholic justice minister from The Hunchback of Notre Dame who burns Paris to the ground in his frenzied persecutions. That and SpiceWorld the Movie – more than anything, I wanted to be Richard E. Grant’s character Clifford. He just travelled around in a bus with the Spice Girls in glittery three piece suits getting into pop-based scrapes.
You rose to acclaim as part of the sketch group Daphne. How do you reflect on your time in the troupe? What do you think worked so well?
I loved it. I spent five years with my two best friends, all making each other laugh then doing it in front of audiences. These days we have nothing, and I mean nothing to do with each other. Last time I saw Phil Wang we walked past each other in the street, and he pretended not to see me until the very last minute, then he stuck his leg out and tripped me up. I went down like a sack of spuds and really grazed the palms of my hands. I asked him why he did that but he just stood there and started crying. I felt sorry for him but the crying got louder and louder and people started to stare, then it started being more sort of a screaming sound and I got scared, I’m not proud of it but I absolutely legged it. Jason Forbes I’ve only heard from once since he joined some cult out in Suffolk or Surrey or somewhere. He says it’s not a cult but when we last spoke he was calling me trying to sell me pay-as-you go minutes. I pointed out no-one uses those any more, I heard someone in the background hissing instructions at him and then he hung up.
You’ve got a wide-spanning filmography that sprawls from HBO’s The Franchise to Comedy Central’s Drunk History. Is there any particular role that stands out to you?
The Franchise was a joy that kept on joying, the scripts were so funny and the team behind it and on-camera were just the absolute best. I generally only pop up briefly in things feeding more established people the odd sensible line (not really my vibe in real life, I’m tremendously strange and awkward to talk to, learning to accept that as I get older) but that amazing American model of having the writers on-set and a more dynamic approach to improv and ad-libs meant that I got given more to do over the course of filming and it just got sillier and sillier. I think it’s mad that it didn’t get a second series. What a team that was!
Do you prefer the screen or the stage? What’s different about the two medians, and what remains the same?
I enjoy the GCSE essay question framing of this. [I laugh here, and Fouracres and I clink glasses, we are drinking Moscow mules together at his club, the name of which I am still not certain. Fouracres’ face, however, suddenly falls, and he looks ruminative, nearly dropping his mule in his distraction]. No really though, I can’t provide an academic answer to that, I have not the credentials. Performance is performance. Live performance is still the most electrifying experience you can get, and nothing will ever replace that, but I love that on screen you can pick up all the minute details of a person’s mannerisms, sounds and movements.
You recently starred in One Man Musical at Soho Theatre. How was that experience? What provoked you to take on the role?
Yes indeed, and more recently we were lucky enough to do a six week run of it at the Underbelly Boulevard Theatre, and a month-long run at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. ‘Provoked’ is, funnily enough, exactly the right word! I was approached by Nicola and Rosie Dempsey (aka musical comedy duo Flo & Joan) at a pub in Bloomsbury quite late on a Wednesday night; I’d been touring some of the museums with my uncle and we were just having a quick refresher before I walked him back to Euston station. I hadn’t met them before so it was a bit of a surprise when Nicola bowled straight up to me and shoved me. Not violently as such but she certainly put a bit of elbow grease into it. I was trying to apologise to the man behind me whose pint I’d just up-ended but Rosie kept shouting ‘I BET YOU WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO PLAY A PASTICHE OF A BILLIONAIRE COMPOSER IN A MUSICAL BY YOURSELF AT THE EDINBURGH FRINGE AND ANY OTHER CONSEQUENT VENUES, NATIONALLY OR INTERNATIONALLY, I BET YOU COULDN’T, YOU AIN’T GOT THE MOXY’. Well, that was like a red rag to a bull for me, and the rest, as they say, is history.
What’s it like playing Falstaff in front of 1500 people on the Globe stage?
It’s very humbling to be in such a legendary location in front of those legendary audiences doing your own version of a canon character like that. You know there’s been hundreds of Falstaffs before you and there’ll be hundreds after. It feels a bit like being a regeneration of Doctor Who – you’ll always have your moment but when the moment’s over your Falstaff evaporates into the universe; that huge crowd in that beautiful big circle grounds you in that moment and you get to share it with all of them. It’s a very very special experience.
How familiar were you with The Merry Wives of Windsor? What drew you to the show?
Not familiar at all, I only knew it from that 18th century painting of the two wives shoving Falstaff, who looks like a big grey frog-creature, into a basket full of dirty pants. This sounds like I’m joking but it’s genuinely true, the painting is by the Swiss draughtsman Henry Fuseli, and was done in 1792.
What excites you about the role of Falstaff? How are you digging into the crevices of his character?
I have been in love with the character of Sir John Falstaff as long as I have been in love with Shakespeare, which is to say since I watched the DVD of Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V aged 11. He is shameless, disastrous, joyful, hairy, full of love and pain (and booze), and has a relentless appetite for existence. I obviously never knew if I’d be lucky enough to play him, and would have to wait until my 50s or 60s for the chance to arise, so to do it at 34 is like being a kid in a candy store. He is my favourite Shakespearean character and while you can NEVER do that justice, being allowed to pretend to be him every day is like being a war dog let slip.
What is the biggest challenge of this current role?
Trying to embody someone with no shame and no repression. I am full of shame and repression. Sir John is a lovable rascal and a bully boy. I look like Mr Bean and behave like a nervous cat. I’ve also made a rod for my own back and made him speak with OP (‘original pronunciation’, i.e. the dialect of English spoken in the 16th century) so he sounds ancient and timeless even to the people of Windsor in the play (they are Elizabethan and he is medieval, something Shakespeare never explained and so neither have we), but I trained in early medieval languages and historical linguistics (didn’t go to drama school, as many of my harsher critics would say is pretty obvious), so while it’s hard it’s a big nerd-out treat for me.
What else is to come from you this year?
I’m really keen to legitimately complete my Pokédex on Pokémon: HeartGold Version on the Nintendo DS, but in order to do so I need Deoxys. Now, the only way to do that these days is to load the Aurora Ticket mystery event onto a GBA copy of FireRed/LeafGreen/Emerald version via R4 card using the dual-slot function on the DS, so you can catch Deoxys on Birth Island, then transfer him across to HeartGold using the Pal Park. However, you can only go to Birth Island once you’ve completed FireRed/LeafGreen/Emerald and obtained the National Dex. I can now announce that I do have a copy of FireRed, and I’m slogging my way through. I fully believe that by the end of the year I will have caught Deoxys and transferred him over to HeartGold. Does this mean I’ll have completed the 2010 Pokédex by 2026? You’ll just have to wait and see…also I’ll be in Cillian Murphy’s new film ‘Steve’ on Netflix.
