David Suchet: Poirot and More, A Retrospective visits the Theatre Royal Bath on 23^rd January for two performances. Hugh Montgomery chatted to Sir David before the nationwide tour begins this month.

It is a common misconception to assume actors are like the characters they play. However, David Suchet does admit to sharing a number of attributes with his most famous creation, Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. “I care about detail and he greatly cared about it [too]. I like symmetry, we’re very similar there… and the other similarity of course is that I’m the most difficult person I have to live with, because I’m a perfectionist, and so is he,” he notes wryly.

David last played Agatha Christie’s hero in 2013, hanging up his Homburg hat after a remarkable 70 TV adaptations for ITV. A decade on, he says he still misses Hercule very much indeed. “Personally and professionally, he changed my life, and I got to know him better than any other person that I’ve [come across]. And then I had to die as him, which was a very conflicting moment for me. Even as I’m saying it now, I can still feel the emotion of it.”

But while David will never play Poirot again, he is reunited with the great man and his “little grey cells” in an autobiographical stage show, which is touring the UK and will be a treat for David Suchet and Agatha Christie fans alike. Entitled David Suchet: Poirot and More, A Retrospective, it sees David being interviewed about his long and esteemed career, letting audiences into the secrets of how his Poirot came to be, as well as revisiting some of the great theatrical roles that made his name. The show has already had one successful UK tour, and because it prompted a flood of letters from people in areas where he didn’t perform asking him to visit, David and his producers have decided to stage another. “The thing that excites me [this time round] is that [many of the places we’re going to] I’ve never been,” he says. “This is going to be a whole new experience.”

Indeed, David has always been passionate about supporting regional theatre, stretching all the way back to when he started out as an actor performing around the UK in rep. Whenever David does a West End play, he says, he always asks the producer if they can do a four to six-week tour beforehand. “London is a great source of tourism and a great showcase for theatre. But we must never forget that England is a little country with lots of regions that have their own theatres, and they are just as important to their local communities as in the big cities.”

One of the sections of the show sees David offer a mini-Shakespearean masterclass, reciting speeches from Shakespeare characters he has played to demonstrate the Bard’s “highway code” of language. It was Shakespeare that really made David’s name in the 1970s when he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company: two big defining moments for him came in 1978 and 1981, when he played Caliban in The Tempest and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, respectively, both to much acclaim. Not everything was plain sailing from there, however: in the mid-1980s, he recalls having a blip when preparing to play Iago opposite Ben Kingsley as Othello. “I was getting very fed up with myself and my own [anxieties], thinking ‘how am I doing?’ And then I realised that an actor is there as much as anything else to serve the playwright, and try and be the spoke in the wheel that is their play. And as soon as I discovered that, I could then forget about myself. I had a reason for existing as an actor.”

Indeed that belief in serving the writer, above all else, carried through to his job as Poirot. He was intent on playing the detective as he imagined Agatha Christie would have wanted – that is, in an understated and serious-minded fashion. When he was first offered the part, he had doubts about taking it on, he says, mainly because he’d always seen Poirot “as a very lightweight character, which came from the [Poirot] films I’d seen.” But then when he started reading the novels themselves, he was “introduced to a character that I’d never seen portrayed… and [so] I decided I’d become the man that Agatha Christie describes in huge detail, for her and her millions of readers”.

In fact, after filming the first series, he confesses that he was worried that his performance was going to be seen as “boring”, because he wasn’t as flamboyant as Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney, who had played Poirot on the big screen. But what David was certain about, all the way through his time in the role, was that he never wanted his Poirot to be a figure of fun. “My main thing was not to be persuaded by certain directors that would come on board to change my interpretation to become more funny or silly or more entertaining. That was quite a struggle and quite a fight, to maintain the integrity [of the character].”

Since David stopped playing Poirot, Kenneth Branagh has taken the mantle on, starring as the private investigator in a number of big-budget Hollywood films – but David says he has deliberately refrained from watching them. “I made a decision very early on because with all the publicity that Ken was getting, I got journalist after journalist wanting to find out my opinion of him – and what they were looking for was my critical sense of [his depiction of] the character. And so I determined not to watch any of Ken’s Poirot, for the simple reason that I then have ‘no comment’.”

Now 77 years old, David is still broadening his career horizons – when we speak, he is, remarkably, making his panto debut playing Captain Hook in Peter Pan at the Bristol Hippodrome. It may seem an unlikely turn for such a great classical actor but he decided to do it when approached, he says, because “I suddenly thought ‘if I don’t do it now, in my 54 years of acting, I will never have done a pantomime – I’ve got to say yes!’” And, after years of giving nuanced, finely-detailed performances, he’s found the whole experience a great release. “I’m the biggest ham you can ever imagine. I’m melodramatic in every way that I’ve never allowed myself to be [before], I’m having a ball!” he laughs.

Another recent life highlight came in 2022 when he received a knighthood from Prince William for his services to drama and charity. “To receive it on the day, I can’t tell you … it was the most humbling experience of my life. I never expected it, and I feel very honoured and privileged to be a knight in my profession. I never use it on a personal level, but if I can use it to enhance charity work or even the theatre [industry], then it’s a great privilege.”

As for the future, David says that he is “calming down” theatrically: “I’m still getting some lovely offers, but I don’t want to do any more big long runs. I want to spend more time with the family, and I’m having more difficulty learning my lines as we all do [when we get older].” However, with various TV projects mooted, he certainly has no plans to retire: “I’m not going to use [that word] but I always say that I’ll stop working properly when the telephone stops ringing.” Which, in David’s case, seems a very far-fetched proposition indeed. 

David Suchet: Poirot and More, A Retrospective visits the Theatre Royal Bath on Tuesday 23^rd January, with performances at 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Tickets are on sale at the Theatre Royal Bath Box Office on 01225 448844 or book online at www.theatreroyal.org.uk

Photo credit: Ben Symons