Gregor Fisher is not, by his own admission, a particularly driven actor. “I think I was born naturally lazy,” he says. “I suspect that, if it weren’t for the occasional conversation with a bank manager saying ‘I think it’s time you banked with us as opposed to us banking with you’, I’d probably just be quite happy, living in France, pottering about in my potager and getting very excited when the onions or whatever come up.”
Nevertheless, here he is getting ready to return to the stage – for the first time in 25 years – in a new adaptation of the classic Argentinian play, La Nona – which has been given a decidedly Scottish makeover by the National Theatre of Scotland. In Yer Granny, Fisher plays the titular matriarch, a 100-year-old woman whose insatiable appetite for food threatens to literally eat her whole family out of house and home.
“I have a friend, Barbara Rafferty. She’s a theatre addict, a work addict – that’s what Barbara lives for,” says Fisher. “She phoned one day and said she was going to do this Argentinian play – she really sold it to me – and that there was a good part in it for me. ‘It’s not a huge gig Gregor, and it’ll be fun,’ she told me. ‘Will I get them to send you the script?’ Now I pointed out that it wasn’t within her gift; that, as far as I knew, she wasn’t the Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Scotland, but she’d been talking with the director who thought she’d be better placed to persuade me.”
Long story short, Fisher reluctantly agreed to read the script by Scottish writer Douglas Maxwell, and thought it might be good fun to do. “So I thought about it, which is highly unusual for me, for perhaps as many as five minutes. Then I phoned the director, Graham McLaren. I got the feeling he was rather surprised, not because it was me, but because somebody had phoned him back so quickly and there had been no debate about it – well, I thought it was good, so I was up for it. I knew there’d be no money in it, so I didn’t ask about that!”
Fisher’s the first to point out that it was the “whole package” which intrigued him. “On the face of it, it’s a riotous comedy, but it’s more than that,” he says. “It’s no accident that this play was the most popular ever in Argentina. What is it about? It’s so multi-layered; there’s little bits in it which could be interpreted in many different ways, and I think it’s particularly apposite to be doing it at a time of huge change and austerity.
“I think it’s a very relevant piece, and I think it’s a very accessible piece – I salute the National Theatre of Scotland for doing something that’s accessible to ordinary folk like me. People are going to turn up and have a good night in the theatre. And maybe it’ll give them something to talk about the next day, which is even better as far as I’m concerned.”
Another factor was the cast. “Maureen Beattie, I haven’t worked with for nigh on 30 years; in fact, Maureen got me my first job at Dundee Rep, in their Theatre and Education programme. I was at drama school at the time and Maureen, bless her, suggested to the then-director that I should join the company, so I left drama school half-way through my final year.”
Along with Beattie and Rafferty, Fisher has worked many times with fellow cast members Jonathan Watson and Brian Pettifer. “There’s a shorthand when you’re working with people like that,” he insists. “You don’t have to spend the first fortnight’s rehearsals getting to know people. I think we’re already at first base; we don’t have to struggle to get there. What’s not to like?”
For a man who now lives in France, though, perhaps there’s the Scottish weather? “What I love about coming back here is the honesty of the people that I come across in the street; it’s lovely,” Fisher says. “But I have to be perfectly blunt about this: I was up the West Coast seeing some friends yesterday and, with all the snow and the sleet, we came down Loch Lomond side – it was blizzards! What’s going on? It’s Easter, for goodness sake. British Summer Time?!”
Also, of course, there’s the touring. Yer Granny opens in Greenock’s Beacon Arts Centre at the end of May, before moving on to theatres in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Belfast and Dundee. Fisher, 62, certainly doesn’t plan to be living out of a suitcase for the duration.
“I’m now at the age where I don’t sleep on people’s floors, so I’ve organised myself pretty well. A very old friend – we’ve known each other since we were five or six – just happens to have a flat in Glasgow, so I’m staying there and most of the time I’ll just commute. We’ll have a car pool, I suspect, so it’ll be all the old farts in the car, travelling back and forwards.”
Fisher accepts that the only exception to this arrangement will be their time in Belfast, a city which he once visited many years ago. “I came out of the hotel in the morning, and heard this screaming shouting. I saw an armoured car coming along, and I thought: Should I duck? What’s going on here? Turns out it was some Scottish Regiment who had twigged me coming out of the hotel; they made my heart miss a beat, I’ll tell you that!”
Such recognition was all down, of course, to Fisher’s most iconic role, Rab C Nesbitt. Having first donned the string vest, braces and white headband for a Naked Video sketch broadcast in 1986, Rab’s most recent screen appearance was in January 2014. Is the “Govan philosopher” likely to return, though?
“Rab’s future has always had to do with a multitude of people, not least those at the BBC,” Fisher insists. “If they don’t commission it, it doesn’t happen. If Ian Patterson doesn’t write it, it doesn’t happen. If I said I didn’t want to do it, it doesn’t happen. If Colin Gilbert’s not free to produce and direct it, it doesn’t happen. It’s a collaborative thing, this show; it’s not a question of one person making a decision.
“I don’t know how precious Rab C Nesbitt is to the BBC – the BBC’s face changes daily, depending on who’s the head of this or that. But I know that it’s something that we each, in our own way — Colin, Ian, I, and all the rest of the cast – have an affection for and a certain amount of pride. So it wouldn’t be trotted out for the wrong reason. If there’s something to say, I’m sure Rab would say it; if there’s nothing to say at the minute, then he won’t be saying it. It’s as simple as that. Rab’s neither dead nor alive.”
So why does he think Rab still resonates with audiences after nearly 30 years? “My take on it — and I stress, it’s only my take on it – is that he is honest,” Fisher says. “What you see is genuinely what you get. He’s not in a good place. It’s not a good life that he has. But I think the joy of the man is how he tackles that, how he deals with it. There’s a good man there.
For the immediate future, though, Fisher’s focused on playing a 100 year old woman. Will he be “bulking up” for the role?
“No, I don’t think that’s an issue,” he laughs. “What I will be doing is finding a very large bra and filling it with broth mixture – it’s got peas and lentils and various other dried vegetables in it. If you put that in a very large bra, not only does it give you the shape, and work the lie that you are actually a woman, but it allows a tremendous amount of ‘movement’ – it has a life of its own, as 100 year old ladies’ chests seem to have!
Having once played Ma Broon in a Naked Video sketch, Fisher insists that the attraction of Yer Granny isn’t about being able to play in drag.
“Most of the things I’ve done in the last 20-odd years have been about my character; Yer Granny is a collaborative piece,” he insists. “That’s a genuine part of the attraction; this does not rise or fall on my shoulders. I am one part in the jigsaw, and I find that very settling. I don’t like lying awake at night thinking: I wonder if this will work? I wonder if I can jump this fence? I’m past all that.”
Not that he’s assuming an easy ride. “Make no mistake about this. With this cast we’ve got some real top-rate turns. And that’s nice. No question they’ll be keeping me on my toes, believe it!”
First published in the June 2015 issue of The Scots Magazine.
