Just for the fun of it

Rhys Ifans and Desmond Barrit

10 April 2012

The one thing that keeps Rhys Ifans awake at night is the fear of unemployment. 'Seriously, I really worry about it. Or perhaps it's the prospect of being idle and bored that bothers me. Either way, I don't worry about much else beyond that.'

Except, perhaps, being introduced as the Welsh actor who shot to fame on the back of a pair of dirty underpants in the film Notting Hill. Ifans doesn't want to talk much about that whole episode - he's clearly sick to death of being asked what it was like to work with Julia Roberts - but it does look as though he's made a conscious decision to step away from the camera for a bit and concentrate on being known for something more.

Like many a Hollywood film actor before him, he's chosen to do so by starring in a West End play. At the Donmar, naturally. Although for Ifans - who admits that he's back in the theatre to give himself a bit of an MOT - there's more to this decision than canny careerism.

He opens as the Maniac in Robert Delamere's production of Dario Fo's Accidental Death Of An Anarchist - a play Ifans has held close to his heart since he was 14.

'I remember how these actors looked as though they were having a wonderful time on stage, as opposed to torturing their inner souls,' he says. 'I found it such a generous play to put in front of an audience, it's shaped how I feel about acting ever since.'

Ifans - who started out in youth theatre in Wales and had already built an impressive body of stage and film work before That Film radically increased his currency - has always been an actor for one reason only: to have fun.

He may have indulgently risked being typecast as a lanky comedy Brit thanks to the good, the bad and the terrible roles that came on the back of Notting Hill, from 51st State to Once Upon A Time In The Midlands. 'It's a world I know something about, that's why I did the films,' he says.

Yet, while Ifans is a natural comedian, he's not the indiscriminate one his CV sometimes suggests. 'Comedy is at its most effective when being subversive,' he says. 'It's the difference between an ordinary person slipping on a banana and a banker. Accidental Death is precisely that type of comedy: not only does it delight in mischief, but it makes people think.'

One of the most performed plays in the world, Accidental Death was inspired by the unexplained 'fall' of Giuseppe Pinelli from a window in 1969 while under police interrogation for his suspected role in a fatal bomb attack on a Milan bank. It was later revealed that neo-fascists were behind the bombing with the collusion of certain members of Italy's secret services; it's the institutionalised corruption of authority that Fo lampoons.

Ifans rebuffs any suggestion that the farce may have dated, pointing out that Fo has kept it alive by rejigging it many times since writing it, including a previously unperformed ending specifically for this production.

'There are corrupt police forces still throwing people out of windows all over the world - we just don't hear about it,' he says. 'And anyway, you can direct the satire in this play at any kind of institution. You have to have healthily subversive genes to enjoy doing this play - and I do.'

Ifans draws a parallel between this play and Twin Town - the Welsh film he appeared in early on alongside his brother Llyr Evans and which he describes as also having a robust disregard for authority.

That he clearly admires both works could suggest he's finally starting to take his own career seriously, or at least realising he can have a bit of choice over his roles. However, Ifans - not one for speculation - simply sees it as a way of reminding himself why he does what he does. 'Ultimately, it's a play about the joy of performing,' he says. 'It's as easy as that.'

Accidental Death Of An Anarchist, until April 19, Donmar Warehouse, Earlham Street WC2, tonight 7pm, otherwise Mon to Sat 7.30pm, £15 to £26. Tel: 020 7369 1732. Tube: Covent Garden

The top five... Political satires on stage

Dario Fo used the suspicious death in custody of one of the men accused of bombing a bank as the jumping-off point for his hilarious satire. But he's not the only 20th-century playwright to find grim political realities an irresistible dramatic topic...

1. The Trial

Franz Kafka's novel of political and social paranoia was transformed for the stage by Steven Berkoff. The predicament of its bewildered anti-hero, desperate for forgiveness despite being ignorant of his crimes, still resonates today.

2. Feelgood

Satirist, former Gordon Brown speechwriter and staunch Old Labourite Alistair Beaton (pictured) deftly took the mickey out of our current government's obsession with spin in this contemporary satire.

3. Pravda

David Hare and Howard Brenton's portrayal of a ghastly newspaper owner, played by Anthony Hopkins, was a much-appreciated satire of the Thatcher years.

4. The Bedbug

Mayakovsky's sharp look at Soviet greed and corruption sees a moneygrubbing prole frozen in time for 50 years, at which point his parasitic nature, along with that of the bedbug frozen with him, becomes an object of scientific fascination.