Interview

Paul Kieve

Paul Kieve, the official magic consultant to Guinness World Records, is the magical mastermind responsible for the gloriously gory murders that dominate the NT's Theatre of Blood. Paul Webb went to the South Bank to meet him....

This sounds like a spectacularly blood-drenched show! "It is, and I've taken the special effects further than before. Preview audiences have been gasping in shock, and I hope we have the same effect on press night. One woman, when she realised that I was part of the creative team, said to me that this wasn't normally her sort of thing - she'd come to please her husband - but that as far as the blood and gore went 'You have to laugh, don't you?' I think she meant nervous laughter, as the effects are more dramatic than I've ever created before."

Have you worked in the theatre for long? "About 14 years. I also work in ballet and opera and on film - as with the Harry Potter film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."

And you've been helping the Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe off-screen too? "Yes, he's actually a very keen, and very good, magician in real life, and I've enjoyed tutoring him in magic tricks and sleight of hand."

Speaking of films, had you seen Theatre of Blood before you were asked to work on the stage version? "No, but I naturally saw it once I'd been asked to work here at the National. One of the many attractive things about the film was its soundtrack, and Joby Talbot's music for the stage play is beautiful - I'd say it was worth coming to the National just for the music alone."

Paul gives me a quick peek at the set, on the stage of the Lyttleton. Designer Rae Smith has created a sumptuous but tattered old-fashioned proscenium arch, all gilt and scarlet, with a lion motif...

It's a wonderful frame to the set...Is the lion a reference to the lead character, Edward Lionheart? "Yes it's a great set and the lion works as a reference to him but actually it's meant to represent the MGM lion - they made the original film!"

How long have you been working on this show? "It's absorbed most of my energy for the past three months. And while I've been here I've discovered that David Bradley, who plays Henry IV in the Henry IV plays, is also a keen amateur magician."

How did you become a magician, and what brought you into the theatre? "I've been interested in magic since I was very small. My Mum used to be a child actress, and was always taking me to the theatre - I think I first saw Hamlet when I was 10. I didn't understand what was going on at all, but I'm glad I was exposed to theatre at such an early age. My first stage show as an illusionist was Ken Hill's production of The Invisible Man at Stratford East in 1991, when then went into the West End..."

I saw it - it was fabulous! "Thanks...it led to a lot of other work, and as my earlier magic act was itself very theatrical - lots of costumes, music, sets - it was a natural cross-over."

We're at Friday 13th. Theatre is full of superstitions - what about the world of magic? "I hadn't really thought of that! There aren't really any specifically magical superstitions that I'm aware of but there have been some very superstitious magicians, and there's one well-known story that illustrates that. There was a very famous magician called The Great Lafayette who had a dog he was very fond of, and he used to say he loved the dog far more than any person, and that he thought the dog brought him good luck. A week after his 'lucky' dog died he was appearing at the Empire Theatre in Edinburgh when it burned down, burning him and eleven company members to death. They created his remains - ironically - when they then discovered his body beneath what was left of the stage. He was known in real life as a great illusionist and it turned out they had cremated a double rather than him, so he carried on fooling the audience even when he was dead! When the real Lafayette was cremated they buried his ashes in a casket in the same grave as his dog, with his ashes between its paws."

Do you have a favourite theatre restaurant? "Two - Joe Allen's, and Andrew Edmunds in Lexington Street."

And how would you sum up Theatre of Blood? "It's exciting, it's gory - with an almost cartoon-like quality about the blood - and the script is wonderful. They've taken the screenplay and altered it so that all the action is inside an old theatre, and the various critics who fall victim to Edward Lionheart's Shakespearean revenges are sort of hypnotised by the theatricality of it all, as if they're taken over by a sense of the stage - which makes for gripping theatre. All my work is new, though of course like all magic tricks they have a pedigree, and as I said earlier they seem to be working very well in previews. Though the point of previews is to keep working on the show, and I've just come up with an even better way of getting the blood spurting across the stage!"

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By Paul Webb
Thursday May 12