Actor Cavan Clarke spoke to David Hennessy about starring in the first London production of Brigadoon in more than 35 years.
Cavan Clarke is a London-based actor from Ballygally, Co. Antrim.
His theatre credits include Small Island, My Country and The Plough and the Stars all at the National Theatre in London, The Cherry Orchard at The Young Vic and Romeo and Juliet at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre while his screen credits include Netflix’s Bridgerton and Apple TV’s Franklin.
He returns to the London stage and Regents Park this week in Brigadoon.
Brigadoon is a musical with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe (My Fair Lady, Camelot and Gigi).
Not seen in London for more than 35 years, this is a new adaptation by acclaimed Scottish playwright Rona Munro and directed and choreographed by Drew McOnie.
The production is the final production Drew’s inaugural season as Artistic Director of Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, and marks his directorial debut in the role.
The story centres around WW2 fighter pilots Tommy and Jeff, played by Clarke, who having crash landed in the Highlands of Scotland, are searching for a way home.
However just beyond the hills, sisters Fiona and Jean are preparing for a wedding.
Over the course of one chance day in the dreamlike village of Brigadoon, their stories entwine.
Cavan told The Irish World: “I think it has the potential to be a really special show.
“Coming in not knowing anything about it and then sort of stumbling into what has become like a dream role that I didn’t know existed last year is really exciting.
“I think all the right people are in the room and sometimes that magic just comes together and creates something that’s special and this feels like there really is a potential for that to be it so I just hope people come see it and enjoy it.”
Of course, this isn’t your first time at Regents Park Open Air Theatre..
“I love this place.
“It’s magic and you forgot how much it is until you’re back in it.
“It’s sort of surreal that in the middle of London, there’s this little theatre oasis.”
It’s a magic venue which makes it apt for such a magic show..
“It’s perfect.
“I didn’t really know Brigadoon at all before getting the call about it.
“It was just very easy to imagine right from the off this mythical story set in the middle of the Highlands in a sort of wilderness in the middle of this park surrounded by the trees- It’s just kind of perfect.”
You weren’t familiar with it at all?
“Not, not at all.
“I remember as a kid hearing stories of Tír na nÓg and those sort of old myths in Ireland tie into the same sort of cultural background too.
“But I did not know it at all.
“And this is also my first musical so it’s sort of a new world for me too in that respect.”
What was your reaction to first reading it then? How did it first strike you?
“I remember getting sucked into the idea.
“It felt like it is something from a different time but in a way that really excited me.
“It feels like a world away and it felt like stepping into a different time.
“A musical on that scale is really sort of exciting to be in the middle of.”
So how does it feel being part of your first musical?
“I have to say I have a gift of a part in this.
“I have always adored musicals but I sing in the sense of, put me in the corner of a pub behind a guitar and if everybody’s pissed, I sound fantastic.
“Singing eight shows a week belting them out is not really what I’m built for.
“I’ve managed to get myself in a musical with a character that’s in it the whole way through from start to finish that doesn’t sing a note.
“I just feel so lucky that I sometimes feel like I’ve won a prize.
“I’m just looking around at these incredible artists around me belting out beautiful numbers and doing the most incredible choreography and being like, ‘How did I manage to get myself in the middle of this?’”
Tell us about your character of Jeff..
“There’s a sort of odd parallel that’s come out of this whereas me, as Cavan, has found himself in a musical which is a world he doesn’t really understand.
“And to some degree, the mythical world of Brigadoon, the magic of that world, people’s ability to express themselves so openly through song and through dance- Jeff, as a character, doesn’t really have access to that because he’s a little repressed and he’s dealing with some stuff that becomes apparent throughout the play.
“It’s really lovely to sort of feel slightly outside of the world as me but also as the character.
“I just think he has a very open and honest heart and a great, great love for Tommy, for his friend and they’ve been through a lot.
“I was just so attached to this journey that’s someone trying to find their self or their expression.
“They’re sort of trying to find the truth in their own expression.”
They are World War II pilots and they crash land and that is when they find this magic, isn’t that right?
“Yeah, that’s it.
“In the original version I think they’re both just on a hunting trip and Rona Munro has sort of reframed it with this new adaptation, just added so many more layers to it and so much more time pressure and so much more danger which is in that situation.
“They’ve already been through quite a lot right from the top of the play so then when they sort of stumble into this village and everything else pretty much takes place as it does in the original story but from a slightly different context which just gives us so much richer stuff to dig into which has just been a treat.”
And themes of love and magic and home are timeless anyway, aren’t they?
“Yeah, we have great outpourings of love and we have grief, and we have expressions of heartbreak, it’s all there.
“In another 100 years’ time, humans are going to be feeling all those same things.
“We’ve really found a bit of depth with that that I’m really excited for people to see because I think it might surprise them.
“I think on the face of it it could look like, ‘Oh, let’s have a jolly day out at the theatre’ but I’m hoping that it catches people off guard and maybe sort of hits them a little deeper than they’re expecting.”
Is there a meaningful message about home in there? Tom and Jeff are trying to get home, they say you can never go home once you leave..
“I think so.
“I guess for these boys, even when they’ve left home and they come back, they’re so irrevocably changed that it’s never the same.
“They’re never going back to what was there before.
“I think all these things come in and out of it.
“We have so many lovely Scottish actors in this version and what it means to them is different.
“We’ve also tied in a lot of Scottish Gaelic in it.
“Hearing the Gaelic takes me to remembering my grandad speaking Gaelic to me when I was a kid and those ties into home as well.
“There’s something sort of in it that’s deeper than I can even explain that is making me home sick and I’m not from Scotland but I think that that’s the good old Irish thing of home is always home.
“I think the original production was a love letter to Scotland but from Americans who possibly hadn’t been or knew that much about it which means to some of the Scottish people watching, it feels a bit twee.
“It feels a bit like when you’re watching an American film set in Ireland and you’re like, ‘I have never heard anybody talk or be like that’.
“So I think we’ve managed to find a way around where Rona has added in a bit of the Gaelic and a bit of the lore and it feels really embedded in Scotland now, which is lovely.”
When did you know you wanted to act? Was it a case of finding your place in drama class in school?
“It was a bit but I think I probably got into drama at school to get me out of doing French and maths.
“I remember really enjoying drama.
“It was the last time I did a musical which was also written by Lerner and Loewe.
“It was My Fair Lady and I was 15.
“I remember the first night getting to the end of the show and sort of feeling kind of electric that it went down well.
“Once you’re on stage, you can sort of think a little bit faster and it sort of feels like a halfway between being terrified and also having a superpower.
“I remember I had never found that sort of adrenaline before and being like, ‘Oh, this is nice. I’d quite like a bit more of this’.
“I think from there, the door was just like it was peaked open and Una, my drama teacher, was a great one for sort of going, ‘You know maybe if you’re finding something in this, you should look into it…’
“And that led to a couple of am dram companies in Belfast and working with a theatre company called Bruiser.
“And then it was meeting other people and they started talking about drama school.
“I was dead set to go to Uni and do either psychology or law which were my other two A levels.
“And then all of a sudden- I’m sure to the dismay of my parents- at 18 I was like, ‘I think I’m going to go to drama school’.
“But luckily, they were incredibly supportive and my mam was just like, ‘As long as you get your A levels and you have a backup, you can do what you like’.
“That was me, I was off then.
“I think once that door was sort of open, there was no going back really.”
So you came to London to train at the Rose Bruford. Being part of The Cherry Orchard at The Young Vic must be a stand out, is it?
“That one was special because that was my first professional job out of drama school.
“I did very little in it.
“I was a tiny little part but Katie Mitchell that was directing it has such a unique and superb way of working and also the rest of the cast were just the most amazing, really fantastic theatre actors so it was like the best lesson I’d ever had.
“It was the greatest education I could have asked for.”
In 2016 you were at the National as part of the cast for The Plough and the Stars..
“It felt like telling that story in the middle of London, it felt kind of special doing that job.
“It was kind of a magic time.
“We had a lot of fun.
“Tom Vaughan- Lawlor was brilliant.
“It was lovely.”
You were also in Small Island at the National based on Andrea Levy’s novel of the same name..
“I think for the rest of my life, that will be a very special job because of how it came together and the story we were telling.
“Andrea Levy, that wrote the book, had been quite active in the workshops that sort of preceded it and then when it came around to our first day of rehearsals, we’d lost her just maybe a couple of days before so it really galvanised the whole team, ‘We really have to do this story justice’.
“I think everybody came into that just really putting their whole heart into it and then some of the audiences that we had that had members of that Windrush generation, to come and see their story being told on that scale for the first time, was very special.
“It was quite a tough journey but in the end, it was such a brilliant team and I think that we all so believed in what that story was doing and who it was for that it was really, really special.”
An early screen role was Catch 22, the WWII TV series starring big names such as George Clooney who was also directing..
“That was a very interesting experience because that was both fascinatingly exciting and also slightly heartbreaking.
“It was a good lesson in the acting industry because I got cast in the role and then flown out to Sardinia for a week.
“There was lots of costume fittings, and filmed one scene on an airfield.
“George Clooney was there and I’m sort of going, ‘There’s George Clooney’, trying to stay cool.
“And all I had to do was walk to a plane and then there was about a month off.
“And then we were flown to a film studio in Rome.
“I was there and I had all the gear on, I was ready to go and then someone popped their head around the door and said, ‘We’ve just cut this scene so we’re not going to film it’.
“So I only filmed one tiny part of it and then the big, sort of quite dramatic scene that was prepared got cut.
“So that was a good life lesson to how harsh this industry can be especially in the film and TV world.”
You acted with Michael Douglas and Daniel Mays in the historical series, Franklin..
“That was great.
“I was playing Jonathan Loring Austin which was another fascinating day.
“I was in Paris for the day and it was very, very early in the morning.
“I had to deliver quite big news to Michael Douglas but I remember it was about four o’clock and I was still half asleep.
“I was standing there for a second and then this man walks up and goes, ‘Hi, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Michael’.
“And I was like, ‘Yes, you are’.
“And we had a couple of hours of just doing this little scene.
“Daniel Mays was lovely to chat to but also really funny, we kept nearly corpsing each other but we had Michael Douglas standing in between us.
“I was back eating beans on toast by dinnertime being like, ‘Did that happen? Was that real?’
“But it was a great day’s filming.”
Other screen credits for Cavan include the Netflix hit Bridgerton and Saoirse Ronan’s award-winning Blitz.
“The focus for the last couple of years was to do a bit more TV and film because I’d done so much theatre before.
“And now I’m like, ‘I really miss the stage’.
“That’s why I’m very, very glad to be back here again.
“I feel like I’m home.
“I think if I had the choice forever, it would be theatre for me.
“TV and film has its own amazing things about it but it was only actually coming back here and sitting in the middle of a rehearsal room again and everybody coming up with ideas and sort of making this thing in real time- There’s just nothing like it.
“And then when we do finally get to open every night’s different and whatever audience is there that night, they see something that nobody will sort of ever see again.
“I think it’s just really hard to beat as a feeling.”
What’s next?
“I’m consciously trying not to think about what’s next because I’m trying to just sit in enjoying being in the middle of this at the minute because it’s very easy to sort of wish it away and it’s already flying by.”
Brigadoon is at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre until 20 September 2025.
For more information and to book, click here.
