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It’s Good to be working with David Tennant again, says Sharon Small-John Nathan-Entertainment – Metro
‘Some actors always have something up their sleeve. I’ve never been that like that. I never count my chickens.’
In Good, Sharon plays the stage wife of the Dr Who star, who plays a reluctant Nazi officer (Picture: Johan Persson)
Sharon Small is back in the West End in a big way, playing opposite David Tennant and Olivier-winning Elliot Levey. The three are starring in Good, C.P Taylor’s 1981 play set mostly in pre-war Germany about how perfectly decent people can end up committing atrocities.
It is not the first time Sharon has worked with Inside Man star Tennant. ‘We did a short film together called Bite. David was a postman who kept getting bitten,’ chuckles Sharon when we meet after a day’s rehearsals. ‘And a radio play a long time ago,’ she adds.
But this latest production is another level of collaboration with the former Dr Who star. Sharon plays Helen, wife of David’s John Halder, an academic who reluctantly joins the Nazis yet ends up as one of their stars, becoming a book-burning SS officer and one of the state’s mass murderers. It is the kind of politically charged play Sharon loves.
‘My family go: “Do not get her to talk about politics,”’ she says. ‘And then they go: “Oh no. Here she goes!”’
Sharon is probably a bigger star on TV than she is on stage. As Dr Brigitte Rayne in drama series Trust Me, Inspector Elisabeth Flynn in Law & Order and perhaps most famously of all Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, she is one of television’s toughest, most trustworthy officers of the law.
Sharon Small, pictured at the West End opening night of Good, has had TV and stage success but considers herself to be just a ‘jobbing actor’ (Picture: Dave Benett/Getty Images)
‘I have played a lot of coppers,’ she acknowledges. ‘But quite often that’s just because somebody sees you do something fairly well and go, “Oh, I know somebody who plays coppers.”’
Do I detect Sharon has had her fill of playing police officers?
‘It depends. I really enjoyed my time on London Kills,’ she says of her most recent police procedural, in which she plays Detective Sergeant Vivienne Cole. As the title suggests, the action takes place in London, the city where the Glasgow-born actor now lives with her two sons and partner Dan, a photographer. It was ‘fast to shoot, we had a lot of freedom and it didn’t feel formulaic,’ she says.
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Despite such starring roles, Sharon describes herself as a ‘jobbing actor’. ‘People in the street say: “You’re so busy!” But I’m really not,’ she laughs. ‘Some actors always have something up their sleeve. I’ve never been that like that. I never count my chickens.’
David Tennant, with Elliott Levey, left, plays an academic who reluctantly joins the Nazis yet ends up as one of the state’s mass murderers (Picture: Johan Persson)
Still, for the moment Sharon is feeling ‘really quite blessed with [appearing in] two plays in a row’. Before Good there was The Trials, a no less political play that imagined future courts in which ordinary people of today are tried by future generations for not doing enough to prevent global warming.
Sharon’s character is a former oil executive with a moral compass, who doesn’t want to use up the planet’s dwindling resources.
‘When I was younger, I didn’t want children for that very reason. I knew it was going to be a tough future. I wish there was a Star Wars Federation that looked over the planet and said: “We can fix this if we all work together,”’ she says, smiling ruefully at her childlike optimism.
Set in pre-war Germany, Good explores how decent people can end up committing atrocities (Picture: Johan Persson)
That sense of deeply rooted social justice perhaps goes all the way back to Sharon’s childhood. In her early years, she was raised mostly by her mother as there was ‘not really a dad in the picture’.
‘There was no money for anything,’ says Sharon. She recalls how her Mum, who died last year, once apologised to Sharon for how quickly she had to learn that requests for ballet or acting lessons were never going to be answered with a ‘yes’.
Sharon is forever thankful for the grant she received to attend the Adam Smith centre in Kirkcaldy – ‘there are tonnes of children who never get that opportunity’ – where alumni also include Ewan McGregor, Shirley Henderson and Dougray Scott. Was her mum proud of her?
‘She said: “Well done!” But she didn’t really ever understand the job,’ says Sharon. ‘She would say: “I would just rather you lived around the corner!”’
Good is at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, until Dec 24, goodtheplay.com
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