Pitcairn starring Naveed Khan is coming to Oxford Playhouse

Actor Naveed Khan was braving the elements in a tent when The Oxford Times caught up with him earlier in the run of Out of Joint’s tour with Richard Bean’s excellent new play Pitcairn.

Though markedly chilly in the night, it was, he said, easier than relying on buses to get him to performances at the Warwick Arts Centre on the not-easy-to-reach campus of Warwick University.

Family comforts await, however, next week when the 31-year-old finds himself back in his home city of Oxford for five days of performances at the Playhouse, his first time on the local stage. The seventh child of a one-time foreman at the Cowley car plant, who died more than 20 years ago, Naveed was brought up in Horspath Road, where his mother still lives. Educated at Oxford School in Glanville Road, he went to Oxford Brookes University to study architecture, following a career path taken by one of his brothers. After two years, however, he switched to the three-year performing arts and education course, only to decide, at its end, with a placement already fixed at a Witney school, that he actually wanted to do the thing rather than teach people about it.

“We were up at the Edinburgh Fringe doing a show,” he said, “and someone mentioned drama schools. I didn’t really know what one of these was, but I looked around and found there was one near home, the Oxford School of Drama, based in Woodstock. I applied and went on the two-year post-graduate course.”

A highlight of this was a series of performances of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the magical surroundings of Blenheim Palace, one on midsummer night itself. Naveed was surprised to find I well remembered his assertive portrayal of the fairy king Oberon.

The actor readily admits there were some toughish times in the years following his graduation. Such, of course, is the life of a thesp. Lately, however, things have taken a decided turn for the better. He will soon be seen in two films. One is Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming, concerning the life and struggles of a family in London, and the other is Survivor, an American spy thriller starring Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson. He plays a New York cabbie. And then there is Pitcairn, which has been for him an important six-month gig, which has already taken him to the Chichester Festival Theatre for a month and for three weeks at Shakespeare’s Globe. Both are co-producers of the play.

Throughout Naveed has been working closely with Out of Joint’s charismatic founder, the legendary director Max Stafford-Clark.

This, he says, has been an important formative experience, not least for his involvement in the fashioning for the stage of a new work, which over the years has been the focus of Max’s career.

On this occasion the piece has come from the pen of that prolific playwright Richard Bean, best known for his transformation of Carlo Goldoni’s A Servant of Two Masters into the National Theatre’s international hit One Man, Two Guvnors. His other successes have included England People Very Nice, also for the National, and the phone-hacking satire Great Britain, now running in the West End.

Despite the seriousness of Pitcairn’s theme, which concerns the transformation of a planned Utopia into something the very opposite, there is about it, says Naveed, a salty element of comedy. “You never quite forget,” he says, “that the writer used to be a stand-up comedian.”

The play deals with events that followed the mutiny on the Bounty and begins, says Richard, where the famous film ends.

Having seen, and much enjoyed, the production, I would advise that a little background knowledge is important for a full appreciation of the play. Though all becomes apparent during its progress, it is useful to know the situation at the beginning.

In a few words, Fletcher Christian and other of the Bounty’s crew have come to enjoy the life of ease and sexual freedom during five months moored off Tahiti while breadfruit seedlings are gathered in accordance with the expedition’s programme. Shipboard life resumes under Captain Bligh and its rigours precipitate the mutiny.

The mutineers, now controlling the ship, set Bligh and his followers adrift and return to Tahiti to pick up their women and a number of Polynesian men — one of whom is Khan Menalee, the part played by Naveed.

After nine months travelling the South Pacific they reach the small volcanic island of Pitcairn, which seems a perfect place to hide from the pursuing naval authorities, the more so once the giveaway Bounty is torched, an event which occurs early in the play.

What Fletcher Christian hopes will become a new Utopia for all involved rapidly starts to change in character as natural acquisitiveness, sexual jealousy and an unrecognised-at-first need for authority and religion begin to corrupt the community’s ideals.

Naveed points out, correctly, that the action becomes surprisingly violent, not least through the bloody activities in which his character becomes involved.

He also identifies a rather clever twist towards the end, which certainly took me by surprise when I saw the production.

Prospective audience members should note that there is a strong sexual element to the drama. “Partial nudity and scenes of a sexual nature” are mentioned, along with haze, on signs outside the theatre. These, I suppose, might be, for some, more of an allurement than a warning.

Pitcairn
Oxford Playhouse
Tuesday (November 11) to Saturday (November 15)
Call 01865 305305 or visit oxfordplayhouse.com