De-Winter's tale: Poldark's Tristan Sturrock takes to the stage with Rebecca

When Tristan Sturrock isn’t striding around Cornwall’s cliffs in BBC’s Poldark, albeit with his clothes on, you can find him strutting the stage in Rebecca, the much acclaimed new production of the Daphne Du Maurier classic.

It means that when we come to talk, Tristan is rather tired, having been playing Mr De Winter since January and darting off to St Just sporadically for filming.

However, as both are gifts of parts, Poldark being re-commissioned, and Rebecca receiving rave reviews all over the country, Tristan knows he can’t complain.

“Rebecca is a treasured novel and you can see that by the people who come to the show, people who are very, very big fans of the novel or film.” With Laurence Olivier famously starring as De Winter opposite Joan Fontaine, in the 1940 blockbuster, was he nervous about stepping into such revered shoes?

“No, because I was very open about playing De Winter. There was no point turning up with an inflexible character in my head, because you need to see what develops and evolves naturally.

“De Winter is a strange monster so I wanted to give him a lightness rather than a sternness, pretending that everything is fine, playing a lot of games.

“I felt there had to be a contrast, but he’s still Bluebeard more than anyone else.

“That’s how I play him, Bluebeard with all his secrets, but once his wife has entered the forbidden territory, everything changes. “Maxim De Winter starts as one thing and then turns into something completely different, so he’s a constant challenge to play,” says actor Tristan Sturrock. “He demonstrates all that worst things that money and wealth stand for.”

To keep the production from being too dark, Emma Rice, award-winning director of Kneehigh Theatre, has peppered it with layering and theatrical devices, little bursts of humour to balance the tension, music, animals, fishermen singing sea shanties and ghosts narrating; so there is a lot of jollity while staying true to Daphne Du Maurier’s text.

“It wasn’t easy to adapt because Rebecca is a very specific form of story-telling,” Tristan says. “It’s not just a ‘who dunnit’, so you have to keep the tension, sustain it, rein it in and keep it tight. Being set in the pre-Second World War years, there is a real sense of something impending, something bad, so it has some wonderful dark and Gothic nuances. The Cornish landscape is as condemning as the text.”

Being set in his home turf must help? “I’m much more at home on the Cornish Moors and the tin mines, the north coast where you feel the elemental force of nature, as that’s where I’m from so I’m aware of the setting.”

Which is exactly where the 48-year-old returns to film Poldark when the Rebecca cast get a few days off. “I have understudies for certain shows in case I need to sneak off for filming,” he explains.

He plays Zacky Martin in Poldark, a good honest village elder and miner, who could not be more opposite to the rich monster banker Maxim De Winter, if he tried. Filming up until the end of March, Tristan imagines that the next series will be screened in the autumn.

• Tristan Sturrock plays Maxim De Winter

“None of us had any idea how Poldark would be received. We thought it might be just a one-off but people really went for it and we were given the go-ahead for another series, so we are really going to town on it,” he says.

Cornwall is also where Tristan cut his acting teeth, enrolling at Falmouth to study sculpture before leaving to join Kneehigh Theatre aged 18. He has been with them ever since. “They got me on board originally to build things – sets, sound systems – it went from there really,” he recounts.

“It wasn’t like a job, it was just a group of mates living together in Cornwall, driving around in a transit van performing.

“It was more like street theatre, the modern day equivalent of rep, and I look back on those days with real fondness.

“It made me realise I liked acting. I went to the RSC, got an agent and it went from there.”

“The only downside is that it is so hectic. I have a wife and three kids in Bristol who I haven’t seen for a month, but that’s the nature of the job,” he accedes.

“I’m looking forward to Christmas as it’s the first chunk of time I can dedicate to them.”

What will he do? “Take the kids to a show. It will be good to watch someone else sweating on stage for a change.”

Rebecca 
Monday, November 16, to Saturday, November 21
Oxford Playhouse
01865 305305 or oxfordplayhouse.com