John Partridge on becoming Hannibal Lecter for new stage production coming to Peterborough

Inhabiting the legendary Lecter is John Partridge, star of numerous West End shows and EastEnders. He now stars as Lecter opposite Mollie Gallagher (Coronation Street) as Clarice Starling in this must-see psychological thriller.

What did you think when you heard The Silence of the Lambs was coming to the stage?

John Partridge: When I first heard about it being put on, I thought, “Ooh, that would be fantastic!” Ahead of my audition, they very kindly sent me the script and told me to pick two scenes, so I said to my good friend [actress] Tamzin Outhwaite, “I need you to read with me”, and when she found out what it was, she said, “Oh my god!” I feel very lucky this has come my way.

Is it intimidating to take on Hannibal Lecter?

Partridge: I did wonder, “How do you do something that is so ingrained in pop culture?” I’m a child of the 70s, so when the film came out in 1991, I was one of those core Silence viewers. It lives in our zeitgeist. Then I read about Anthony Hopkins choosing three quite surprising inspirations for Lecter: Truman Capote, Katharine Hepburn, and the computer HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

That really gave me the freedom to do my own version of that process. My three are Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor, and John Malkovich. Lecter is intelligent, mocking and acerbic, but also serious and malevolent. Now, I try to forget any other version of Lecter and just put myself firmly in that cell.

How do you convey Lecter’s darkness?

Partridge: The very helpful thing is that most people know already who Hannibal Lecter is – and if you don’t, you can guess from me being in a glass box for the majority of the play that I must be an extremely terrible man! When I was first placed in the box, I thought, “Oh my goodness, how do I push my performance beyond it?” Then I realised that rather than trying to push, I have to pull the audience into the box. It also helped me get into Lecter’s headspace: how it feels for a man who has so much grace, who loves music and art, to be confined like that.

How does Lecter and Clarice’s dynamic translate to stage?

Partridge: It’s inherently theatrical. It’s like a dance: I invite her to dance with me. I love Mollie – she’s a good northern lass. We’ve got similar backgrounds, and we’re both instinctual actors. I didn’t go to drama school, and this is her first piece of theatre. I think that’s what makes our relationship on stage really fresh. It’s a very different dynamic from Anthony and Jodie [Foster]. We’ve also got a natural rapport. We’ve developed this tight tennis match between us, and hopefully, audiences will love seeing us try to score points off each other every night.

Which of the show’s ideas or themes have you found most interesting?

Partridge: There’s so much social commentary in this. It’s set in the 80s, when women were viewed very differently – or perhaps not, I’m actually not so sure half the time. If you look at American culture then and now, with Trump in power, in some ways, we’ve regressed. Our attitudes to lots of things, be it same-sex marriage, gay and trans rights, the rise of toxic masculinity, we’re actually not that far from the 1980s. As a gay man, I see my hard-earned freedoms rolled back every day.

We were talking in rehearsal about the attitudes of men and police officers at the time, the rampant misogyny, but look at where we are now with the likes of Andrew Tate. Or look at the gender pay gap, the glass ceiling that’s still there. It’s pretty sobering seeing where we’ve progressed and where we have so much more work to do. Weirdly, Lecter is a psychopath but not a misogynist. He treats Clarice seriously.

The one big change we’ve made in our production is with the Buffalo Bill [serial killer] character, who in the original believes himself to be transsexual and is seeking gender reassignment surgery. We do not need to be villainising our trans brothers and sisters in that way, and our story is much stronger for the changes we’ve made.

•Tickets are available from www.newtheatre-peterborough.com