THE broadcaster and actor Zeb Soanes’s voice — the sound of the Radio 4 Shipping Forecast — is instantly familiar, but his beard is something of a surprise. He, too, is getting used to his new look. “I’m afraid I look a bit like a wolf, because I’ve had to grow everything to play Alec Guinness,” he says.
In a new production of the one-man play Two Halves of Guinness, Mr Soanes plays 34 characters, including figures in Guinness’s films, such as Professor Marcus in The Ladykillers, Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Fagin in Oliver Twist. Sir John Gielgud, Sir David Lean, and Dame Edith Evans are among the real-life characters he brings to the stage: “all of the other characters in his life, to help tell his life story”.
When we speak, Mr Soanes has just finished the first leg of Two Halves of Guinness at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, where the play sold out. It is proving a very busy time for the actor, as he was appointed an honorary lay canon of St Edmundsbury Cathedral at the end of last year, and Chancellor of Suffolk University in the autumn.
Mr Soanes had long wanted to perform Mark Burgess’s play about Guinness, but there was a period of waiting while the piece was being performed by others. Two big numbers helped the stars to align this year: the 25th anniversary of Guinness’s death, and Mr Soanes turning 50.
The actor’s connection to the legend of film and stage stretches back to when he was 17 and wrote to Guinness about training as an actor. Guinness responded with an encouraging reply. The note accompanied Mr Soanes to the University of East Anglia, where he studied drama. It was framed on his bedroom wall.
Owen Chad CoxZeb Soanes during his installation as an honorary lay canon of St Edmundsbury Cathedral
Mr Soanes observes that there are “many halves to Guinness”, not least his shyness, and conversion to Roman Catholicism. “The overarching thing is there’s a lot of sadness and searching in Guinness’s life. He never knew who his father was. His mother, if she knew, took his identity to the grave with her; so there was a great hole in his psyche and sense of himself.
“What we discover in the play is that he spends his life gaining his fame as a man of a thousand faces. But, by the end of the play, he realises that his unique selling point is actually that ‘nothingness’ that he struggled with all his life: it is what makes him a great actor. The structure of daily life at school was a very helpful framework for him. Then later, his faith, when he became a Roman Catholic, that provided further structure.”
As an actor, Mr Soanes says, “no matter how famous you are, there’s always the fear the jobs will dry up, the telephone won’t ring. So, there’s that going on in his mind, but also all of this other, more fundamental uncertainty about his origins. His faith was very important to him.”
EXPLAINING Guinness’s allure, Mr Soane says: “Guinness appealed to me because he was such an extraordinary character actor. There was a great volume of films that I could watch, and so many different characters that he was playing. Also, the more I learned about him — his quietness, his shyness — there was lots that drew me to him. What appealed was that he wasn’t an outwardly showy actor in the same way that Olivier or Gielgud were. There was something about Guinness’s acting that drew you in. In whichever role he was playing, there was a little secret that he was sharing with you.”
To research his hero, Mr Soanes spoke to the Roman Catholic writer Piers Paul Read, who wrote the authorised biography of Guinness. “He was a friend of Guinness, and was Guinness’s choice of biographer. To be able to sit down with Piers for a couple of hours in his garden, 25 years on since he wrote that biography, to be able to say to him, ‘Standing back from it, what did you choose to include? What didn’t you choose to include?’
“There was very little excluded. It’s a very candid, wonderful biography of Guinness. You get a rounded sense of the man. What he didn’t include was anything that might have been considered gossipy or unkind. In terms of describing Guinness as a man, it’s very helpful.”
Research also took Mr Soane to the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, in Mayfair where Guinness worshipped after he was received in 1954, having played a priest in the film The Detective. “I went to Farm Street Catholic Church last Sunday for mass. Because that’s where Alec Guinness worshipped, and I wanted to sit in the space where he used to worship, when he stayed at the Connaught [Hotel] in London.
“That was very helpful. I found that incredibly moving, being in that space, experiencing a different way of offering yourself to God, in very formal worship, and observing the way that people took the mass so deeply. I found it very touching.”
Faith has been part of Mr Soanes’s life since early on. His family have lived in Lowestoft for generations, and his father, an accountant, was a Methodist lay preacher before becoming a minister. As is the lot of clergy children, from an early age Mr Soanes was thrust into adult social situations, when his peers would have been able to escape back into their own world.
Danny KaanZeb Soanes in Two Halves of Guinness
“I was a very shy boy, but, paradoxically, wanted to be a performer, because I found confidence in being other people. I would get terribly shy if I was asked to be myself in front of people. Reading in church, I used to get terribly nervous, but that would have been my first experience of public speaking. And there’s nothing more addictive or rewarding than entertaining grown-ups when you’re a child.”
He describes life as part of a “large family” as “at least eight around the Christmas table. I used to put on little puppet shows and magic shows at Christmas; so I very much got the performing bug at home, and was encouraged. At church, we were always encouraged as children to sit with other members of the congregation; so we formed friendships with much older people. All my life, I’ve been very grateful for the friendships of older people. I’ve always been an old soul.”
DRAMA in Mr Soanes’s own life came out of the blue in April 2021, when he had a stroke. Turning his laptop around so that I can see the window in his Islington living room where he sat to get air, while waiting for the ambulance, the broadcaster likens the experience of a stroke as being a puppet with the strings cut. He describes it as a near-death experience.
“That really focuses the mind. In those ten minutes, when I sat just on this little window seat here, with the window open, trying to keep myself conscious whilst the ambulance arrived, breathing some fresh air, I had to make peace very quickly. It was terrifying, but I remember thinking very clearly: ‘I’ve had a wonderful life. I’m not ready to leave the party yet. There’s still much I would like to do, but if it’s now, if this is the moment, then it’s been wonderful,’ and I felt this tremendous feeling of gratitude, which I’m very grateful for. It’s wonderful to feel so thankful for life, and for all the kindness that’s been shown to me.
“But having come through that to the other side, it has galvanised me to want to do so many things: get on stage and do the Alec Guinness play, fulfil that life’s ambition. I raised money for a statue of Benjamin Britten, which was installed in Lowestoft last November. That campaign had started about six months before I had the stroke. I was determined to see that through, and had this sense of wanting to give back.”
Owen Chad CoxZeb Soanes is installed as an honorary lay canon of St Edmundsbury Cathedral
Being community-minded is a legacy of being brought up in a church community. By tradition, at Christmas, the Soanes family attend Corton Methodist Chapel, near Lowestoft, built by the Colman’s Mustard family. Mr Soane’s father preaches the sermon, and his mother plays hymns, by heart, on the organ. “She’s a hymn jukebox.”
In common with many performers, Mr Soanes’s schedule does not always align with regular Sunday church attendance, but he is a member of the congregation at St Peter’s, De Beauvoir Town, in the diocese of London. He describes the service for being installed as an honorary lay canon St Edmundsbury as very different from the Methodist services he grew up with. “I’m from a very low-church background. My installation was incredible. It was almost like a coronation. The singing was phenomenal. It’s a different way of doing things, but the message is the same. I do feel at home there in a different way.”
Describing his own faith as being centred on being kind and thoughtful to others, he draws a parallel with John Cleese’s views on spirituality, as expressed on Desert Island Discs. “He said, ‘I think the fundamental truth is so simple, that it gets bound up in hierarchy and pomp, that none of them quite hit the nail on the head, none of the denominations. It’s all about love.’”
Mr Soanes says that he can worship anywhere, but concludes: “My funeral, I expect, when it comes, will be a Methodist one.”
Two Halves of Guinness continues touring in February, March, and April.
twohalvesofguinness.com