Nigel Goodall

As he explained, ‘It is a play that waits for the right actor to come along; it is a self-defining role. The Hamlet will be, to some extent who David is. At the same time, you have to have an actor who can be, as Ophelia describes him, “The poet, the soldier, the scholar.” You have to have someone who is all those things, someone who is charismatic and can be brutal and coarse, and can be witty, and moving, and can physically take on the demands of the part, not just the fighting, but the sheer length of the role. It’s the longest role in Shakespeare. And it needs someone who can give you something of those prismatic colours that the role contains.’

There was nothing remotely funny about Recovery, Tony Marchant’s moving drama about a family dealing with the aftermath of a horrible accident. It seems to be something a serious actor has to do – play someone with up-there problems. Hoffman’s done it, DiCaprio… as have lots of other major movie stars I can’t quite think of right now. Here, on a smaller scale, our own David Tennant (taking a break from the Tardis) is playing Alan, who’s been left with severe brain damage after being run over. He’s extremely good at it, totally convincing as the husk of his former self.

‘Our brain is our personality – if that gets knocked sideways, you become fundamentally different. You can’t imagine what it must be like to be married to someone who becomes a different human being.’
And it is that which is at the centre of Recovery. David as Alan is a husband and father whose personality is all but wiped out after a traffic accident, and with Sarah Parish as Tricia, the wife who must find new ways of loving the stranger sitting in her living room, it is an unsparing portrait of a family crisis.

the public like about David is his energy. He glitters on screen; there’s a vitality to him which undeniably works for the Doctor. On set we’re surrounded by props and monsters and explosions and things often go wrong. When they do, we say to each other, “Well, at least we’ve got David.” We put the camera on him and it just comes to Life.’

‘It’s fast, furious, funny and crazy. I don’t think it’s a Casanova that people will expect. He’s not a lounge lizard, a lothario or a lady’s man, he’s a livewire, a free spirit, and people become attracted to that. He’s almost an innocent, a puppy dog with all this energy and fizz about him.’

According to one review in the Liverpool Echo, ‘David Tennant is such a fine actor that if he chose to read the phone book on prime-time telly I’d probably tune in to watch.