Rupert appears in the second season of this popular TV show as Jack (the new Lord Featherington), looking absolutely fiiine in Regency clothes…
I can’t give much away about the plot without spoilers, so you’ll just have to watch for yourself! While the Featherington plots definitely play second fiddle to the Bridgerton plots, Rupert is in every episode, and does an excellent job as always.
You can catch Bridgerton on Netflix!
We’ve been absolutely blessed by the results of this photoshoot by Mark Cant on 10 March 2022 – with styling by Ellie Witt, and hair and makeup by Vanesa Miraglia. You can see more of Mark’s wonderful work on his website.
The following images are all captured from various articles, with the greatest respect but without permission.
Rupert returns as Cicero’s best friend Atticus in this audio play, a sequel to the multi-episode Cicero of 2018. This is a single story, and Atticus is much more involved throughout.
As I’ve come to expect from Big Finish, the quality of the storytelling and acting is excellent – and I have to admit it’s just so lovely to hear Rupert’s voice again.
You can purchase the audio files from the Big Finish website.
Rupert plays the role of Marcus in this new adaptation of the novel The Secret Garden, directed by Marc Munden. Colin Firth stars as Lord Archibald Craven and Julie Walters as Mrs Medlock.
Marcus is the main character Mary’s father, and we only see him during a few flashbacks, but Rupert is as charming as ever!
BBC Merlin fans will recognise one of the filming locations as Puzzlewood, as featured in the banner above.
Release of the film was significantly delayed, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. More info available on IMDB.com.
Screen captures used with the greatest respect but without permission.
Rupert appeared in the West End production of Dear Evan Hansen, as Larry Murphy, Zoe and Connor’s dad.
The production’s London home was the Noel Coward Theatre – with previews from 29 October 2019, and opening on 19 November.
The play shut down during the pandemic, but reopened on 26 October 2021. The production eventually closed for good on 22 October 2022.
This was wonderful for Rupert, as the Broadway production has been enthusiastically received, and won six Tony Awards in 2017, including Best Musical.
You might like to consider the book published by Nick Hern Books: Dear Evan Hansen: The Complete Book and Lyrics (West End edition). I’m not sure how much Rupert-related goodness is in there, but he did suggest to me that I keep an eye out for it. Though I’m sure he knows I’m a completist, so that might not be a general recommendation! Available from: Nick Hern Books.
5 stars from Alex Wood for WhatsOnStage: … The result is something quite extraordinary – a musical not like any other. … And its success depends entirely on its leading man. … Debutant Sam Tutty … wears a lot of the characters’ flaws on his cast-sporting sleeve, from nervous ticks to jaunted mannerisms and turbulent dialogue. It’s hard to appear simultaneously nervy while capable of holding the attention of 900 spectators, but it’s something Tutty manages adeptly – the sort of assurance you rarely get from a first timer. … But Tutty’s success comes while sitting on the shoulders of some titanic supporting performances … In a piece that spends a large portion of its runtime focussing on the anxieties of teens, it’s often the adults that steal the show – Rupert Young and Lauren Ward present a rich, textured relationship as Murphy’s parents … Dear Evan Hansen is a desperately powerful exploration of a troubled teen sacrificing the truth for a sense of comfort – startlingly relevant for a world swaddled in screens and fleeting fictions.
Rupert is the character Codename Lazar in this production of David Hare’s play Plenty, at the Chichester Festival Theatre from 7 to 29 June 2019. The director is Kate Hewitt, and Rachael Stirling plays the lead character Susan Traherne.
5 stars from Gary Naylor for Broadway World UK: Rachael Stirling holds the narrative together, her Susan frightened, ecstatic, cruel, seductive, charming and charmless. She’s never at ease, the old espionage agent’s compulsive desire to look over the shoulder of the person to whom one is speaking, both a literal and metaphorical compulsion.
Amongst the fine support, Yolanda Kettle shines as would-be artist Alice, the dilettante surrogate daughter, whose on-off emotional, sexual and financial dependency on Susan appeals to her fantasy of replaying the rescue scene in the forest over and over again.
4 stars from Michael Billington for The Guardian: Rachael Stirling is excellent in Kate Hewitt’s invigorating production of a play about individual and national unease.
4 stars from Ian Murray for WhatsOnStage: Some will no doubt see Plenty as a dissection of madness, yet it is more than that. It is the question of what someone will do to be truly free regardless of the consequences.
4 stars from Dominic Cavendish for The Telegraph (registration / paywall): Rachael Stirling triumphs as a fearless Bond-like figure in David Hare revival. …
Rachael Stirling gives us no cute, idealised portrait of bravery: the character’s trembling need kindles reciprocal ardour in Rupert Young’s insouciant-acting stranger (Code name Lazar); in their embrace lies the adrenal romance of wartime.
“The fact that you could meet someone for an hour or two and see the very best of them and then move on. Can you understand?” she [later] tells a diplomat called Brock …
Phil Hewitt for Chichester Observer: There are fine moments in Kate Hewitt’s revival, and she’s assembled a fine cast; but it’s difficult to believe that this is David Hare at his best or even a David Hare particularly worth revisiting.
2 stars from Dominic Maxwell for The Sunday Times (paywall): Meaty main role ends up overcooked in revival of modern classic.
Matt Merritt for The Portsmouth News: Rachael Stirling gives a fine performance in the leading role; building to eruptions of grief, purposely baiting Brock’s bosses over Suez. She’s never really served by the material though. It doesn’t help that some of her most important dialogue is thrown away as a recording to cover a scene change.
This, we’re told, is a modern classic. For the life of me I have no idea why and the hard work of the cast can do nothing to dissuade me.
4 stars from Tim Walker for The New European: On the surface, this is an incredibly stylish piece of theatre complete with great recreations of ambassadorial black tie dinner parties and parachute jumps into enemy territory. Nina Dunn’s video design is superb with its moody images of Stirling projected on to the walls, and, at the end, the whole stage opens up as much as the characters.
On a deeper level, it amounts to a timely full-blown exercise in psycho-analysis for the nation, and it asks a question pertinent to our times: what ultimately have we got, when we take away the occasional historic moments of unity and acts of heroism, to bind us all together? In short, who are we? I’m honestly not sure any more.
Rupert features as Binkum Fray in one of four episodes in Volume One of the new adventures of the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy).
The episode takes place during the 1940s, and while Rupert’s performance as Binkum Fray (aka the Lieutenant) is a great deal of fun, I’m afraid the character is a particularly benighted product of his time in terms of prejudices.
You can buy the CDs or downloads directly from Big Finish.
Rupert appears as James, a reporter, in the first episode of 6-part comedy-drama The Bisexual.
Alas, Rupert is only in a couple of scenes in the early parts of the episode. James is interviewing Leila (Desiree Akhavan) and Sadie (Maxine Peake) about their personal and professional relationships with each other.
The interview seems pleasant enough, but once James starts directing the photo shoot, things start getting a bit weird … and come to think of it, perhaps it’s just as well that we don’t see him again!
Leila does accuse him of being “so fucking pretty”, so obviously Rupert was cast for more than one reason!
Rupert stars as the Duke Orsino in this musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night. The adaptation was conceived by Kwame Kwei-Armah and Shaina Taub, with Taub writing the music and lyrics, and is co-directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah and Oskar Eustis. It is Kwei-Armah’s first offering as Artistic Director at the Young Vic Theatre.
The show runs from 2 October to 17 November 2018 at the Young Vic in London. More details and tickets available at the official website.
You can read an interesting interview with Gabrielle Brooks (Viola) by Kate Berrington, about the accessibility of Shakespeare, in the British Vogue, 14 October 2018.
The banner is from a production photo by Johan Persson, sourced on the Young Vic page on Facebook.
I’ve been lucky enough to see this play twice now, and I’ve loved it. I have to admit to being a bit wary the first time, as the reviews (quoted below) had led me to fear the play was Not Quite Shakespeare, and maybe there wouldn’t be enough Orsino, either. So I was very relieved to find that none of this was so.
The story we’re already familiar with from Shakespeare’s play was certainly compressed in this adaptation, but it was all in there. (And it’s not one of his longer plays, anyway.) The romance and comedy from the original was emphasised in this version, and the cruelty and pain featured less so, but again it was all there. Or maybe I just didn’t miss a lesser emphasis on the aspects of the play I find most challenging and/or problematic…?
Or maybe we feel the pain less because in this production Malvolio retains his self-love, his belief in his own intrinsic greatness, despite being so cruelly dealt with. I’ve seen productions which end things very bitterly, with Sir Toby’s marriage to Maria being foreshadowed as disastrous, Malvolio’s threat of revenge coming from a broken man, Feste alone, Andrew Aguecheek dismissed, and so on. This adaptation does not interpret the outcomes in such ways, and I don’t know that there’s any reason in the original text why it shouldn’t do so. Why not, instead, end with not only the main romances being properly aligned, but also with a joyous song including everyone in a renewed community, and Orsino and Antonio (formerly wartime enemies) shaking hands in a spirit of kindness and reconciliation…?
The themes of this show are love and joy, acceptance of others as they are, and having the courage to be one’s own full self. To find such subject matter in Twelfth Night is no stretch at all.
Much of the spoken dialogue came directly from Shakespeare, and the lyrics were often inspired by the original play as well. I can’t imagine Shakespeare himself being fastidious about such a joyous and accessible experience. He created popular entertainment, too, after all!
As for Rupert … oh, he does play a lover so very well! Orsino isn’t exactly the largest role in the original play. However, this adaptation focuses more on the confused triangle of love between Orsino, Olivia and Cesario/Viola, and so we are blessed with more Rupert than I’d feared! Alas, he is absent for a longish stretch in the latter parts of the play, but he has so much lovely stuff to do in the early parts and in the last scenes, that I can cope with that.
It’s not unexpected to find Rupert called “effortlessly charming” in reviews, including one reviewer this time who wondered why on earth Olivia was resisting him at all! But we know that love doesn’t work like that, or at least not in this play. It was sweet to watch Orsino feeling heart-wrenched by Olivia, but also responding despite himself to Cesario. Right from the start he’s noticing Cesario’s irresistible smile, and soon he’s returning it in kind. (This comes with extra frisson, as Brooks is the most convincing Cesario I’ve seen.) The love triangle is all very genuine, as is the resolution once Sebastian makes a fourth – which compares nicely to the irresponsible antics of Sir Toby’s crew, and to Malvolio’s self-important dramatics.
Everyone does an absolutely terrific job here, though my heart was mostly caught up by Rupert, Gabrielle Brooks (Cesario/Viola) and Natalie Dew (Olivia). There is lots of laughter and lots of energy along the way, and only one scene which left me a bit indifferent. The community chorus were superb, and it was great to see they were diverse in all kinds of ways – including age, with a few older characters. Inclusion is, self-evidently, the way to go!
So, it’s five stars and three cheers from me for the Young Vic and the artistic directions of Kwame Kwei-Armah!
Review Round-Up by Fergus Morgan, The Stage, 10 October 2018.
The first show by a new Artistic Director is an important indicator of what’s to come, a chance to establish the tone for the ensuing years with a memorable statement about the kind of theatre they want to make. In assuming responsibility for the Young Vic, a musical version of Twelfth Night may not be the obvious choice for an inaugural show but it’s community-based inclusive staging and strong equality message has Kwame Kwei-Armah setting-out his stall from the start. … This version of Twelfth Night is designed to engage the audience as much as possible beginning with barbecue food and interaction with some of the performers. Robert Jones’ cartoonish set juts-out into the audience guaranteeing everyone a good view, while maximum use is made of the auditorium’s exit points and staircases. They really want you to have a good time and with plenty of comic focus and a rousing love-in finale the feel-good factor is dialled-up to the max. … Gerard Carey may be the best Malvolio you’ve ever seen, utterly embodying Olivia’s taunt that “you are sick of self-love” and given the most astonishing tap routine with a hilarious interpretation of the yellow stockings segment. … Olivia (Natalie Drew) becomes amusingly beguiled by Cesario, an interaction played for comic effect which Drew sells superbly, but Orsino’s devotion is almost entirely serious and Rupert Young is charming as the heartbroken Duke aching with unrequited love. Brooks is equally enchanting as the suffering Viola in disguise, but the emphasis on the humour takes away from some of the pain of Shakespeare’s original, that fine balance between light and dark captured in the songs isn’t reflected in the storytelling as well as it could be. 3.5 stars from Maryam Philpott, The Reviews Hub, 12 October 2018
Rupert features as Atticus, in this series of audio plays focussed on “ambitious young lawyer” Cicero, and set amidst the politics, crimes and scandals of ancient Rome.
Unfortunately Atticus only appears in the last of the six episodes – which is particularly frustrating when most of the episodes are framed by Cicero’s letters to his BFF Atticus, who lives in Athens. The episodes are all well worth a listen, though, with some interesting stories told. Samuel Barnett is utterly charming as the main character, Marcus Tullius Cicero, finding a nice balance between naivety and wisdom. George Naylor as his brother Quintus Tullius Cicero, and Laura Riseborough as his wife Terentia, round out a superb main team. Which is not to say I wasn’t delighted to hear Atticus finally cry out a hearty greeting when the Cicero brothers go visit him in Athens!
And Rupert does a fine job with the character, of course. It doesn’t take us long to suspect there’s a lot more to Atticus than the expansive cheer and expensive estate.
The first episode of this series was recorded on 3 October 2016, at The Moat Studios. The remaining episodes were recorded on 18-22 September 2017, at The Soundhouse.
You can purchase the CD or audio files from the Big Finish website.
update 27 Jan 2023: I found this lovely casual shot of the Cicero cast!
