Words: Anna Lord
Photography: John Stewardson
The term multi-talented is bandied about a lot, but after creating weird and wonderful theatre, appearing in EastEnders and teaming up with Peep Show’s Super Hans, 27-year-old Oliver Lansley certainly qualifies.
“It’s quite amusing, but very flattering,” is Oliver’s take on being officially dubbed multi-talented. As an actor, writer and director, he certainly boasts the necessary credentials. He started out performing on stage before setting up his own theatre company, Les Enfants Terribles.
“I always thought one of the great things about theatre was the fact that anyone could create it,” he explains. “Essentially, you just need a space to perform and an audience – unlike TV or film, which is pretty hard to create on your own.” The formation of the company inadvertently led him into playwriting: “Primarily because I couldn’t afford the rights to put on other people’s plays,” he shrugs.
The theatre of Les Enfants Terribles is at once magical, whimsical, sinister and grotesque. It has garnered comparisons to Tim Burton, Roald Dahl and Lewis Carroll. With their most recent production, The Terrible Infants, Oliver wanted to create “a show that makes adults feel like children.”
“The stories I remember from being a kid are the ones that scared, thrilled and excited me. I think storytelling – and to a certain extent, theatre – is about eliciting an emotional response. When creating something for children, you’re trying to work with bold emotions that they can relate to: fear and wonder. The combination of magical and sinister is a natural one, plus I think the things that tend to excite us the most also scare us a bit.”
As well as writing, directing and performing in his own creations, Oliver has substantial experience of acting on stage and screen elsewhere. He has appeared in Holby City, Doctors and EastEnders. “The thing about working on those shows,” he admits, “is that no matter what other work you do, your friends and family will never be quite as excited as they are by you being on EastEnders.”
A career highlight for Oliver was playing the lead role in Greek, a play written by his hero Steven Berkoff. “Steven’s always pushed his own creative vision,” reflects Oliver admiringly. “He has a bold voice, writes, directs, acts and is very accomplished at all of them.” He could just as easily be describing himself with that statement: Oliver Lansley feels like a young Berkoff in the making, with recently published play Immaculate no-doubt the first of many.
For the time being, Oliver is concentrating on his TV work. He’s busy developing Whites, a comedy for the BBC with Matt King [Super Hans from Peep Show], based on King’s experiences as a chef in a Michelin starred restaurant. And after filming a pilot back in 2006 for Channel 4, ITV2 picked up his comedy series about DJs, FM, co-written with actor and director Ian Curtis.
Being pitched as The Office meets Peep Show, the series stars Chris O’Dowd [The IT Crowd] and Kevin Bishop [Star Stories]. “We’re just finishing off the final scripts at the moment, and start shooting towards the end of November,” he can reveal. “It’ll go out in February: it’s a very exciting time at the moment.”
