‘Why I’m playing Fagin in a yarmulke’

Nearly 30 years ago, Simon Lipkin’s parents Ruth and Matthew took their nine-year-old son to see Oliver! in the West End. It was a massive glittering production at the London Palladium and young Lipkin was entranced. He’d seen a role that instantly he was desperate to play. “Jonathan Pryce was Fagin. I was obsessed. Afterwards, my dad asked me if I wanted to play the Artful Dodger or Oliver. I said: ‘Neither. I want to play Fagin.’ I was such a weird kid. I’ve always been interested in those weird, dark, funny, heartbreaking parts,” says the now 38-year-old Lipkin, who is about to play his boyhood dream role at the Gielgud Theatre.

To be accurate, this is the second time he’s played it. At the tender age of 13 he took the role in the play at his Gants Hill secondary school. He had previously attended Ilford Jewish Primary School. By then, he was determined to become a professional performer and had persuaded his parents to let him go to Sylvia Young Theatre School. By the age of 20, he had already chalked up two West End credits in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and in the original cast of musical comedy Avenue Q.

“My parents were huge theatregoers” he says. “They still are. I live in central London and the only time I ever see them is when they call and say, ‘We’re in town watching a matinee. Are you around?’ They are obsessed! My mum used to go as a kid and as adult used watch every play going and Dad is a humongous musical fan and comedy lover. My mum used to work in television.”

His mother was a producer for Thames Television and worked on the infamous Today show with Bill Grundy when the Sex Pistols were guests and let rip a torrent of profanities live on air. “Her specific programmes were This Is Your Life and Today with Bill Grundy.

“Yeah. So, when the Pistols swore very famously, that was her fault,” says Lipkin “She fed the questions into Grundy’s ear from the gallery. She said that it was a very long night at work!”

His father, now retired, was a lawyer representing trade unions. Interestingly, one of Lipkins first on screen roles was in an election advert for the Tory party. “I was playing the youth of today, which meant I was like drug dealing and fighting and so at least in mine and my father’s heads I was rebelling against the Tory party!” he says laughing.

Lipkin has a younger brother David who works in banking. “I remember we used to go on drives if we were going to visit my grandparents or anything like that.

“We’d always play a tape of a musical in the car. So, I knew every word to every show before having seen it.

“I used to sit in the back of the car singing my heart out. I mean, my brother hated it. He is so supportive and sees everything I do and does enjoy the theatre but has very little interest really in it.”

Lipkin’s career has given him plenty of opportunity to sing those songs having appeared in everything from playing Nathan Detroit to Rebel Wilson’s Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls to Buddy in Elf the musical.

Now Fagin, a role that has “an elephant in the room”. Is it or is not antisemitic?

“I think not.” He says quite definitely; “I don’t think it is a tricky role. I think it’s quite a clean-cut. I just think it’s been made into something it isn’t.

“I think it was a role that was written in a time where people had a very clear perception of what they thought Jewish people were.

“Dickens himself changed the second edition of Oliver Twist. In the first, Fagin’s name is used a couple of times and then he’s just referred to as the Jew. In the second it was always Fagin.”

Indeed, Lipkin takes a very prosaic approach to the role.

“I have no problem with the fact that he’s a criminal, he loves money, he nurtures kids to go into a life of crime. He also happens to be Jewish. I think that that’s the big differentiation. He is Jewish but his life choices are his. There are plenty of non-Jewish people who are criminals.

“It’s like saying if he was a serial killer, you can’t make him Jewish. I celebrate his Jewishness without being overtly so.”

His Fagin does wear a yarmulke and what the audience won’t know is Lipkin has had it embroidered inside with his own Hebrew name, Shimon ben Mordechai. “He’s Jewish, he’ll wear a yarmulke, it’s who he is.”

In all honesty, Lipkin in person is not someone you would immediately think of as Fagin. Tall, tattooed – including one of the Star of David – with masses of long dark hair and certain youthful handsomeness that belies his 38 years. He recounts the tale of an incident that happened when the show was on its pre–West End run in Chichester. “Chichester is a lovely place, but it is it has a very specific demographic. I was in the lift in the apartment block where I was staying with this lady. I had just come back from the gym, so I was in like joggers and a T-shirt with my tattoos out. This very sweet lady said, ‘Which apartment are you working in?’ So, I said ‘Oh no I’m living here for the summer I’m working here and told her I was in Oliver!. She asked me what I was playing. I said, Fagin. ‘Fagin?’ she said, ‘No. you’re too far too handsome to be playing a Jew!’ And I said, ‘I’m Jewish’. She then said ‘So what do they do, do they give you the nose?

“If I would have said to her, ‘What you’re saying is horrible’, she would have been mortified. She didn’t know! She was a woman in her, I’m assuming late seventies. She had no idea that’s what you’re about. That is what you’re battling and when Jews are upset it is because they’re not battling the character they’re seeing, they’re battling the attitude of other people’s ignorance and what that personifies to an external community.”

All that aside, the production received rave reviews in Chichester, many lauding Lipkin’s performance with one critic saying “Lipkin has an extraordinary stage presence.”

Professionally fulfilled, Lipkin is also riding the crest of the wave of personal happiness having recently become engaged to Georgina Castle, daughter of British tennis ace Andrew Castle. Georgina is also a musical theatre actress and the two met when they were both in Elf in the West End. “I fell in love with Georgina during Elf. I was enthralled by her, but I thought this smart, attractive woman would never be interested in me. Halfway through the run, we had all gone for some food somewhere after a press thing. I said I might go see a show. She said she would come with me. That was our unofficial first date and we’ve never looked back.” Lipkin has said previously. The couple plan to marry next summer in a ceremony that will embrace both their backgrounds.

Along with acting, Lipkin is a member of the magician’s organisation the Magic Circle. “All of that comes from when I was a child. I was obsessed with Tommy Cooper so I would watch him doing these magic tricks and I think he’s making people laugh with them but also the magic is brilliant, he was a phenomenal magician.

“I just love any art form where you can embrace an audience. I didn’t realise this when I was younger, but magic is for people, right?”

We go back to discussing Fagin. His good friend Andy Nyman is starring as Max Bialystock in a revival of The Producers at the Menier Chocolate Factory. “What’s the difference between Fagin and Max Bialystock?” Lipkin asks.

“Max is a man obsessed with money, out for himself. He’s a Jewish, a Jewish man obsessed with money.

“It’s all self-deprecating. It’s just not based on an old book. The characters are not so different.” He adds finally: “It’s interesting, isn’t it? There are these big productions that are on in the West End. In the current climate in this country, there’s two very big shows that feature very big Jewish characters. It can’t be bad!”

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Oliver! opens at The Gielgud Theatre on December 14