Anon asked: 11, 24, 25 (Cabin Pressure Question Meme)

Posted this in answer to an Anon asker a few days ago and then changed my theme and the format went very strange so reposting as a text post cos I have NO idea how to work HTML codes

11) My ship

Douglas / Martin or Douglas / Herc.

The former is my more traditional stance. I’ve always been quite Greek in these matters and like the dynamic between an older, more experienced man and a younger, less cynical one (though, in truth, the age gap between them is hardly vast).

I think they’d be good for each other, they’re both vulnerable in their own ways and they understand each other; since they already act like a married couple it makes sense for them to progress into actually being one.

As for the latter, there’s a certain chemistry between the two of them- the kind of scratchy antagonism / fondness that to me just screams UST. Partly this pairing is just wishful thinking on my part: ALL THE OPERATIC VOICE PORN *falls over*. I really want to know more about their shared past.

Strangely, the ship I find myself writing is one that I don’t personally ship at all: Martin / Henry (blame my flatmate). I tend to avoid reading that pairing (and M / M) because I find the characters too similar and the possibilities too fluffy but these things also make it quite easy to write crack about them.

24) My favourite actor in the series

ROGER ALLAM!!!

Oh, did you want me to expand upon this?

I started listening to Cabin Pressure because I knew about John Finnemore from The Now Show and Benedict Cumberbatch from not having lived in a cave. To begin with, Roger Allam was the ‘dryly amusing character with the nice voice;’ I knew little more than that and, if I’m honest, I was fine with that state of affairs.

Then I heard him sing. I’d thought, after Ottery St Mary and Newcastle, that Roger Allam had a good singing voice; now I rather resent that the bounds of playing a character ever restricted his singing to being ‘good’. When I heard him properly, I was hooked and there’s been no looking back.

So, there’s his voice. But even when the original London recordings of Les Miserables and City of Angels had been listened to on repeat several hundred times (or so it must feel to my long-suffering flatmate) there was still much more to explore. Allam himself has noted that his speciality is for playing ‘fucked-up men,’ or, as a reporter put it: ‘the honourable man alone in a corrupt and confusing society who will not be turned from his ideal by the threat of death or ridicule.’

And so I fell in love with his screen characters, among them Peter Mannion (the most sympathetic character in The Thick of It- a fact made all the more exceptional by the fact he’s a Tory), Fred Thursday (whose attitudes towards morality appear both forward thinking for the decade Endeavour is set in and still moving today) and Robin Janvrin in The Queen.

Of course, there’s rather a dramatic flip-side with Allam as he’s evolved throughout the years to playing not just extremely honourable characters but also the most extreme bastards (though they are, of course, also ‘fucked-up’). In the course of just a few short years at the National Theatre, he’d played both Hitler and the considerably more noble and heroic German leader Willy Brand, playing both with utter conviction.

Reviews for the former role lauded the terrifying realism of his performance and, having seen the latter myself, I can honestly state that I’ve seldom seen anything so moving in the theatre. I was transfixed, and this was only a recording of the play being viewed years later on a computer screen. I’m going to see Uncle Vanya soon and god knows what effect he’ll have on me live!

I’ve also heard him in some stunning radio plays: I recommend the extremely moving Dr Brighton and Mr Harding and the frankly lascivious Les Liasons Dangereuses. It’s actually quite alarming that Mr Allam, whose voice is sensuous enough when in its normal register, actually has a specific ‘seduction tone.’ His vocal chords should be registered as dangerous weapons.

On top of all this, the man seems to be a genuinely wonderful human being. In interviews he often seems quite shy and anyone who’s seen his reaction to winning an Olivier Award last year (though it was by no means his first) could not fail to notice how modest he is.

In addition (if you needed, or, indeed, wanted more) he’s a real life BAMF. A theatrical god despite frequently suffering from crippling stage fright which meant that “[he] once went through an entire month of sweating and trembling,” he’s also been known to act through considerable physical pain:

‘The quality of “sexy imperturbability” that one reviewer noted in his acting has its counterpart in a physical stoicism. One night, in the middle of Importance, he ruptured a calf muscle, but “altered his movements slightly, so that very few people in the audience knew anything was wrong”, and then continued, since he had no understudy, to play every performance.’

Oh, and he’s amusing: ‘A pay-to-view-celebrity-scandal website now offers what is apparantly an unauthorised photo from that play [What The Night is For] with the come-on: “Roger Allam NAKED!” Allam, who hadn’t heard about it, is shocked, disgusted and just wants to know one thing: “Where are my royalties?”

And he started acting as one of only two men in a feminist theatre group… and he plays the guitar and the piano… and he’s gorgeous… and he looks good in drag… and I should really go and lie down now… *fans self*

25) Something else by John Finnemore that I love

I’ve loved The Now Show for years and years and I also love Miranda. I’m completely in love with the writing he did for That Mitchell and Webb Look and David Mitchell’s Soapbox.

I’m seeing him ‘in the flesh’ in April and genuinely cannot wait. He’s wonderful and utterly adorable.