The mock classical actor created by Nigel Planer and Christopher Douglas scaled the heights at the RSC and the ‘Nash’. Now, he’s ready for a comeback
If you’ve ever marvelled at an actor “truthpumping”, “perf-quaking” or spraying their “actoplasm” across the front row then you’ll be familiar with the wisdom (and luvvie lexicography) of Nicholas Craig. The spoof thespian and self-styled sage of the stage, created by Nigel Planer and Christopher Douglas, shared his hard-won lessons on performing at theatrical bastions such as the RSC and “the Nash” in the memoir I, An Actor.
Published in 1988, the book came complete with glossary (eg Berk off: “to go to Los Angeles”) and photographs of Planer, as Craig, brooding in rehearsals, brandishing weaponry amid billowing smoke as Coriolanus and clad in scuba gear for an underwater avantgarde production of The Winslow Boy. Hailed as “the Spinal Tap of actor biographies”, it spawned a series of TV and stage outings for Planer and was reprinted in 2016 with a foreword by Steve Coogan, thanking Craig for a one-to-one acting masterclass delivered atop Helvellyn.
