Launching an acting career at age 35 was a sure bet for Desmond Barrit. An accountant for 16 years, he wagered actor friends in London 5 pounds he could get a job as an actor. The next morning he scanned a theater newspaper for auditions, showed up at one and landed the role of a cat in a children’s theater production. His only previous acting experience was as Hamlet in a school play at age 14.
“I started at the top and went downhill from there,” jokes Barrit, a native of South Wales.
Now with the Royal Shakespeare Company, he has crossed the Atlantic this fall at the invitation of Cornell College English professor Stephen Lacey to direct a student production of Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors” at Cornell’s Armstrong Theatre. Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 5-6 and 12-13, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 7 and 14.
For 15 years, until 1993, Lacey had staged a Shakespeare play in conjunction with his Shakespearean comedy course. The plan fit well with Cornell’s One-Course-At-A-Time academic calendar, where students study a single subject for 3 ½ weeks, take a four-day break, then go on to another 3 ½-week term. Nine terms are offered each year.
This year Cornell is reviving the Shakespeare production and class, with plans to offer the course every three years. Students attend Lacey’s class in the morning, then work with distinguished visiting artist Barrit in afternoon and evening workshops, rehearsals, set building and costume production.
In the 20 years since he vowed to land an acting role, Barrit has amassed a handful of awards and dozens of credits in stage, film and television productions. He’s shared the spotlight with Peter O’Toole, Patrick Stewart, Kevin Cline, Jamie Lee Curtis and Natasha Richardson. Performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company he won the Helen Hayes Award for Best Actor as the character Bottom in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which toured the United States; and the Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance in the role of Antipholus in “The Comedy of Errors.”
Cornell’s production of “The Comedy of Errors” is set in contemporary Turkey. Characters include a beggar selling tissues, a shoeshine girl and people carrying worry beads -legitimate characters Barrit photographed during a visit to Istanbul. The music is provided by Turkish CDs he brought home. He’s thrown in some juggling and belly dancing to take advantage of skills unique to his Cornell actors. “Some of the lines (from Shakespeare) people don’t understand, so it’s open to all sorts of interpretation,” Barrit says. Admission is $7 for adults and $5 for non-Cornell students and seniors. For tickets, call (319) 895-4293.