19 July, 2024

Man of Kent a natural for annual Agatha Christie murder mystery

Well-suited… Nic Scanlan-Dyas at Shoreside Theatre’s rehearsal room in Forrest Hill, preparing for his role in Spider’s Web

Art is imitating life in Forrest Hill actor Nic Scanlan-Dyas’s return to the stage in Shoreside Theatre’s annual Agatha Christie murder mystery.
“My character is an English 60-year-old, he tells the Observer. “It’s my first piece back after 30 years and I get to play myself.”
More surprising than his perfectly matched casting is the play’s setting, in Maidstone, Kent, where Scanlan-Dyas grew up. The Spider’s Web script even references places he remembers from his childhood.
The former professional actor plays amateur sleuth Sir Ronald Delahaye in the production, which opened at the PumpHouse in Takapuna this week. “It’s really, really good fun,” he says.
Scanlan-Dyas, who spent his 20s popping up on the British stage and screen, including on BBC TV series The Bill, has ventured far and wide in the decades since.
He retrained in computing and worked for a software company, then stepped across to banking in New York. Later, he spent 15 years in Japan, after his New Zealand-born partner secured a high-flying job there as a corporate finance lawyer.
He met Jackie, originally from Gisborne, in London. They married a few years ago at St Mark’s in Remuera, with Scanlan-Dyas attracted by the church’s traditional English style. The couple’s daughters, aged 16 and 17, attend Kristin School.
The family had a harrowing time during the Covid quarantine in 2020, when the family tried to get into New Zealand to see Jackie’s mother, who was seriously ill with cancer.
She died when they were in MIQ. But with Jackie’s father diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she and Nic were determined to establish a family home here and prepare for their daughters’ further education.
Scanlan-Dyas keeps the Forrest Hill home fires burning, with his wife commuting from Tokyo, working two-and-a-half weeks there at a time. The house-husband role is one he also fulfilled in Tokyo, doing the school run, organising moves and finding time to pen a few murder-mystery novels, form a band and record.
Last year, his curiosity was piqued when he saw Shoreside Theatre advertising its Agatha Christie season. When he saw a post about auditions this year he decided to give it a go.
He says it is the first time in seven or eight years that he’s had the time.
Another key reason: “My children have never seen me act.”
Worried about remembering his lines, Scanlan-Dyas recorded the script and talked his part back while wearing headphones on daily dog walks across Pupuke Golf Course.

“People must wonder what I’m doing talking aloud.”

He plays a suave military man in a play set in the mid-1950s, and has the job of outlining the action to the audience.
Scanlan-Dyas is impressed by the standard of community theatre here, and was surprised at the length of the 11-performance season, with a larger audience than he experienced doing shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
“Some of the people I’ve worked with on this are as good as the people I’ve worked with on professional shows.”
Scanlan-Dyas attended East 15 Acting School in Essex, and went on to win plenty of parts, but there was no Hollywood moment.
“When you’re working professionally, 90 per cent of what you’re doing is auditioning,” he says. Rejection goes with the territory and it begets humility in his reminiscences.
He recalls his agent geeing him up to audition for a television series of Tarzan by telling him he’d be perfect for the lead role, only to turn up to find a roomful of similarly tall, toned, long-haired hopefuls.
“I was tall, so I was always being a policeman,” he laughs.
“By my 30th, I’d decided if it was going fine – wine and caviar – I’d keep going, but if it was baked beans I’d think again.”
So he changed course, although he retains fond memories of his acting years and thinks he will do more community theatre here.
But he is slightly embarrassed that his wife has bought a stack of tickets for family and friends to attend and is planning a pre-performance drinks party that he won’t be able to imbibe at. “I said, you’ve got to manage your expectations.”
It will be hard to top the reception he and fellow cast of Ladies Night once got on a six-month UK tour. The play about a troupe of male strippers – written by New Zealanders Anthony McCarten and Stephen Sinclar – wound its way through big theatres to His Majesty’s in Aberdeen.
He recalls the cast in velcro trousers running the gauntlet through an overly enthusiastic crowd. “By the time I got to the stage, I had practically nothing on.”
It made for more better work stories than his business days.
“My wife always says she married a stripper,” he says.

• Spider’s Web is on until 4 August at the PumpHouse Theatre. Tickets at pumphouse.co.nz

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