George Fouracres

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Friday 19th August 2022

Not everyone associated with comedy, it turns out, is at the Edinburgh Fringe.

George Fouracres will be best known to most of us as one third of the excellent sketch troupe Daphne, alongside Phil Wang and Jason Forbes. But since their last outing he's gotten a proper highbrow gig, at Will Shakespeare's old gaff, The Globe Theatre, on London's Southbank.

Fouracres is currently appearing in Much Ado About Nothing, and has just begun a new part, as Stefano in The Tempest. So what can he tell us Shaky dunces about that character?

"Stefano is the 'drunken butler' of the King of Naples," he explains, "who washes up on the mystical island pissed out of his head and discovers Caliban, a little goblin monster, whom he enlists to help him kill Prospero and become ruler. Thoroughly pleasant bloke."

That production continues right through until late October. Which begs the question: how does a full Globe season compare to an Edinburgh Fringe run?

"At the height of Hamlet performances at the start of this season, fellow comedian Ed Gaughan, who was playing the gravedigger, pointed out that we were doing six and a half Edinburgh shows a day. For the length of three Edinburghs. There's no Mosque Kitchen at the Globe, but on the plus side, working at the Globe doesn't cost me thousands of pounds I don't have."

Which is always good. Now, to the stage!

First gig?

I've been really wracking my brains and can't decide when the first one was. I guess it was playing 'The Great Gondolfo' in a Year Six end of term assembly. I was a magician and I brought my own top hat from home (my grandmother made it out of Kelloggs boxes). Man, I made Reception laugh, what a stormer.

Worst gig?

A performance of Filter Theatre's very raucous A Midsummer Night's Dream. We were touring in Doncaster and were told by the theatre about an hour before the show that a Catholic primary school were coming to watch (?!) and that we therefore needed to cut out any rude bits (?!). We were gobsmacked and indignant but in the end gave in and did so, only to find out at the end that the school had complained anyway and got a complete refund.

Favourite show, ever?

Machynlleth Festival is my favourite thing ever, and Pappy's closing shows where they get as many comedians as possible to come up and provide a punchline to a set-up was always amazing.

You'd have about an hour or something to come up with a punchline, and we (Daphne) did one that was something like 'What happened to the hypochondriac butcher?'. Our punchline was a sketch where I laboriously recommended different types of sausages to Phil Wang, before he coughed mildly, at which point Jason Forbes came on gurning and licking his own face whilst naming different diseases at me, who was looking aghast at the other end of the stage.

Phil suddenly turned round, cried out and punched Jason unconscious. I then explained that Jason was a rival butcher from across the road, and a dreadful hypochondriac, who would go into ferocious flights of fancy where he believed he'd been possessed by all the diseases he feared. I felt his pulse and realised that the blow had killed him.

The sketch just ended, with us screaming 'OH NOOOOOOO' at each other, the audience inexplicably went absolutely mental. Magic.

Which one person influenced your comedy/acting life most significantly?

My very funny, weird, massive, supportive family will always be my main inspiration, but I do owe a lot to Sean Holmes, the associate artistic director at the Globe, who gave me a chance back at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2018 and has made me into a better actor and given me opportunities I could never have predicted.

Also of course my Daphne boiz, Phil and Jason, for the sheer amount we've all made each other laugh, which is obvs the most important thing when you're making comedy.

Acting hero: Mark Rylance. Comedy hero: Limmy. Does that all cover it? Not sure if I understood the question.

And who's the most disagreeable person you've come across in the business?

Peter Bourke, the actor who has been playing Oberon, Horatio, Friar Francis and many others alongside me since last year. He insists on providing the company with chocolate and buying everyone coffees, when he's not busy restocking the dressing room fridge with prosecco out of his own pocket.

He's worked at the RSC, the National and the Globe for decades and was best pals with the likes of Sir Ralph Richardson, Roald Dahl and Dame Penelope Keith, and all he does is ask after you and your loved ones, that is if he doesn't have the gall to invite you round for dinner at his beautiful home or in a delightful restaurant.

What kind of monster does these things? Does he seek to shame me?

Is there one routine/gag you loved, that audiences inexplicably didn't?

A series of sketches called The Freaked Out Lads where Phil Wang would just come on stage with either me or Jason Forbes standing there silently, looking freaked out, whilst he sang a little song about how freaked out we looked.

This culminated in a kitchen sink drama where it was revealed that he was the ghost of a friend who had perished when a neon sign fell on his head. He then stole our souls and took them down to hell, still singing his little song. It survived much longer than it should have done.

Any reviews, heckles or post-show reactions stick in the mind?

I think 'moronic... smug... all made worse by his Black Country accent... like a hammer banging on metal' in the Telegraph review of Hamlet probably merits a mention.

Also not a heckle of me, but my friends and I were in a dive comedy club in New York and a drunk woman shouted out 'It's my birthday!' To which the stand-up responded 'It's your birthday?' To which the woman responded 'Huh?' What a show-stopping exchange.

How do you feel about where your career is at, right now?

I hate to be sincere (jk, I love it I can't stop) but these have been the happiest 16 months of my career so far. Don't get me wrong, they've been really really tough too; my partner and I have experienced several significant bereavements in this time, one in the opening week of Hamlet, and we work very mad, exhausting hours in a building from a bygone age of thatch and pantaloons, which never stops being surreal.

But this has all been (get ready to vom) a dream come true and I've done the best work of my life so far here at the Globe, I'm unbelievably proud of all we've achieved since April 2021. I will be unemployed as of October though so... if anyone's got a yen to work with a by-and-large good cook and arguably unbalanced comic actor from the Black Country, gimme a shout cos my rent and bills have skyrocketed.