Life sentence

It was exactly 20 years ago this August that Omid Djalili, on the cusp of his big break but still a mostly unknown new face in British comedy, sneaked a look at soon-to-be-Perrier-Award-winner Lee Evans slaying a sold out crowd in the Assembly Rooms Music Hall. He left inspired.

Much as the prospect of playing for a more sizeable throng did undoubtedly appeal to a comic who had recently done a show for an audience of three people (“one of whom,” he recalls, “wanted their money back”), it was the sheer exuberant joy that appealed to him. “I thought: ‘it just looks like so much fun, playing to a packed house,’” the London-raised Anglo-Iranian says. “I remember thinking: ‘he is having the time of his life. I’ll never do that.’”

How wrong he was. In 2013, Djalili returns to the stage in Edinburgh for the first time since 2008 with two shows, both in the same venue and the same room in which he saw Evans all those years ago. In a festival-long run, he’ll follow in the formidable footsteps of Morgan Freeman and star as contraband-smuggling prison inmate Ellis “Red” Redding in Owen O’Neill and Dave Johns’ major new theatrical adaptation of The Shawshank Redemption. Additionally, for 13 nights from August 13, Djalili will slickly switch from straight to funny man, ready to appear a few hours later in his brand new standup show.

In  these last two decades he has become not just one of the biggest draws in British standup (2005's No Agenda broke Fringe box office records) but also an established actor on screens big and small, starring in the likes of Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Sex and the City 2, Djalili’s in the privileged position of being able to pick jobs based on what he’s passionate about rather than purely for the work. “I’m past doing things for financial reasons,” he says. “It has to be for reasons of just loving it.”

When he was approached by O’Neill about the stage version of The Shawshank Redemption—he ranks the movie as being among the greatest ever made—he was quick to say yes, at least once assurances were given that they’d be doing something markedly different from the film. This interpretation will be closer to the source text of Steven King’s 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, rather than its critically-revered, multi-Oscar-nominated and impossible-to-live-up-to big screen incarnation.

The Assembly Rooms has a tradition of stage versions of well-known movies, 12 Angry Men and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest being recent examples, but with a six-figure budget, this is the most ambitious such production yet. Directed by former RSC associate director Lucy Pitman-Wallace, and featuring an all-star cast of comedy actors in straight roles that also includes Ian Lavender—better-known as Private Pike in Dad’s Army—Owen O’Neill, Steve McNicholl and Terry Alderton, this is serious drama with a witty twist.

Despite his popular image as a larger-than-life master of subversive firebrand wit, Djalili’s well accustomed to playing it straight – as he’s been known to joke in standup shows, he’s a “theatre ponce” at heart. “I actually fell into standup comedy by accident,” he explains. “I dropped drama because I enjoyed doing standup more. And because I also didn’t see myself getting the kind of roles I wanted. In the early 90s, there were no real opportunities for actors with a Middle Eastern background.”

“Standups really do love doing serious roles,” he muses. “I think deep down we all want to be taken seriously.” On that note, Djalili gives a sober analysis of what he believes to be the heart of The Shawshank Redemption’s enormous appeal. “To me the essence of it is very simple,” Djalili states thoughtfully. “The move from hopelessness to hope."

“If I can be esoteric for a moment,” he continues, “in all our lives, we’re all stuck in the prison of the self. We don’t really live – we all just survive. When in fact we’re all here to fulfil our potential, by really pushing ourselves and learning to hope and dream – to really grab life by the bullhorns and be happy.”