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Victoria Kingston talks to director Richard Baron in his Fulham home about his latest project Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Above: Richard Baron

I suppose it’s reasonable to expect a theatrical director to be a good communicator; it’s part of the job to help an actor interpret the written word and transform it into a living performance. But talking to Richard Baron in his Fulham home about Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which he is currently directing on tour, is not just interesting it’s also a great pleasure. He confides in me that he wanted to be a journalist when he was a student at St Andrews University. “I was writing for the University paper and I also got a job on the local paper, but I always ended up doing the theatre reviews. Then I was asked if I wanted to direct a play and that brought a lot of things together for me. Working on the text is very interesting, but I also like the social and psychological aspects, and working with a group of people of different ages.”

At the relatively young age of 37, Richard has a very impressive CV that includes awards and nominations to be proud of. He has directed a variety of work, from intense dramas such as Look Back in Anger and A Streetcar Named Desire; comedies including The Importance of Being Earnest and The Ladykillers; Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors and The Tempest; musicals: The Boyfriend and HMS Pinafore and adaptations of novels: Vanity Fair and Great Expectations.

It’s a great challenge to take on Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which comes to Richmond Theatre this month. It’s complex and intense, steamy and hard-hitting, packed to the brim with Williams’ usual themes of family conflict, the decay of the old values of the Deep South, homosexuality and the corrupting effects of excessive money. The play has been made famous by the Paul Newman/Elizabeth Taylor movie – and certainly they gave vivid and memorable performances, but that was actually a censored, hugely altered version, with a very different ending from the one Williams originally wrote. It’s the original version that Richard is directing – and that’s something I want to ask him about. “I never intended to produce the Broadway version, as it’s called,” he tells me. “It cops out on all the issues that make it a great play. Williams wrote it at the time as a different version because it was considered more acceptable to audiences. It tries to mellow the play, it skirts round the homosexuality aspects quite a lot, it changes Brick’s and Maggie’s relationship at the end, it leaves Big Daddy suddenly reconciled to his death, after having left the stage screaming in agony twenty minutes earlier. I never felt Williams had his heart in many of the lines. It’s completely unconvincing.”

Richard admits he loves living in Fulham – for one very good reason. “My dad and my granddad used to support Fulham Football Club. When I was a child, we lived in Eastbourne, and my grandfather used to take me to Fulham matches, so I had this massive affection for them – and I always thought I would live in Fulham when I grew up so that I could go to watch them play. And now, I do live in a Victorian terraced house in Fulham near the North End Road, and I do go to the matches. I have plenty of space, a big kitchen, and I have even held rehearsals in it. Of course, Fulham Broadway has really been spruced up in recent years, and I love the North End Road market. I feel I’m at the centre of everything here – public transport is very easy. I work away quite a bit, so I live a gypsy lifestyle in some ways. But I like it that way. I can pack my suitcase in half an hour, close the front door, and I’m on my way.”

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is at Richmond Theatre from 13-18 November. Box office: 0870 060 6651.