Stephen Kinman leans forward to show me his hand. “Look! All the hair is standing on end! And that’s just at the thought of being on stage at the Globe.” Yesterday, when he was actually rehearsing there, “I swear to God, those hairs didn’t fall out the whole time.”
He leans back. Just got over Covid, he says, still feeling a bit emotional. His eyes are shining. “I believe in the spirit of spaces. The tree is from Shakespeare’s time. It is like a musical instrument; like standing in the middle of a guitar. I’ve never felt more giddy in my life than working somewhere.”
Kinman is 46 and anonymously looks like a young Derek Jacobi. Not very well known. Working with a famous actor recently, Kinman mentioned that he knew Justin Fletcher, the CBeebies star who promoted Makaton, a sign language for children with special needs.
The actor started crying. “He said, ‘Can you tell Justin that I learned to communicate with my son because of him?'” He then asked Kinman what he had done. “I said, ‘Oh, I’m Robert the Robot.’ He just kept saying, ‘Oh my God,’ for about 30 seconds, and then he said, ‘I’ve got to call my wife.’
Words recorded 400 years ago related to young children. This is beyond magic. Stephen Kinman, CBeebies actor
If Fletcher – aka Mr Tumble – is the most familiar face on pre-school television, Kynman is its most chameleonic. As well as playing the jolly tin butler in Justin’s House, he is a regular on the sketch show Gigglebiz, voices fireman Sam, Lofty in Bob the Builder and most of Thomas and Friends, and was a dazzling villain in the latest CBeebies Christmas panto.
This annual show is just one of the hybrid productions the channel mounts each year: performed live, screened later. They do proms, ballets and, since 2016, abridged Shakespeare, with Kinman as the Bard, who pops in and out of the wings to explain what’s going on.
Previous years have seen 50-minute versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet. This year is As You Like It and their first time at the Globe, a long-term ambition not only of the cast but also of the theater’s artistic director, Michelle Terry.
“My little girl is five-and-a-half,” she says, “and she’s probably spent more time with people from CBeebies than me and her dad.” The collaboration is part of Terry’s drive to “demystify Shakespeare and get people through the doors – and the sooner the better. What CBeebies does brilliantly is to find these fairy tale paths and use them to open up the text.”
“You can’t think of defrosting the Yorkshire pudding”… Stephen Kinman as Shakespeare, along with Zak Wyatt and Evie Pickerill as Romeo and Juliet. Photo: James Stack/BBC
She starred in As You Like It herself, and the director of that Globe production, Elle While, takes the reins for this one as well, working on an adaptation from CBeebies comedy supremo Nathan Cockerill.
Cockerill’s tactic is to do away with melancholy plots – no more Phoebe, Sylvius or Jacques (Kinman’s Shakespeare inherits the “All the world’s a stage” speech) – and add some useful bookends.
So Andy Day, usually seen mid-brontosaurus, plays a modern-day entrepreneur who wants to tear down the Globe and build condos. Shakespeare (sort of still going) gathers some players – mostly CBeebies regulars – to put on a show and convince him otherwise.
The text is clean but true. No bowdlerisation; as many verses as possible. The hope is that it will soak in somehow. “At this age, language is still fickle,” says Kinman. “It’s not solid metal yet, it’s liquid mercury.” He excitedly recounts seeing big insights on small faces. After a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, two young siblings quoted his lines. “It really meant a lot to them. Words recorded 400 years ago are linked. This is beyond magic.”
It’s not just children under six who appreciate the approach. “I’m still trying to figure out Shakespeare’s text,” says Day. “You are constantly learning. A teacher friend of mine said: “I show my students A-level versions of Shakespeare on CBeebies because afterwards they go, ‘Oh, that’s what’s going on!'”
In fact, despite the obvious challenges, performing Shakespeare in front of 1,500 children may be easier than doing it for adults. Rebecca Keatley, who plays Rosalind, is one of the channel’s main presenters. Adults can forget how refined a child’s sense of fulfillment is, she believes. “They are much more accepting. They are like mushrooms. When they play, they just think: I want to be a knight, or a pirate, or a nurse, or a fireman. They just inhabit that character.
Day agrees: “As long as it’s authentic enough and they’re engaged enough, they’ll accept anything. They don’t see race or gender.
The kids will see right through you. They are like dogs for insincerity. Stephen Kinman
That’s another reason “As You Like It”—perhaps Shakespeare’s best cross-dressing comedy—fits. For today’s kids, Terry believes, the play can actually “get closer to what Shakespeare was exploring, not what people have tried to squash it into. Children are much more umbilically connected to their diverse identities.
While having three small children. “My experience is that it’s only when we grow up that we try to become animals of reason and reason.” In the CBeebies version, the wrestler Charles is played by Joanna Adeyinka-Burford. The character was originally renamed “Charlie”, but that upset the scan, so they went back to the original. “It’s very non-binary,” says While. The public, she thinks, is unlikely to care — or notice.
Storming the Stage… Patrick Robinson as Prospero in The Tempest. Photo: Guy Levy/BBC
There are four performances and eight days of rehearsals: generous by CBeebies standards but mind-boggling for the theatre. There’s no room for gentle exploration of themes – “subtlety isn’t our queen at the moment,” says CBeebies series producer Anna Perrone. A brief discussion of what pastoral means to the cast is based on the fact that most of them are vegan. But, fortunately for While, they were all unusually prepared to “return to their childlike capacity for imagination”—something that usually required considerable coaxing.
“CBeebies is all about the audience,” says Keightley. “The main goal is: what can we give them? Are we giving the right messages? Are they getting what they need? How can we do it in an inclusive way?’
Such a specific demographic limits performers’ potential for self-indulgence. “You can’t fool kids,” says Kinman. “They will see you through. They are like dogs for insincerity. And that’s great because it forces you to engage.”
He has adopted Fletcher’s mottos: commitment, clarity and communication. “Be honest, be sincere. Don’t just smile and tell the kids what you want to say while in the back of your mind you’re thinking, “Oh, I can really defrost that Yorkshire pudding” because they spot it 100 yards away. “
Kinman trained as an engineer before turning to conventional acting (RSC, Sunday in the Park with George at the Menier), puppetry (The Muppets’ Treasure Island, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) and audio work (he recently narrated Jamie’s memoir Vardy). He used to be a stickler for children’s television. “I was very naive and arrogant. But now I’d be crawling on broken glass to work on CBeebies. It is definitely the most rewarding job I have ever done. You communicate directly with the child and there is nothing like it.”
Yes, some people underestimate it, he says; mostly those in the industry who have never done it. Not the parents, though: “If you try to take CBeebies away, they’ll riot in Downing Street.”
They may still need their posters. In May this year, it was announced that both CBBC and BBC Four would be discontinued as broadcasting services. The same fate may await their sister channel.
“I worry about that,” Terry says. Her teachings are as valuable as conventional education for her child: “The Curator is so clever and clever and set.” There is a clear equivalence with the organization she leads – and it would be easy to detect a call to arms in Cockerill’s added plot to save the globe from the philistine capitalists.
After all, Terry says, Shakespeare founded the theater with a public mission. “It was the most amazing socio-economic model that says storytelling, cultural conversation, debate, nuance and multiple truths are a human right and should be for everyone. The idea of reducing this seems wrongheaded and arrogant to me.
‘Beyond the Magic’… the CBeebies gang perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo: Guy Levy/BBC
It’s easy to be evangelical about CBeebies after being a beneficiary of its output. As the outpouring of affection and admiration around its 20th anniversary in February showed, its quality, ambition and dexterity go far beyond what is required – exemplified by projects such as Shakespeare’s plays.
But it’s encouraging that the people whose skills make it special seem, if anything, more invested. Kynman’s advocacy runs deep. Nobody does CBeebies for the money, he says, bursting out again. “That’s because we believe in trying to help kids realize that we can be better. Prejudice, sexism and hatred of others is learned and CBeebies is really, really good at it: kindness is your best weapon. And speaking of: don’t be afraid to open up.”
He does it on his own without being prompted. “I was bullied a lot at school,” he continues, “and I learned to be funny to avoid that. My father, God rest him, was the best man I knew. I miss her every day. At his funeral I said, “They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes, but I did. He was my father.
He pauses. “I think…
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