NIGEL Pivaro shot to fame as Coronation Street bad boy Terry Duckworth, then disappeared from acting to work as a journalist for nearly two decades.
Now he’s back in the spotlight, in a national tour of The Commitments, heading for Bradford this autumn.
Returning to live theatre for the first time since 2003, Nigel admits he was apprehensive, but he’s clearly loving the show.
“What’s not to love about it? I’ve always loved the story and the music. I get to spend nine months going up and down the country, and stretch my acting muscles again on stage,” he smiles. “In a way, it’s heralding the fact that I’m back in the business.”
The Commitments tour was initially planned for 2020. “When it came along it felt like a golden opportunity, but then of course it was postponed because of Covid, then last year it was postponed again,” says Nigel. “Here we are now at the starting point and I’m really excited.”
He plays Da, the father of aspiring fledgling music manager Jimmy Rabitte. Based on Roddy Doyle’s 1987 bestselling novel and Alan Parker’s popular 1991 film, The Commitments is the story of Jimmy, a young working-class music fan, who shapes an unlikely bunch of amateur musicians into “Dublin’s finest-ever soul band”. His efforts are not exactly taken seriously by his father.
“There’s friction between Jimmy and members of the band, but the constant tension in the narrative is between him and his Da,” says Nigel. “The latter thinks his music is a load of rubbish because it’s not Elvis, basically. As far as he’s concerned, if it’s not Elvis it’s no good.”
The show is packed with soul classics like Try A Little Tenderness, In The Midnight Hour and Mustang Sally. Much of the singing is left to the younger cast members but Nigel, 62, gets to sing “a few bars of Elvis rather than the old Motown and Stax classics.” He adds, laughing: “That’s probably just as well really.”
There is, he says, some common ground between him and Da: “He’s a bit of a cynic and as I get older I get more cynical too. At this age you’ve kind of seen it all.”
Manchester-born Nigel studied at RADA and in 1983 landed the role of Terry Duckworth. After five years of playing the Corrie hunk he left, later returned on a regular basis, with jailbird Terry causing nightmares for parents Jack and Vera - not least when he sold his baby son, Tommy.
Nigel has fond memories of the cobbles: “It was fun behind the scenes, especially with Bill and Liz (Bill Tarmey and Liz Dawn, who played Jack and Vera), Michael Le Vell, who plays Kevin Webster, and (Shipley actor) Brian Mosley, who played Alf Roberts. He was so funny off-set. He’d try and make you corpse when you were waiting to go on. He’d stuff a grape up his nose and daft stuff like that.”
Nigel did plenty of stage work, with theatre credits including groundbreaking drama Just Frank, about a man with AIDS, Funny Peculiar and An Evening With Gary Lineker. He won the Scotsman Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival for No Further Cause For Concern, of which he says:: “That’s probably the thing I’m most proud of. I found the play myself, put on a reading at Stratford, got the money together to put it on in Wales, Edinburgh then London, and it was well received.”
Aged 39, he made the surprising decision to become a journalist. “I’d always been intrigued by journalism, and interested in history and politics,” he says. After 20 years as a jobbing actor, he went to Salford University as a mature history student, graduating in 2003, and in 2006 he graduated from the University of Wales with an MSc in Social Science and Economics. After a post-grad journalism course, he worked for regional papers and is now a freelance writer. He’s made documentaries for the BBC’s Inside Out series, including Regeneration Game, which challenged housing programmes forcing residents out of gentrified neighbourhoods.
A return to acting wasn’t on the cards but in 2019 Nigel bumped into writer Jim Cartwright, who he’d worked with on a tour of his play The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice. Cartwright asked when he was returning to acting; whetting Nigel’s appetite. He did some plays on BBC Radio 4. “It was a great re-introduction to acting,” says Nigel. “There was no pressure because it wasn’t in front of the camera or live audience. I started to believe in myself again as an actor.”
Of The Commitments, he insists the story and the songs are the real stars. And, he adds, “the skill in which music and story are woven together without it ever being ‘Oh, here’s an excuse to sing another great song’.”
The Commitments runs at the Alhambra from November 13-19. Call (01274) 432000 or visit bradford-theatres.co.uk
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