EastEnders’ wife-beating villain Alex Ferns is back as troubled hero on stage
The actor once dubbed Britain’s most-hated soap villain turns troubled hero in a new play about bomb disposal experts in Afghanistan.
Alex Ferns — who played wife-beater Trevor Morgan in EastEnders alongside Kacey Ainsworth as his victim Little Mo — said his experience doing national service helped him to understand the soldiers in Casualties.
“When I was 18 I served in the South African army. I think there’s a very different mind-set. It’s not a civilian mind-set,” he said before the play opens in London tomorrow.
“Everything is treated with this black humour. If someone is offed, within minutes people are making jokes. And in the play, there’s a faultline of military humour. Apart from being very moving, I found it very funny.”
Ferns, 44, said the play was “very relevant” now that Britain is preparing to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan next year and the impact of post-traumatic stress is becoming clear.
His co-star is Finlay Robertson, 38, who is known from TV drama The Body Farm with Tara Fitzgerald. Casualties is written by actor Ross Ericson, who served a brief spell in the infantry before having to leave through injury. He sent it to director Harry Burton, a friend of Harold Pinter, after Ericson appeared in a production of Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter.
Burton said the play had both “poetry and tremendous action sequences”, though it was a challenge depicting the defusing of an improvised explosive device in a 90-seat theatre.
Casualties runs until July 14 at the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park.
