Preview: No nerves for actor portraying prominent Tom Hanks character in The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown's 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 80 million copies and been translated into 44 languages. The 2006 film version, starring Tom Hanks as symbologist Robert Langdon, grossed $760 million and spawned two sequels.
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The success of the novel and film is like a sword of Damocles hanging over Graham Percy's head as he is playing the main character in Vertigo Theatre's stage version that runs until June 8.
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'Initially, I was very intimidated, but the script for the play is quite different than the film. In the play, Robert is way more flawed. He's a rumpled, faded guy, and I can play that. I'm not the matinee idol kind of guy that Tom Hanks is. There isn't the romance that was in the film. You won't have the audience asking how a young girl could be attracted to this rumpled old professor. It is our shared interest in signs and symbols that creates a kind of chemistry between us,' says Percy.
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The Da Vinci Code created quite a bit of controversy when it was released. It is purported that Christ and Mary Magdalene were lovers and that they had at least one child, and Langdon and Sophie Neveu are in search of this bloodline.
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'I had already read the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, so I was aware of the premise of Brown's novel. I was really entranced by the whole concept. In its day, it was a real conspiracy theory. It really opened a can of worms. People thought Brown's novel was nonfiction. There are people who still do.
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'It's been a good 20 years since the book and the film were so popular. We're hoping people will have forgotten enough of the details that they will join us in the search, and they will be as surprised as Sophie and I are by what we discover along the way.'
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In the story, Sophie is a cryptologist and Robert is a symbologist.
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'There is no such thing as a symbologist. It's something Brown made up. It means that Robert is a specialist in symbols, but, as he says, what you see in the symbol is what it means, so it doesn't make him much of an expert, but it sounds good.'
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Graham says there are two mysteries the audience has to solve in Vertigo's The Da Vinci Code.
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'There is this whole thing about the Holy Grail, or the bloodline of Christ, and then there is also the whole thing about Sophie. Who is she? What broke the relationship between her and her family? Was it because of her that her grandfather was murdered?'
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As with the film, Robert and Sophie's quest takes them to some very exotic places, including the Louvre Museum in Paris, and to view some great artworks that Robert must interpret for their symbols. This requires a great deal of projections, as designed by Andy Moro.
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