Stephen Kunken on starring in political thriller 'Kyoto'

After receiving rave reviews for his performance in the RSC’s Kyoto in Stratford-upon-Avon, Stephen Kunken has followed the play into the West End — and it couldn't be more apt for current times.

An international conference on climate change may not sound like the most electrifying setting for a drama, but in the hands of the RSC and writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, Kyoto becomes a gripping tale of power and corruption. American actor Stephen Kunken plays real-life Republican oil lobbyist Don Pearlman who expertly narrates the action. As well as playing Commander Putnam in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and working with some of cinema’s greatest directors,

Kunken has added his talents to an array of British theatre exports on Broadway, including Frost/Nixon, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Festen, and Enron – for which he received a Tony Award nomination. He’s now buckling up to take the character of Don Pearlman into the West End.

It must be nice to have a second crack at playing Don. Do you ever look back on performances a year down the line and think of how you’d do it differently?

Every single time – you don’t have that luxury much in theatre because you rarely get the opportunity to repeat, you just remember how BRILLIANT you were! The first run of Kyoto was a nail-bite because we were making so many changes wrestling it into what it ultimately became. I’d like to have spent time researching and broadening out my aperture a little bit, which I then got to do in the off period – reading all about what’s happened at COP29 and the American election and how that affects everything that’s going on.

Did your own research into Don unearth anything that has helped your performance?

In the run-up, I sat down with Don’s son, Brad Pearlman, and we had a bunch of really informative conversations. Ultimately you’re playing a character, so it’s not necessarily the real-life person and there’s not even a form to fit into because he’s not a well-known person – it’s not like playing Nixon or someone. But even when you play somebody who may not have fallen down on the right side of history, you never think of that person as a villain. And when you’ve heard that he was a beloved family member, you realise there’s no value in playing him as Richard III.

How did you find the experience of performing in Stratford-upon-Avon?

For an American actor, it’s an absolute dream. It’s a dreamy place, the company is absolutely dreamy – I couldn’t believe it, it really was one of those “pinch me” moments. And those audiences were terrific and international. It’s just a uniquely fantastic complex that loves art and actors. As an American, there are so few places like that. It was like going to the centre of the religion of the art for me and feeling like what we do has import and that these people have respected it for a long time.

If you could go back and play any Shakespeare character, which would it be?

I’ve always wanted to play a lot of the bad guys – I’m fascinated by the Iagos and such. The part that’s often missed is the honest Iago, because as soon as you twirl that moustache, it stops having value. I want to see the person you’d never expect to go down that road – because I think it’s the choices we make that makes us the villain, not the patina on top of us.

You’ve done a lot of political work – has that been a conscious decision or has the work just gravitated towards you?

I don’t know which is the chicken and which is the egg – I don’t know if I just have an affinity for it or not. I love doing new plays – I love sitting in the room when a writer’s trying things, I try to remove any kind of ego from that experience. I’m also really fascinated by the choices that real people make as opposed to characters in fantasy worlds.

You played Warren Putnam in The Handmaid’s Tale, which addresses prescient issues such as women’s reproductive rights and the rise of the US Christian right – how was that experience?

When I was cast in The Handmaid’s Tale, we all thought Hillary Clinton was going to be President – it was in that small window right before the election. Suddenly we arrived in Toronto to begin filming Margaret Atwood’s incredible novel and it was a different administration to the one we’d expected. What had been a cautionary tale became a protest piece for the next six seasons.

Given all the current turmoil, do you think we will see a surge in new political plays?

This is one of the moments where we go from being entertainers to being actionable artists and it’s a different calling. Sometimes entertainment is exactly what we need in these moments, where you just want to forget the world. But it’s going to take people’s voices to move us through this period of time. The day after the American election, I called the play’s creators and said: “The experience of seeing this play and doing this play is going to be fundamentally different.” And they were in agreement – it hasn’t dampened it, it’s just turned it up by a thousand per cent.

You’ve appeared in a lot of British plays – do you consider yourself an Anglophile?

Right down to my Tottenham Hotspur football strip! I’m a giant Anglophile – I have English cousins who live in Kensington and are like my brothers, so I spent a lot of time over here as a kid. I think my first professional English play was probably Festen, which was great. I love the English way of working – it’s very different. I think the time given for things to gestate is so welcome. No offence to my beloved Broadway, but I think London is the theatre centre of the world. I’m an absolute Anglophile and every time I’m over here I’m in my happy place.

Book Kyoto tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Kunken in Kyoto. (Photo by Manuel Harlan)

This article first appeared in the February 2025 issue of London Theatre Magazine.