Clarke Peters: Man on the Wire

Clarke Peters has a voice like jazz. It ebbs and flows: now smooth, now rat-a-tat. He talks with the timing of a bebop musician.

The riffs start coming when the actor, director, writer and singer is explaining why he is reviving his musical Five Guys Names Moe here in Edinburgh.

He begins with well-rehearsed patter—“there are a lot of people who have not seen this, it has been 20 years after all, so this will be a new experience for them”—before pausing, seemingly unhappy with the predictable arrangement of his words. He slows down. Then grins.

“And because it's the Edinburgh festival, man!” And he's off.

“There is nothing like this in the world,” he says. “There's nothing like this. This isn't Broadway. This isn't the West End. This is about art. It's about people who are curious. It's about diversity. You see the drums, acrobats, the comedians, artists. This is what it is about. It's not about the money. Edinburgh celebrates the spirit of our craft. There's nowhere like it, nothing like this at all in the Western world. So for Five Guys to be here, it's another string to Five Guys' bow.”

In his gold-buttoned blazer, pressed white shirt and elegant grey trilby, Peters is as reassuringly cool in person as you would expect of the man famous for playing some of TV's most beatific characters.

Last year he starred as Nelson Mandela in the Channel 4 film Endgame, but he is most famous for his role as detective Lester Freamon in The Wire. As Freamon he was the quiet, moral centre of a fetid, corrupt Baltimore slowly sliding into the sea.

He will reappear on our screens shortly in Treme, the new series from the team behind The Wire, and in the Glasgow-shot film Legacy with Wire co-star Idris Elba. Now 58-year-old, he's never been more in demand. And he's busy learning the upright bass.

Which begs the question, does he really have time to revive Five Guys after 20 years?

“There's a lot happening in my life right now,” he responds. “So maybe it's not a bad time to bring out all the guns.”

Five Guys is the story of Nomax, a man who's got the blues. His girlfriend has left him and he's broke. His only company is his radio, from which emerge the titular Moes: Big Moe, Four-Eyed Moe, Eat Moe, Now Moe, and Little Moe. They comfort him with songs by Louis Jordan (“a cat who wanted everyone to have a good time,” says Peters).

It ran for five years in London and New York, picking up awards along the way. But Peters was cruelly denied the full glow of its success.

The musical—based on a book Peters wrote a few years earlier—opened in the West End in 1990 under the wing of musical theatre impresario Cameron Mackintosh. Come opening night, Peters took his place on stage as Four-Eyed Moe. It was the culmination of a journey which began when he moved to Europe from his native New York in the early '70s to pursue a career onstage. He was a backing singer for David Essex, Joan Armatrading and Shirley Bassey before dedicating himself to acting in '76.

Come that first night in 1990, Peters could have been forgiven for jumping a little higher than usual during the show's more energetic numbers.

“I was to pirouette and go into a split,” he says. “And I felt something as I came down. I didn't land accurately. This is all it takes – a millimetre shift in the coccyx, and that threw everything out up my spine. But I kept dancing.”

He kept performing for the next four weeks with slight discomfort. Then on a trip to the swimming pool he was scalded by the water in the shower, and he twisted awkwardly.

“And that was that,” he laughs, contorting his body. “I stayed like that. I screamed at the top of my lungs and my daughter, who was only about 12 at the time, came running into the men's locker room, yelling 'that's my dad'. I'm standing holding onto the shower with my trunks halfway down my ass, screaming. I didn't go back into the show after that.

“It was hard to watch Five Guys become a success and not be up there. It was terrible actually. I thought how ironic it was to take it this far and not be able to participate. But it was a blessing that I got a chance to see it.”

But now Peters feels he will at last get his dues in Edinburgh. He will play the less energetic role of Nomax. Because of a gruelling Fringe programme that demands at least 25 performances in as many days, Peters is lining up some famous understudies to help him out.

“Maybe I'll get Dominic West up here,” he says, half-seriously. “I know he would love to. He's always said he wants to do a musical. During the second year of The Wire he was raving about Five Guys. That's decided – I'm going to give him a call.”

The Wire is arguably the reason why Peters's name now appears above the titles for Five Guys. The show's note-perfect dialogue, hugely ambitious story arcs, and refusal to supply easy resolutions to knotted, murky problems—and some effusive column inches from highbrow critics—have helped The Wire become the yardstick by which TV drama is judged. Wire fans are as familiar with Baltimore slang as a Trekkie is with Klingon.

But Peters is not getting carried away by the hype. “What gets me more than anything else is”—here he affects a fanboy drawl—“'Oh man, I spent three days watching it beginning and end'. Three days! Why would you do that to yourself?

“I do think it lives up to the hype. I do think it is the most intelligent thing that has been out there for a long time. But don't let it go to your head, folks. Don't sit back and have a lost weekend watching The Wire. There are better things to do and you can always come back to it.”

Peters offers such serene fatherly advice throughout the interview. “Never stop learning,” he tells me at one point. It's almost a mantra. “Never. Stop. Learning.” The words could be those of any of his characters.

He is a member of the Brahma Kumaris, a modern religious movement originating in India which advocates asceticism, and avoids roles which match his spiritual principles. “More and more as I get older,” he says, “I want to remind myself of what I feel is correct.”

He cites the 1986 film Mona Lisa as a watershed in the kind of roles he would choose. He played a knife-wielding pimp. “I didn't want my kids to see that,” he says. “The Cosby Show wasn't about at that time, so the black male was always portrayed like this. I told someone I didn't want to play this kind of guy. And I didn't shoot a film over here for 10 years.

“I wanted to align myself with something more positive. Maybe that comes from my spiritual practice – I'm almost sure of that. I look at the characters I end up playing and there is always a humanity, a life lesson, so I feel like I'm being paid twice.”

The newest addition to Peters's gallery of saints is Albert Lambreaux in Treme, the new series from The Wire creator David Simon. Lambreaux is one of New Orleans' Indian chiefs, trying to rebuild his life and his neighbourhood's culture after Hurricane Katrina washed it all away.

In contrast to The Wire's grim outlook (in a nutshell, society's great institutions—politics, police, schools, press—are slowly devouring each other), Peters says Treme is about restoring New Orleans' place in the world, and honouring the unique cultural heritage of a city which can seem foreign even to Americans.

“If people get it, they get it,” he says. “If they don't get it, at least they'll have a point of reference to how important New Orleans is – to American culture first of all, but ultimately to the world.”

Just as for The Wire he mastered Freamon's hobby of making dolls house furniture, Peters has taken up the upright bass in preparation for his new role. He started lessons in Baltimore last October before heading to New Orleans. “I'm getting there slowly,” he says.

This all took place before he knew he would be reviving Five Guys. He laughs when recalling the first song his tutor taught him. “It was 'Early In The Morning', the first song in Five Guys Named Moe,” he says, marvelling at the serendipity. As always, his voice is ringing with jazz.