Talking Shakespeare Kolme (Three)

Dreaming of Summer

Another week of Lockdown Three with walking in the woods, reading books, watching TV, puzzling over jigsaws, enjoying one posh takeaway a week and playing Dolly Dress Up as Sally “went” to the online sales to buy a couple of dresses for summer. I also “attended” an Old Vic streaming of Matthew Warchus’s theatre production of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, a play I know well having acted in it at university. The shifting perspectives of truth and memory, of creative performance and religion, of birth, death and sacrifice, of emigration and loyalty to country, relationships and self – all Friel’s rich and potent themes were played tenderly and truthfully by Michael Sheen, Indira Varma and David Threlfall, actors at the heights of their powers. Counterbalancing the brain-flexing profundities of Faith Healer have been other cultural delights, including the ongoing revisit to ER, Bridgerton and the new season of Call My Agent, as well as more Talking Shakespeare from the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The cast of Faith Healer, Bridgerton, ER, Call My Agent and images of Harriet Walter, one of the "guests" in the RSC's Talking Shakespeare.

Boldly beaming in from America

During lockdown, Patrick Stewart’s generous, tender and muscular readings of The Sonnets kept my brain (and heart) entertained on youtube so I looked forward to him “Talking Shakespeare” with Greg Doran but, in fact, like many of the speakers, the range of his ideas were so vast that the 60-minute chat could easily have been the first in a series. He disarmed Greg Doran instantly with a sincere cri de coeur from America: “How it does my heart good to see your Warwickshire face…..” and began with a tribute to his English teacher, Cecil Dormand, from Mirfield Secondary School, who had dropped copies of Merchant of Venice on his class’s school desks and insist they were going to act the play, not read it. Mr Dormand planted the seed in Stewart’s Yorkshire head that he should consider becoming a professional actor and decades later they are still in touch. Apparently, his ex-teacher is not particularly a fan of Science-fiction, though has loyally watched the 178 episodes in 7 seasons (and 4 films) of Star Trek: The Next Generation starring his ex-pupil as Captain Jean-Luc Picard; and thinks, but isn’t sure, that he has seen seven of the X-Men movie franchise for a sight of Professor Charles Xavier. (The latter information is from a Yorkshire Evening Post interview with Mr Dormand, rather than the Talking Shakespeare series.)

Greg Doran interviewing Patrick Stewart, Harriet Walter, David Suchet and David Tennant

Eros, thou yet behold’st me?

Patrick Stewart remembered auditioning for the Royal Shakespeare Company on a rainy Sunday evening in early November, 1966. It was a struggle to get in the building and he offered his Henry V speech on a totally empty stage to Peter Hall, John Barton and Maurice Daniels.  John came up to the edge of the stage after Henry V – and suggested he try it a completely different way. It was then the penny dropped about the need to be flexible and responsive when acting, something he also expanded on towards the end of his interview when describing his working relationship with Ian McKellen. Stewart described the RSC as his “grad school” and is still grateful that one of his earlier directors was Peter Brook. Stewart gave insights into film acting with advice from Rod Steiger (“you just need to think…. the camera photographs thoughts….”) and an enthusiastic appreciation of Shakespeare’s language, particularly the ordinarily worded moments (“Oh, she’s warm…”) that tap into a time-defying humanity. “Be Fearless” was the knight’s main advice to younger actors. The distinguished theatre critic, Michael Billington, argued that Patrick Stewart’s performance as Antony was one of the best Antonys he’d seen in decades, so it was also a great privilege to eavesdrop on the Cleopatra from that production, Harriet Walter.

Another of The Greats

Like Patrick Stewart (who also discussed in some depth his interpretation of Antony, his chilly Prospero, his political Claudius and his isolated Shylock), Harriet Walter had plenty to say and could have filled six episodes of Talking Shakespeare. Patrick Stewart revealed he was writing a memoir and Harriet Walter is already a significant contributor to anthologies about acting in Shakespeare and the sole author of

• Other People’s Shoes: Thoughts on Acting and
• Brutus and other heroines

Both books reflect on Walter’s long stage career having played extensively in Stratford-upon-Avon and at the National Theatre and interpreting Ophelia (at the Royal Court), both Helenas from All’s Well That Ends Well and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lady Percy, Imogen, Portia, Viola, Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, Brutus, Henry IV, Prospero. The latter three, of course, are usually played by male actors but Harriet Walter has presented brilliant interpretations of those characters and paved the way for many other casting directors to think more boldly about what is possible in the art of theatre. Shakespeare wasn’t a “given” in her childhood but at drama school a bullying lecturer pushed her in the various different ways Hermione’s speeches could be acted in The Winter’s Tale and she learned a great deal playing Ophelia in Richard Eyre’s production of Hamlet with Jonathan Pryce (who famously conjured the ghost of Old Hamlet from his own imagination….) Having learned languages at school, Walter loved working with Cicely Berry at the RSC on how textual meaning is carried in sound, rhythm and heartbeat as much as word definition. John Barton taught her the art of putting across an argument and using speeches to shift the ground of your character and appeal to the other characters onstage and the audience. It’s remarkable that such a prestigious stage performer (and teacher, through her projects and writings) should also have such a range of film and TV work, including Star Wars, Killing Eve, Talking Heads, Succession, The Crown, Belgravia, and Downton Abbey. She concluded with insightful comments about the complexity of Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well and gave an impromptu reading of Helena’s famous speech beginning

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie

Patrick Stewart and Harriet Walter in various guises with appearances by Ian McKellen, Antony Sher, David Tennant and Jonathan Pryce

Two Davids

David Suchet and David Tennant talks

David Suchet and David Tennant with, among others, Judi Dench, Ben Kingsley, Catherine Tate and Alexandra Gilbreath

It was the Rainbow gave thee birth

Political change for the good of civilisation, skinny Prosecco, home-baked bread, cookies and parmesan biscuits - also good for civilisation!

Watching woods fill up with snow

In the past fortnight there has been “too much weather” – bright blue skies, dull dark skies, gales, rain bursts, floods, mud pools, mud slides and snow. “It must be beautiful this time of year – all that snow!” So, I here offer some images of the woods and meadow near me, blanketed in snow. I have posted before about Robert Frost’s famous poem about stopping by woods on a snowy evening. This year, during Lockdown 3.0, there has been plenty of time to stop and stare (copyright W H Davies) at the lighting effects on the snowy crystals on the bare branches

Photos by Emily

I also love a quiet place

On one walk a miracle occurred: across a pond, above some reeds, a blue streak caught our eyes. We stood still, stared and waited. And there it was – one of my life ambitions fulfilled – a kingfisher in the wild. And, yes, it fished. And flapped. And bobbed its head. And perched. And stood. And streaked down into the pond again and back again to settle on its vantage point. It kingfished. And haunted. The last verb is inspired by Supertramp poet, W H Davies, who I’ve mentioned and quoted before. His poem below about a kingfisher is one I learned in primary school and later used as a teacher with Year 7 classes because it efficiently illustrated the use of archaic vocabulary and syntax, repetition, half rhyme, alliteration, assonance, simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia – and even more sophisticated poetic techniques – all in one lovely-sounding 18-line package.

The Kingfisher

by W H Davies

It was the Rainbow gave thee birth,

And left thee all her lovely hues;

And, as her mother’s name was Tears,

So runs it in my blood to choose

For haunts the lonely pools, and keep

In company with trees that weep.

Go you and, with such glorious hues,

Live with proud peacocks in green parks;

On lawns as smooth as shining glass,

Let every feather show its marks;

Get thee on boughs and clap thy wings

Before the windows of proud kings.

Nay, lovely Bird, thou art not vain;

Thou hast no proud, ambitious mind;

I also love a quiet place

That’s green, away from all mankind;

A lonely pool, and let a tree

Sigh with her bosom over me.

What I do is me: for that I came

On the day I saw the kingfisher I also thought of one of my obsessions – one of the most brilliant poets in the English language: a poet who led a fascinating life and wrought poems like a Christ-loving-pagan blacksmith hammering golden swords whilst wrestling with fiery demons in the tattered and billowing cloud of God’s abundant, undulating duvet…. Yes, he’s a hyperbolic wordsmith, that Gerard Manley Hopkins – what a guy! Any road up, he wrote a sonnet about all things expressing their own selves, being themselves, expressing themselves (What I do is me: for that I came) and although the second half of the sonnet gets profoundly religious, he starts with three ordinary sounds: a bell, a string on a musical instrument and a stone dropped down a well; as well as two startling sights: the flaming glimpse of a dragonfly and the fiery lick of a kingfisher.

Kingfisher, Dragonfly, Stone, String, Bell

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same….

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same. Snow falls. Kingfishers fish. Poets distil. What I do is me: for that I came…. We are, as people say, human beings not human doings…. So stopping, standing and staring at snow on the bare branches of trees, or watching a kingfisher haunting a lonely pool, or pausing, breathing and resting – that kind of time-wasting is not time wasted. The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.