Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Theatre director who as RSC artistic director staged celebrated A Doll's House, King Lear, The Master Builder and toured the provinces.
On the island
Eight records
Mir ist so wunderbar (from Fidelio)Favourite
And for me, it's probably the most perfect piece of music ever written, I think. It also encapsulates for me what opera can do, that nothing else can do.
Harry Mortimer and his Brass Band
My father was a was a was was a South African of Cornish origins, and of course brass bands Cornwall, it's it seems a rather a nice choice.
All the world's a stage (from As You Like It)
And for me he is the quintessential Shakespearean actor.
Bob Dylan, one of the great icons of the nineteen sixties. A very, very heady time for my generation.
Dove sono i bei momenti (from Le nozze di Figaro)
Felicity Lott with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink
This is Mozart, the great force of sanity in the world, I think. This is the marriage of Figaro. This is the Countess's Aria Dovesona, when she's lamenting what's happened to her marriage.
Van Morrison and The Chieftains
I got together with my wife towards the end of the eighties and I was directing The Three Sisters in Ireland and we played this all the time on the car when we were driving all around Ireland.
Grand Chaconne (from The Fairy Queen)
Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie
Just before I took over the RSC as artistic director, I had a few months, a few very happy months, out in the big wide world, and I went to the Aix en Provence Festival and directed Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen.
Long Live the Mountains (Finale from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
Because of my children, this is the first play that my daughter Rose and my son Jude ever saw in their lives, and I'd like this song to remember them by.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31How does [the theatre] make us better citizens?
I think the the answer to that is that the theatre poses moral choices and I think it equips the audience to address those moral choices and to make up its own mind. And that seems to be the centre of democracy.
Presenter asks
6:05Why was your father such a brilliant undertaker?
He was, on the one hand, a very strong man, and on the other hand, a very compassionate man. And I think he understood ceremony. I think he understood the need for ceremony in grief. ... He was wonderful with the grieving. ... I think people trusted him with their grief.
Presenter asks
23:07Why is having a company so important to you?
I think it goes back to Shakespeare. ... a group of actors working over a period of time on several texts, very often in different theatres, very often in different towns ... brings about um a working method, a harmony, a level of achievement, which I think is very, very hard to replicate ... In any other system.
The keepsakes
The book
Frances Yates
It's a wonderful book about Renaissance and Greek memory systems to enable me to conjure up in my mind all the things I might otherwise forget.
The luxury
A case or two of white Burgundy (Le Montrachet 1996)
I'm hoping there'll be some rather tasty seafood, so I'd like a case or two of white burgundy, maybe a le Montraché, ninety-six perhaps.
Presenter asks
Why do you think people felt so strongly [about you taking the RSC out of London]?
It was principally the critics, to be honest. I think that's partly the metro-centricity, if you like, of the British press. London is the centre of the universe. And I think also they were surprisingly short-termists about it. They couldn't see that a process of change was going on here and that change can actually be a healthy, progressive thing.
“the theatre poses moral choices and I think it equips the audience to address those moral choices and to make up its own mind. And that seems to be the centre of democracy.”
“the sound of my childhood in fact is is the sound of is is the sound of funeral hymns.”
“I've always known that you have to go through things to go around them or to avoid them very often leads to poor art.”