Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Controversial theatre director who faced trial over his National Theatre work and founded the English Shakespeare Company.
On the island
Eight records
it's a memory from school days. In fact all my pieces I I'm afraid to say are rather ham because I decided I was going to remember my life on this desert island. And Louis Belson and Skin Deep was a piece that we used to sit around in uh various drawing rooms at school and try and remember the drum riff that uh it constitutes the centrepiece of it.
really it's reminding me of all the days I used to busk in in Paris and Scandinavia and Mexico earning money, playing three chords and all the Buddy Holly numbers.
The Rocky Road to DublinFavourite
really it's a tribute to Luke Kelly, who's now dead, because I've never seen a group of people smash themselves to pieces on the altar of drink like those boys did. And I used to be their roadie for a bit, travelling up and down Ireland with them, hauling them basically out of the pubs and sort of apologising to audiences for them being an hour late.
it reminds me of a wonderful flat that uh four of us used to share in Dublin in it used to be called 208, 208 Rathmines Road, which uh I shared with Terry Brady and Ralph Bates, both of whom as I say uh have made their ways uh in an extraordinary fashion and uh we used to plays for breakfast.
it reminds me of all those wonderful times over in the west of Ireland in Connemara and Kerry where my wife's father comes from. It's just the mists and the mountains and the light above all and Roching Do does that for me.
it really is was the first sort of Welsh song that I almost knew the words to through the choir that used to sing in uh the Shoemaker's Arms in uh Pentu Bach.
it's um from my first acquaintance with Lottie Lenya, which was actually in a bar in Munich where I studied for a spell, and it also reminds me of the days in Leicester and Newcastle, where I did two productions of the Thrupney Opera
Requiem in D minor, K. 626: Sanctus
Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini
once again a memory, I suppose, of my Leicester days and and uh friends there, uh Bob and Susie Meekle, and Bob who runs the music department at Leicester University, and in whose choir Patsy used to sing, and the last thing she sang was the Mozart Requiem.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30Why did you choose this moment [to form the English Shakespeare Company]?
Well, it was partly accident and partly design. A few years ago, I decided I'd take a bit of a sabbatical from the National Theatre … and I hooked up with Michael Pennington … and we went to the Arts Council with a very minor project … And they said, No, what we want is something really large. If you've got something really large, then we'll be interested. So, we went back to them with something really, really large, which was Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part Two, and Henry V. And they jumped around, gave us some money … Suddenly, there it was. I mean, in no time, we'd actually formed a company and were on the road.
Presenter asks
4:44What relevance is there, do you see, in the Henry trilogy to today?
I don't think that politics in this country have changed an awful lot since those days. The divide that there is, the social divide between North and South, or the Irish problem, or the problem with devolution in Wales and Scotland. … And then Henry V is about uniting the country behind a war of expediency, a political war of expediency … and uniting the country behind that in a patriotic effort and thereby eradicating a lot of the dissident elements that there are in society. Now I find obvious parallels in that with today's situation in this country.
Presenter asks
11:45The keepsakes
The book
Hugh Johnson
I decided I wanted to look at all those wonderful wines and remember the taste and just savour the moments that I've had in various bars throughout the world.
The luxury
I decided that the senses uh had got to be pounded to, so I'd remember wine and I'd taste marmite, and I'd thought fifty pounds I could just have a finger a day and Keep the taste of toaster marmite going.
Why did you choose an Irish University [Trinity College, Dublin] to start with?
Well, it was a complete accident in a way. I wanted to go uh abroad. I was l I was late uh to do some exams for Oxford and it would have meant waiting a year. And so I tried to get some money to go to Heidelberg or the Sorbonne … and nobody would do that. So I thought, well, I'm not going to go to any English university. And a friend of mine at school had written a letter to Trinity saying that he'd got uh three A levels and could he have some application forms and they wrote back by return of post saying just turn up with £100. So I wrote the same letter and got the same reply back. I thought, well, any university that could do that is worth its salt. So over I went and it was the best thing I ever did.
Presenter asks
18:00What did you make of [Peter Brook]?
Well That was really one of the luckiest things that happened to me in a way. … my association with him was very, very close for several years and really he was a confirmation of so many things that I'd come to understand and believe made up theatre. … in Ireland I developed ideas on the physical aspect of theatre as opposed to just the verbal and was fascinated by Eastern theatre, Japanese, Chinese, mime, acrobats, circus, everything that went into the European tradition if you like. And when I met Brooke that was a confirmation that these things were indeed a very integral part of theatre and it wasn't just a verbal literary pursuit as a lot of people would have me believe.
Presenter asks
22:03Was it a frightening experience for you [being prosecuted for 'The Romans in Britain']?
Yes, it it yes, it was. Um it it affected me more than I thought at the time, simply because I never really believed that it was happening or was going to happen. But the further that the the the whole thing went on, the more ludicrous it became, and the the more real became the danger that in fact I I would end up having been found guilty under this subsection of the nineteen fifty six Sexual Offences Act … And when it was called a draw, sort of halfway through, and disentangled, it was with a profound sense of relief.
Presenter asks
26:52Why should you bother [with theatre]? Why should we bother?
Well, theatre for me is an instrument of social change. Uh I have very strong views on how I think society should be and what I would like it to be educationally, socially, politically. And the only way I can actually put forward those ideas coherently, as far as I can see, is through theatre. … I try and use theatre in order to to try and and say some things that that I hope will interest people and finally either enthuse them or anger them. I don't mind which as long as they're positive about it.
“I was turned off Shakespeare at school because we used to spend sort of one whole term on one soliloquy of Hamlet. In fact, for twelve years I left Shakespeare altogether.”
“I think we're more than a little bit insulin. I think we're very xenophobic. Where theatre is concerned. Well, where the arts are concerned in general … we do guard our citadels and and try and cling on to our our somewhat now tatty classical heritage. I mean very jealously. And we don't open the doors to influences from abroad.”
“I'm a Shakespeare lover, not a hater. I analyze those texts down to the last syllable to ensure that the decisions I'm making are not arbitrary ones.”