Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Theatre director and former artistic director of the RSC, known for staging every play in Shakespeare's first folio.
On the island
Eight records
Nathalie Stutzmann, Philippe Jaroussky, Orfeo 55 Orchestra
It celebrates diversity, it celebrates difference, because it's from his opera Giulia Cesare, and it's a male and a female voice. But I suspect you may not immediately distinguish which voice is which. It is the moment when Cornelia Pompey's widow and her stepson Sesto lament the death of Pompey. It's plungent, beautiful Baroque music, but the way those two voices interact is exquisite.
At the same time as Dactari came out, a film arrived at the ABC in Fishergate in Preston, and my parents took me to see it, and it changed my life. And the music for the film, the score, was by John Barry, who later wrote all those, well, I think who had already written all those James Bond themes and things. I bought the record and the sheep music. So this is Born Free, sung by the golden voice of Matt Monroe.
Choir of Preston Catholic College, conducted by Harry Duckworth
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
So I'm sure, Lauren, there are better recordings of this particular piece. But this is for Richard, who fifty two years later is still my very best friend. And we are singing the treble line in Palestrina's Sikut Cervus.
I think I'll need something to dance to on the island. And I wasn't a great clubber, but I did love dancing. And this, in a way, felt it was about the celebration of the energy of that gay community.
Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
Paul Simon featuring Ladysmith Black Mambazo
this is of course celebrating that time, and it is the great Lady Smith Black Mambazzo singing with Paul Simon on his seminal, if controversial, album, Graceland, and this is Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.
Thomas Quasthoff, Berlin Baroque Soloists, conducted by Rainer Kussmaul
I felt at that juncture in my life, I felt a very lucky guy. And whatever happened next, I had been with the love of my life, I had been working on the greatest plays ever written with the greatest classical theatre company in the world, working with some spectacular talent. And I thought, you know, this is really about my gratitude and I guess my privilege at having that opportunity. So I've chosen Bach's Cantata. This is written for candlemass. So this is the moment when Mary and Joseph bring the child Jesus into the temple and St. Simeon takes the child in his arms and he says, I have enough, that God has allowed him to live to that point and that is enough in his life.
Andante from Piano Concerto No. 12 in A major, K. 414Favourite
Alfred Brendel, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
And Tony was suddenly diagnosed with cancer, with terminal liver cancer... one of the things that sustained us was music through that time. And so, this is a piece of music that we played a lot.
Mark Courtley, composed by Paul Englishby
This, in a way, is a song about retirement. This is a song about imagining what's next. And it is, of course, Shakespeare. So it's from The Tempest. And it is Ariel's song as he contemplates his liberty.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:32How many copies of the First Folio are out there and how many have you clapped eyes on?
Well, I have to say my sister Jo said to me, Let me get this straight, Greg, you're trying to see over two hundred copies. Of the same book. When you put it right back. So this is Shakespeare's first fairy, the first time that his collected works were were put together by seven years after his death by two friends, John Hemmings and Henry [Condell]... We think there may be seven hundred and fifty originally printed, possibly more than that. There is one census that says there are two hundred and twenty eight, but now there are two hundred and twenty nine because I found another whale.
Presenter asks
20:09After school, you went on to study English and drama at Bristol University. At that point, did you want to act, or had you started to think about directing?
Of both, my parents had very wisely said, you know, if the theatre is what you want to do, get yourself a degree to fall back on. And even my headmaster, Father Wren, in the only piece of career advice that any of my friends at the Catholic College ever remember getting, was he said to me, We're going to put you in for the Oxbridge exams, but because you do nothing but Shakespearean plays maybe you should think about doing English and drama at university... I read a piece of Flaubert, who says that most people end up in life doing what they do second best. And I thought, what do I do? I loved acting. But I knew that actually directing was for me, a much better job, much better role, because you had a view of the whole thing, and I loved that. So I decided that I would be a director, and then, lo and behold, I get a letter from the Royal Shakespeare Company asking me to audition for the nineteen eighty seven season.
The keepsakes
The book
Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609 edition)
William Shakespeare
many which I have hardly read, and I would love to get to know those
The luxury
There is a shelf of 35 albums that are full of sunshine and holidays and family and kids growing up and Tony and I
Presenter asks
25:39Your very first role at the RSC was Solanio in The Merchant of Venice, and Anthony Sher was playing Shylock. What were your first impressions of him?
Well, there's a scene in The Merchant where the the s the salads taunt a Shylock. The scene was that I had to you know, we were basically beating him up with sticks. And in the middle of that scene Shylock delivers the the astonishing speech, Hath not a Jew eyes. And he exploded with this sort of volcanic white hot intensity, and it was amazing to just be that close to it. And indeed, once we started performing, to be there every night. basically just fell in love with him.
Presenter asks
30:19You and Tony were known as G and T to your friends. How did you manage working together professionally and being a partnership at home? What were the boundaries?
We had to make very specific boundaries because we got it wrong, actually, in on Titus Andronicus. And I would get home and I would just need a gin and tonic and sit in the garden. The trouble is you lose your best friend if you're directing them you s or or being directed by them I guess. You lose the person where you can go home and go, Oh my god, how you know, that person in rehearsals is driving me mad or whatever. But well, we decided that we would when we were at home we'd not try not to talk about work.
Presenter asks
42:09Which passages of Shakespeare have you turned to since losing Tony, and are there any that you've avoided?
People were fantastically kind to me when Tony died. It was a huge outpouring of love and respect for his talent... In Richard II, there's a moment when the Duchess of Gloucester says about grief. She says, For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done. And I think that was something that was hard for people to understand in a way, that you know, you looked fine and you were doing stuff and and yet you were still falling apart in inside. He had written a diary... he wrote um what he called uh the dying diaries. He told me he wanted me to read them and for two years I just couldn't do it... Reading the diaries, his voice came back into the room, and his laughter, and I had forgotten how much we laughed. Philip Larkin says that what will survive of us is love and I now know that to be true. So the grief has gone through all the various stages that they say it'll go through, and every person dil finds that journey different. But for me The recognition of being blessed with what I had. We had thirty-five years together. And they were full of love and laughter and life.
Presenter asks
46:20What about the isolation on the island? You've spent your life working and enjoying the company of others. How will you be on your own?
I have since Tony died. I think I've learnt the difference between loneliness and solitude. So I'm okay in my with my own company. In the sun, I have my twin sister goes nut brown and I turn into a species of rhubarb. So I'm not looking forward to that bit.
“I do desire the reader's mouth To kiss the writer's ass.”
“I suddenly, you know, it was like suddenly I could do something that earned some kind of respect. So I have a lot to thank Shakespeare for in my life.”
“I felt this sense of a Catholic faith. But I also knew that from as early as I could remember I was gay. I knew that in my soul.”
“And he died in my arms. At the beginning of December. And he disappeared from my life and it was like it was like being torn in two.”
“Philip Larkin says that what will survive of us is love and I now know that to be true.”