Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Theatre producer known for running the Roundhouse, revitalising National Theatre overseas tours, and producing The Three Sisters and A Doll's House.
On the island
Eight records
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral': IV. Ode to Joy
whenever I'm in trouble, which is very often, I always, always hum the Ode to Joy, and everybody always says, Can you hear it? She's humming the Ode to Joy, put your flack jacket on.
Simon Preston, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
my next record is just a very happy memory, and I'd like to have this on my island. It's Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
When I was small I was always, always sung to sleep by my ma. With Alice Bluegown.
LazybonesFavourite
very difficult for me to choose the Paul Robeson,'cause I'd like the whole lot and we'd be here for a fortnight. I think the voice tells you about the man.
As You Like It: Rosalind and Orlando
Vanessa Redgrave and Ian Bannon
there has never been a Rosalind like her.
When I was small, like everybody else, um I didn't quite know the difference between life and death. And when people died, one thought they'd gone away, which makes one assume they may come back. So I thought that Kelly, the boy from Calawn, I was good at hearing words, and there's a wonderful line in it which says, seven feet is his height with some inches to spare, and he rides like a king in command, and I thought he might suit me quite well.
Johann Pachelbel, arranged by Ryudo Uzaki
I apologise to the purists because this is Patra Bell, but it's been treated by Nina Gauer, and it's the music that we had in the play Tango at the end of winter. And Alan Rickman played the leading role. I think he is a great actor. And he dies better than anybody. And he died to this music.
Ariel's Song of Freedom (from The Tempest)
two of my eight um come from the same source, Yukio Ninagawa. And it's really because my life changed when I met him.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:26Where do the feline morals come in [to the job of a theatre producer]?
Well, I'm afraid, like any other profession, ours does have its rather quaint members, and you have to be able to go out on the market place and fight a battle that you wouldn't perhaps … got to cajole, you've got to persuade.
Presenter asks
7:18Why should an English audience go and watch a play in a foreign language that they can't speak?
I believe that if you have something spluttering into your ear, you don't hear the voice. Now to hear Chekhov in Russian is pretty staggering. I'd rather not hear an English voice telling me what it's about. In Bergman's Hamlet, to hear those words in that extraordinarily difficult language, I found very exciting, and so do a lot of other people.
Presenter asks
10:57Tell me about wanting to be a priest.
When I was small, I was very affected by going to Mass and my family are Catholic. And I loved it, and I like the smell. Incense is great. And the frock is lovely. And of course I was not being a religious at that time, so I never wanted to be a nun. But I just thought this was rather good, a big audience, everything.
The keepsakes
The book
Thomas More
I read it when I was seventeen at school. I've met a lot of other people who read it round about that time, six or sixteen or seventeen, and you don't read it again, but you keep remembering bits of it.
Presenter asks
17:29How did you rescue the Roundhouse?
Well, I I was actually put there um by Anthony Field, who was the finance director of the Arts Council. … And it was a mess. And I elected to put on, shocked everybody, forty rock concerts in a row. … and trudged up and down this bar in Wellington's'cause the place was a swill with beer, and we paid our debts. It was as simple as that.
Presenter asks
29:01How are you going to be different as the Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford?
Um well, the first difference would be that I um [am] a woman. Um they're all traps. Um I was very nervous about accepting this, and did say to Cameron, every time somebody does something because of vanity it is normally a mistake. I must think about it very seriously. And then I thought, yes, perhaps I can do something. It will be quite useful. Um I can talk. About if I can do it, God knows anybody can, so I should give you all hope.
“It must be in your head if this is the very last thing I do. Do I want it to bid? Do I want the am I proud of it? And I have been terribly lucky. I've been very privileged.”
“I don't want to be liked. I want to be loved. I don't want to be adored, but I want to be loved.”
“It is, since that time, it is the most extraordinary book. It was written 500 years ago, but it is a book about the future.”