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Q: Why did you want to direct Antony and Cleopatra?
I have always loved Antony & Cleopatra, but never wanted to do a big scale production of it in the main house. It's really a chamber play about an intimate relationship set against the backdrop of international politics. The Swan Theatre allows the epic and the intimate better than any theatre I know.
Q: Are you setting the play in Rome, complet with togas and so on?
I am adopting Shakespeare's setting of Rome and Egypt, and retaining the metaphor of an ancient world. I want the audience to draw their own parallels if they choose. To modernise the location for example might make the play seem too specific, deny its application to the more general, to the universal if you like.
Q: When you were casting Patrick Stewart and Harriet Walter, what did you hope they'd bring to the roles?
The play completely relies on the casting of the central roles, and until I was absolutely sure of them, I would not go ahead. Patrick Stewart returns to the RSC after a gap of 25 years. He was a great Enobarbus for both Trevor Nunn and Peter Brook. It's about time he had a stab at Antony, a role for which he is in many ways perfectly suited. Matching him as Cleopatra is Harriet Walter. Harriet and I have worked together several times, notably I directed her as Lady Macbeth and as Beatrice in Much Ado, both of which experiences now feel like we were just warming up to have a go at Cleopatra.
Q: What research did you do for the play?
We have pretty much one source for the play - Thomas North's translation of Plutarch which Shakespeare follows incredibly closely, sometimes almost word for word, as if he is writing the play with the text of Plutarch open next to him on the desk. However, where he diverges from the order of events, for example, it is always significant. The text in the first folio has no scene breaks at all, giving the play a breathless momentum. This is important to catch, and in the Swan - where you don't need scenery - will prevent any scene changes holding up the action. It's quite a long play, albeit less than a sonnet longer than Romeo and Juliet, and we are currently playing it at breakneck speed!
Q: You have directed several Shakespeare plays that deal with complicated relationships between couples (Much Ado, Taming of the Shrew, All's Well). What draws you to this particular area?
Antony and Cleopatra's relationship is extremely complicated. They are the George and Martha (from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) of the classical theatre. Plenty of back history, resentment, love and hatred, unfulfilled expectations, and shared fantasies, mutual mythologies to explore.
Q: You have not yet tackled a contemporary piece of work for the RSC - do you intend to? How do you feel new work fits into the remit of the RSC?
I have of course tackled contemporary work with Biyi Bandele's Oroonoko, Peter Barnes' play Jubilee and Derek Walcott's adaptation of The Odyssey, as well as Mike Poulton's adaptation of The Canterbury Tales. I admire the scope, the ambition of the playwrights in Shakespeare's day, and I have to say, directing the little known Jacobethan repertoire is exactly like working on a new play, and we approach them as if the ink was still wet on the page. Though of course I can't ask Fletcher or Jonson what they meant at a certain point, I can only surmise, and of course they can't be precious if I cut their lines! But, yes, I do want to do more new work, it is vital that we do new work alongside the classical, and as Donald Sinden once said, "Man cannot live by Bard alone"!
