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Fiona Buffini talks to Assistant Director, Gemma Fairlie, about her experience of directing the RSC's 2004 regional touring production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Click on the questions below to read her responses.
Q: What were your impressions of the play when you first read it?
Q: How did you settle on your concept?
Q: What's at the heart of the play?
Q: How was it working on one of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays? What were the advantages of that? What did you find the problems were?
Q: You added certain scenes to the play as well, and there was some editing. Where and why did you feel that was necessary?
Q: What were your working methods in rehearsal?
Q: How did you decide on your design, and what were the problems working towards being in the mobile auditorium and having two shows that had to tour?
Q: How did you decide on casting? What were the problems in having to cast for both shows, and what were you looking for within the cast?
Q: How did you approach the problem of Proteus's changeable affections?
Q: What about the issue of the rape in the play?
Q: What about the end of the play, and the fact that you've got a lot of things happening in a very short space of time?
Q. What were your impressions of the play when you first read it?
Fiona:
My first impressions of the play were that it was an adventure story and a romance. And I felt very clearly that it was about two young men going from one place to another place that is completely different, and having a great big adventure there. That was where I started from. Very soon after that I landed on the 1930s, being one of the great ages of mass migration, and also being a time when two ages collided, when you had the remnants of Victorian England in old stately homes and estates, and the thriving modern city growing up as well. Something that’s very clear in the play is the division between the rich and the poor, which also fits in very nicely with the 1930s idea.
Shakespeare is constantly moving the reader and the audience on, and I think that energy was a very clear first impression of the play and this energy fits very well with the energy of a jazz age city.
Another first impression would be that it’s not a complicated piece. In the writing there is one plot and not really any subplot. It’s about the fortunes of four young people. It’s very clear and pure. Also there’s the fact that in the world of the play the virtues of the young triumph over the virtues of the older, the more corrupt, the more politically aware. And I think that’s a very beautiful thing about the play, that love does triumph, and constancy triumphs, and innocence and naivety triumph over the forces of darkness. So I was very excited on my first reading of the play.
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Q. How did you settle on your concept?
Fiona:
I think what I’ve just been talking about, the fact that love triumphs, means you have to give the play a setting where that is possible. To me one of the most romantic eras of all time is the 1930s. There were so many things going on in the world, but there were also all these wonderful Hollywood films about people coming to the big city. It’s all about future and possibility and romance. I look at those 1930s films, and I buy the happy ending, because I’ve suspended my modern disbelief in those things, because it happened then. And I knew the play had to be set in the past, so to me the 1930s was the perfect setting. In a strange kind of way it’s one of the last ages of innocence, after the Second World War, certainly Western Europe, woke up to all the darkness that was possible – I think that was when Europe and America grew up. But I think in the 1930s the western world was still quite innocent.
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Q. What's at the heart of the play?
Fiona:
It’s multi-layered. I think what’s at the heart of the play for me, is a universe that is benevolent where you know that the good are going to triumph over the not so good – it’s about redemption, I think. I think that’s a very important thing in the play. Constancy triumphs, and the mistaken, the wicked, even the slightly naughty are forgiven by the play, because I think at the heart of the play there is a belief that human beings are fundamentally good.
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Q. How was it working on one of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays? What were the advantages of that? What did you find the problems were?
Fiona:
I found no disadvantages, personally speaking. I found it incredibly liberating to work on a play that not many people know – and a play that I don’t know. So I’ve been absolutely just as creatively free as I would be working on a new play
Something I have found a problem is other people’s attitudes towards the play, and I’ve fought like a tiger against this throughout the production. There is an idea about The Two Gentlemen of Verona that it is a sort of prologue to his greater writing. And I disagree with that, I think the play stands up on its own. And the difference between the 'Two Gentlemen' and some of the plays, something like Hamlet – it’s the difference between a seventeen-year-old boy and a forty-five-year-old man. A forty-five year-old man has experience of lies, has had his existential crisis or is indeed having his existential crisis, and is wondering about the meaning of life. A seventeen-year-old boy, on the other hand, is at the beginning of his life. And that’s what this play represents. It’s about possibility, future, hope, excitement and a belief that everything’s going to be OK, which is what you’re like when you’re seventeen. And I don’t think that’s minor – I think its major – I think that’s part of the human development.
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Q. You added certain scenes to the play as well, and there was some editing. Where and why did you feel that was necessary?
Fiona:
I’ve added two scenes that aren’t in the play at all, which are our street scenes. They are not textually based, but I wanted the audience to experience Valentine’s excitement of arriving in a new city. He’s never been in a city before and it’s a huge plot leap from leaving Verona at the end of Act I Scene 1 to the next time we see him in the text when he’s already in love with Sylvia. We don’t know who Sylvia is or the world that she inhabits. I believe very strongly that in Shakespeare plays things shouldn’t always make sense, and that the writer is able to bring his audience with him in a way that many modern writers aren’t. So I didn’t want it to totally make sense, but some scenes were so appealing to me that I wanted to see them, so I put them in. In terms of cutting the play we’ve cut very little, apart from some of the more obscure jokes in the comedy scenes – in the scenes, for example, between Proteus and Speed (Act I Scene 1) and some of the bandiage between Launce and Speed towards the end of the first half, in Act III Scene 1. I’ve pared those down. And I have also slightly rewritten Eglamour’s story. In the text he agreed to go with Sylvia on her elopement, on her travel to Valentine, and in the text it’s not clear why he abandons her. And I’ve tried to explain that scene in the form of a fight scene.
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Q. What were your working methods in rehearsal?
Fiona:
The play’s the thing. That’s where it all starts. All of us in the room are there to serve the play. I like to work collaboratively. I have very clear ideas about the play myself, but they don’t work unless the actors are living the play. I see my role as helping the actors towards the text, and helping the audience towards the text, because actually in performance the relationship is between the actors, the text and the audience. What I’ve tried to do in rehearsal is to take the play very seriously – I haven’t treated it as a light comedy. Everything that happens in the play matters to everybody in it. So throughout rehearsals I’ve been encouraging the actors to take their predicaments seriously, however preposterous they might seem, to remove judgement in terms of ‘my characters’ bad’, ‘my character’s good’. You’ve just got to play the text. If the actors believe in it then so will the audience.
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Q. How did you decide on your design, and what were the problems working towards being in the mobile auditorium and having two shows that had to tour?
Fiona:
Initially it seemed impossible. David’s design concept for Julius Caesar and my design concept for 'Two Gentlemen' seemed absolutely remote. David’s doing modern industrial bleakness and I’m doing 1930s romance. How do those two things meet up? We knew we had to share certain elements of the set, being the floor and the back wall, and I think the design we’ve settled on serves both plays extremely well. For 'Two Gents' the challenge was creating three different universes. We have the universe of Verona, which is a kind of 1930s country house intimacy and stagnation, followed by the wild world of Milan. Both on the street and at Court this is a very sophisticated and energised world. This is followed by the world in which the play ends, the world of the outlaws, only referred to in the text as a hill outside Mantua. So we adapted it to be a forest. The action is very fast-moving and flowing so I’ve tried to be as simple as possible. For the world of Verona we are in a sepia world of browns and yellows and muted colours. It’s a very warm world, but also a very stagnating world. In Milan we’re in black, white, grey and red. It’s very sharp. For the outlaws the staging is very simple and achieved through dappled greens and shadows. Each of our three separate universes are achieved both musically and through the lights. The music is the big signifier of where we are, the emotional universe we’re in, as well as the physical universe.
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Q. How did you decide on casting? What were the problems in having to cast for both shows, and what were you looking for within the cast?
Fiona:
The usual – very good actors. I saw many, many good actors, some were just perfect.
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Q. How did you approach the problem of Proteus's changeable affections?
Fiona:
It is difficult in the play that Proteus is totally in love with one woman and then is totally in love with another woman. Now if he is in the same environment for the whole of the play that becomes far less forgivable than if he is in one environment at the beginning, a very sheltered, claustrophobic and dead universe, and then he goes to the most exciting place in the world. I think Proteus falls in love with the city, falls in love with the lifestyle, and therefore falls in love with Sylvia. She’s a star, she’s the most famous person in Milan. I think he forgets his roots – I think he forgets who he is, for the duration of the Milan scenes, and then comes back to himself in the forest. So that was something I bore in mind.
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Q. What about the issue of the rape in the play?
Fiona:
Well, it’s in the writing. Proteus says to Sylvia that if she won’t have him, after he’s been so reasonable, he’s going to take her by force, which is a difficulty to any woman, never mind a modern twenty-first century woman. That’s a difficulty in the play – how do we retain sympathy with Proteus? My personal belief about Proteus is that even if he was allowed to carry on he would not be able to go through with it.
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Q. What about the end of the play, and the fact that you've got a lot of things happening in a very short space of time?
Fiona:
I’ve got no problem with it whatsoever. I did when I first read it. I thought a lot happens in fifty lines. The Duke comes on, everyone is forgiven, and it’s a happy ending. And I thought ‘is this not preposterous?’ But actually, given the energy of the play and given everything that happens in the play, given that it’s about love, anything can happen. Given that the four protagonists are young, that’s absolutely not a problem for me any more. I think it’s a strange thing in the play that the Duke pops up at the end, but what I’ve tried to do is create an environment where the Duke also is out of his depth, just in the same way that the lovers are. The Duke and Thurio roll up at the end of the play, but they’ve met the outlaws who have stripped them of all their clothes. They arrive on stage in their underwear, and they are as vulnerable and as open to change as everybody else in the play.
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