Robert Icke and Andrew Scott in Conversation

however really thank you for coming out my name is Rob I'm the director of this and if you don't know who this is you probably haven't been yeah see what comes out so someone had the idea when I didn't interview while back and Andrew read it and said that he could get more out of me and ten short answer questions then the interview had got out of me in and so then we made this deal that we would do ten short answer questions and someone didn't do it so we've only got one set of questions that we're both gonna answer yeah yeah yeah I think so just like they're not really seeing with Hamlet they're just to kind of get us started to make us feel relaxed um that you feel relaxed and then we will talk about Hamlet and then at the end we'll take some questions from you guys Richard or Judy I would go for Judy and I'll tell you why I think Judy has has been upstaged slightly by her slightly more flamboyant partner but that doesn't mean she doesn't have her own flamboyance I think she's intelligent and I think she's probably very patient what about you I hear all of that I think I've gone Richard only because of risk that I feel like the energy thing with risk if you want an actor what job would you do I'd be a I know just to paint you what is your favorite non theatre related work of art I love david hockney specific i supposed to be la see all the LA stuff these drawings of his mom are beautiful I love his life drawings favorite childhood book what about you what's your answer to that what favorite nondating welcome you I mean in terms of narrative art I think it's probably at the moment it's kind of The Sopranos again because I'm really watching it yeah in terms of visual art I think I'd like if I could own one I don't Amane I don't a big water lily Monet were you just there yeah yeah properly amazing he built a this story that he built I didn't know that when I built the water that he's Marik we were having a whole moment about this about how it wasn't a lake that he painted it was that he decided he wanted to plant a lake and so designed and built a lake so there's something about how do you take your tea I don't drink tea or coffee as you well know not out of any you know highfalutin ideas I'd have a hot chocolate inspired by our current prime minister to resume what is the naughtiest thing you did as a child I remember saying for the first time in front of my my mom I remember really clearly we were in mayo on holidays and that's something to do with Rolo's do they still still sell Rollo's that's something not like anything as obvious as the last roll oh it's something to do around Lazaro but really cuting and we were inside my sense my stormed outside and it was raining I remember think this is really traumatic it was just getting really wish I didn't have anywhere to go I remember thinking this is apical I didn't get in any trouble weirdly for that I think cuz it was probably highly amusing even though this were on you and like if you'd sworn in your house would that I've been that sort of weird weird time around 13 14 15 when you start to sort of push it a bit then that'll become sort of acceptable it's a bit like not too strict but a lot to go straight to that dr. Cass Oh dogs and finally this would be a good segue HD favorite member of the royal family who's in the well do you know because um my sister is called Sarah and I'm called on drew so when Sarah and Andrew Prince Huntress check Ferguson where it getting married and they were sort of really sort of weirdly jolly weird they when they came out well you're probably a bit young but they they were sort of like so happy it's sort of wacky so I think I'll go for it Sarah Ferguson I saw her actually in the hotel we weren't meeting each other we disposable and you were like you're my favorite that's not a member of the royal family there was it I think issue she can communicate I don't know if she gave yeah my Irish meiosis is to make my lack of knowledge about yeah do you want to tell me your favorite before we do the member of the royal family at the moment it's the Queen purely because somebody told me a story about a week ago that she apparently was at a wedding at some very posh wedding and dancing queen came on and apparently the Queen said I like this song because I'd like dancing I'm almost certain that story isn't true but she's my favorite but we did we were just talking about this but we talked about the Queen quite a lot when we first started right yeah I talked about the Royals and what it meant to be royal and what the contest was because we started on this what feels not like an age ago yeah it was about two years ago supposed to do and we we'd sort of decided to work together yeah and then and but we hadn't decided on what play we would do and we talked about a few plays talked about The Glass Menagerie using Tennessee Williams play for the Shakespeare as well that might flop into the future rather than oh it was that lovely thing that happened where the conversation organically started to just settle over for a few meetings didn't it on yeah on this one yeah and we did talk about we did talk about the Princess Diana's funeral and those very startling images and what it means in a modern context it is quite an unusual thing because you know I come from a republic and we don't I do find the idea of having a royal family unusual in the sense that I mean I do see I just see its value in in a way but playing a prince is sort of kind of a hard thing to get a grip on but I do I do believe that everybody is is the same so the idea that there's a sort of perfect family doesn't sit easy with me particularly given like didn't we didn't grow up with things like that in Ireland but that's what this play is about is about the human being behind them that's right and I think the scrutiny is well bookings more important than the status yes the sense of being Celia says that he's the observed of all of the years and you do you think that that sense of what does it feel like to be watched and to be looked at the whole the plays were interested in yeah remembers looking together at the looking on YouTube of the footage of the funeral back in the way before we started yeah and that idea of like if you felt because I suppose there's two extraordinary things in one of those moments one is the public response to what happens when Diana dies and I sort of have a villain in England we find ourselves surprised by how much it turns out to mean my main memory has been a kid when Diana died was the sort of everyone being really surprised that how much of a huge deal it's alive and the whole country just shut down yeah but the second one is what does it feel like to be those two kids and they're your mom's died and to you it's your mom's died but there's also this whole mass in with a layer of it spread over the talk yeah but yeah I I feel like an I can sort of understand I understand a little bit in the past couple of years about scrutiny to a certain degree I mean I don't I'm certainly not followed around by Byam by paparazzi or anything left after thank God and Plus you know that's idea of being looked at a bit bit more than thought I was before I feel I feel very grateful having worked in the theatre and for such a long time before I had any of that because you do find and that's something I do think about in relation to how much I do think that that when somebody is looking at the unit particular way if you're not comfortable with what or what they're what they're what you're presenting them with it becomes if it can be very poor frightening and that's very fluid because some days it's Europe I'm okay with that and some days I'm really not like the way we all are and but but people can find those right understand do you think it sort of changes the nature of what you're able to get away with I do think it means you can't make mistakes I find it very hard to I think people can as you know the thing that drives me insane it makes me angry instead his rudeness and people being dismissive or or people being at rude in any way so I absolutely hold on to my right to be rude back when when people are rude to me or rude to people that I'm with throwing people out of the way or they just take if they want to take a photograph they just hand it to the person you're having lunch with there's anything in and also you know I wasn't I wasn't I wasn't I remember I did a play on Broadway with Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy and the culture over in HoN Broadway is very much that people go and want to get their play ball so and we have it a little bit here but it's certainly big over there and I remember so clearly come here in the stage door and people just pushing you pushing you out of the way to get to the to the famous person I do think it's very it's I do think it's very helpful it's been very helpful to me to have gone through all those years of having because you're able to decide quietly what you're able to do artistically I've never been ashamed of big corner myself an artist I think that sort of almost they say if someone's you say call yourself an artist now when you're an actor that's that there's some sort of I don't know but I think if there's absolutely no shame in that and I put in relation to Hamlet it's been it's been in a way it's been helpful it's been I think I would have a completely different experience had I played this when I was 30 I do not know because I do understand that I live a little bit more I suspect the play wouldn't it's a clever way of points takes on it isn't it for the right you think would it all be fine if this were just a normal family who were your family you know something about pointing the camera at them and the way the play does yeah and saying well I mean it's gonna be you know it's a big deal for anyone when their grandparents died but when the Queen dies that's gonna have massive like we're all gonna live through a different time yeah it's one of the things that the Armada where we started in mind based um you know we start we do this play to Charles the third that was kind of really all about that what is what are we all gonna mean to ourselves when the way things have been since 1953 is gone and a new thing starts yeah and of course that's what's happened in this play right mm that's you know as far as the text suggests old Hamlet's been around for a long time suddenly he's gone yeah and gone completely you know even the public version that he's bitten by a snake in the garden yeah is a total shock it's not an illness and a decline in that you know and I think the idea that there it's one thing that we talked about a lot during rehearsal is that the idea of communication within the family is very odd yes it doesn't feel like that there because everybody's going why don't you which happens in a lot of families you say don't say that I've said this to you but you know but this usually we don't train cameras on each other and you know they doing the extra and extremity in the play but I do think that's it shows that people certainly in this family have a real inability or lack of interest and speaking directly in an emotional way and I've said that a lot of it we talked a lot of it in the sense now he's just grieving that's to me once that's the way I can relate to him at the beginning of the play he's just grieving no more no less I think it's an extraordinary thing that's happened with his uncle and his mom but right now i partly think that us might be okay if he was just given a bit of time or if he was about to go we said oh yeah well to go let him go back to Wittenberg yeah he'd probably just get on with it because I thought the problem with living here is that you can't you know if you've lived here all your life since you were a child what's the play suggest you have you know you remember your ekend and the feast and things so this is sort of very neatly and very lightly touched and I think sense of what the previous 30 years of Hamlet's life have been like living in this place yeah but how can you ever escape the memories of how it was yeah you know it's exactly the same place living in the house you lived in with your ex or something that you just kind of go this is this is the same thing but with different cats yeah cuz you think I suppose we partly consciously and party I mean we never talked about making decisions about things like is he mad you know is the gods real yeah I think partly because the process we went through in the years leading up to starting rehearsals in January dissed you to just read the play which we got most excited about the bits where we didn't know yeah and the bits were there was a problem where you think well okay but if he's if he's mad then that might mean one thing and if he isn't that might mean a different thing but actually remember you think at one point what's the definition of mad mmm like when do you cross the line into mad and when does sad become mad yeah and there's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so yeah it's it's in it's in the play and you know which we should we should talk about the sort of famous play buzzer because it was you know you're talking about it we because the play is so famous so much of what's interesting and compelling about drama is the sense of I don't I really don't know what's going to happen and when the play is so famous as home that is you forget that we don't know that the ghost doesn't he could be in every scene for the rest of the play he could we don't know what he's going to say we don't know that a philia and Hamlet could make up we don't know that he's gonna say Kathy - nan we don't we don't know that in the closet what is things gonna be long isn't it that's the example one you've got to play makes no practice absolutely no preparation for his death and so we have this sort of buzzer that you did this thing of because it's so full of famous lines there you go the most important thing to to think but is what was the intention behind those lines and they certainly weren't about making the lines famous they were about making them truthful and authentic and that's what I think we tried to reclaim a little bit in this production did you feel a lot of this sort of I mean you done no professional Shakespeare like a tiny bit a little tiny bit not not in theater and so when we sort of said okay we're gonna do it and we stuff it depends on some dates I literally when you sort of thing doesn't make me feel nervous yeah it's been the biggest that's the thing we were just talking about it's it's it's been the biggest journey and the thing that I I really feel proud of um and very I feel very strongly about it that I suppose because I felt I don't a lot of plays have been in the theater for twenty years a lot of new plays and old plays and various different types of plays and I feel to a certain degree accomplished enough and not in that way but I definitely did think that there was maybe something within Shakespeare that I didn't possess because I don't really still understand entirely what I am beep antaria or I don't those kind of rules I find a little bit frightening because I didn't train but then I've always loved words and I've when I was a kid Louis fifteen or sixteen we used to do these Drama Camp competitions called the fashion Ireland and you would do excerpts from which of the third or Merchant of Venice or King John I loved them and I as a as a kid I had a an understanding of it even though I understood the rhythm of it and I understood that it was very active or you know I didn't understand what a baktun was what a bodkin was exactly and I think that's very important and for some reason maybe consciously or unconsciously I veered towards a new writing or stuff that away from Shakespeare or classical yeah yeah to a certain degree but now having done Tom this and really understanding that that of course it has a rhythm like all plays - but it's the most active stuff and pleasurable stuff to act it doesn't feel intimidating and I love the idea that there has been such a huge diversity of audiences of people who are genuinely going and I can I can genuine this isn't just pee or speak I genuinely feel that people understand even if they don't understand every word you understand the the rhythm and the feeling and so having done this for 20 maybe 20 weeks I feel like incredibly passionate about his his great genius and how how it shouldn't be kidnapped by me that there's a whole lot of a conversation about Shakespeare that has that in it even down to this like well he couldn't possibly have written the players because he didn't go to university and you think about the whole the whole thing has been claimed by a kind of academic and discipline yeah you know and having that moment in rehearsals were the first line of speak the speech speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you and saying I think like you could just say that to me so it just as if I was talking to you yeah and the way that that's normally done in British theatre at least is that we say hey speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you as if Hamlet's saying I I did it white when I read it all to you so can you take my line reading yeah and there's a sort of in in that I think really extraordinary you know weird chunk in the middle of a play in which the writer seems to address exactly what poetry doesn't appear you know the word verse doesn't appear the word iambic pentameter doesn't appearance know what that was yeah and it's strange to me I mean I understand it but I also find it really strange that we've allowed this writer you know as far as we know who never spent a single moment of his life thinking about things being published you know there's a Ben Jonson spent ages before we died getting his place together in the white editions so they could be beautiful before they'd survive him and Shakespeare's the collected Shakespeare is published seven years after his death by his mates yeah and they forget one and have to put it in so it isn't in the content page and it goes in and it isn't in there but you sort of you realize from that I think that the guy roll sheet music for actors yeah and was it was it was a practical person of the theatre and the audience and the way that those two things could interact in to relate yeah I'm I find itself strange we've turned it into a thing that if you say what is shake you know you go onto the street and somebody what if Shakespeare acting like and they'll kind of do exactly the thing that Hamlet's advice that the player says don't do that yeah and something that you said eyes always really like the way that you say well think you want which is the equivalent of us saying he isn't rather than he is not it's it's to collect realize it but now it's been turned into what think you armed which is a sort of weird way of said that actually has the absolute opposite of his intention first films when we sort of we sort of gift wrap gift wrapped it and sold it that's something that isn't for somebody else and it isn't for everybody it's just first and certainly and for me you know going into it because I I suppose because I haven't had I haven't it hasn't been part of my cultural life in the sense that I haven't studied it and so there's words in it he's the words in it are so beautiful I always think of this when he talks to Horatio and he says that word even it's just a man as my conversation coped with all so thou art even as just a man as aramid conversation well when he says the word coat and that yeah Horatio we know immediately you go Horatio Thoreau and so it's that there's certain there's certain keys and certain words that open up the whole feeling as well as the sense and also that hold the whole image of it that you go my conversate of all the people I've talked to you you're the one my conversation coped with the best as if like the practice of talking to other people as a matter of getting through yeah word choices extraordinary word choices this is so genius and you can say the word cope and every single person will go and of course you say the word fardels you know so I don't know from me that's that's a way in and even doing it into having done it so many times now I still think oh my god there's that word yeah he's it's I think with my peers well you're right it's kind of it's such a complex they're sort of like magic spell Shakespeare plays in that they they have a rhythmic Authority which is nothing really to do with the story like it feels like in any language you couldn't make those sounds and you'd go well that sounds like it's really saleable yeah and I sometimes it sort of makes me sad a lot that we pretend that that's not true yeah and we've invented this idea of vers speaking which I suspect he wouldn't have known what that was and because I don't really know what that is in terms of sometimes you get people saying things like I didn't think the vers speaking was very good and I always think I don't know what you mean by that yeah and and of course there's this crazy idea that you should stop at the end of every line for a little tea break which and and you know I kind of that is as bizarre to me as kind of taking a piece of mops are or an Eminem song and every four beats taking a break but you just you murder the rhythm of it you turn it into a kind of soporific lee repetitive with mick structure which the beauty of it is it isn't because you look at the soliloquies and actually half the time the sense of pause along off off the end of the lines into the next there yeah it's inarticulate you right he writes dialogue human the way human both absolutely expertly so to sort of reduce it into a sort of is is so it's just wrong it's just wrong remember you saying at one point when we were talking about the play within the play come and go cheetos company the my idea how that sit by me and he says no yeah but that i suppose that speaks a bit of the way when we approached it I thought the members ever having a conversation about deciding to approach it like this it was just sort of the way it happened no but it was always through character I do think there's a thing I think often the very last word in the sentence helps hmm I don't know that for somebody else could be completely different this is just from just from me and I do think the idea of antithesis is sometimes works that tough example that I use here comes what is this the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate Beauty into his likeness if you just say without a little if you don't show the antithesis of both those ideas and I don't think you get the full and I think that's sometimes helpful so there are things that are helpful but I suspect that's the same as in any plan you know Rogers have rid of old writers have rhythm and for some reason I wasn't very breathing I'm saying like you know if I were to think of Simon Stephens done a few this place or Mike Bartlett one right there were fifty books written this is the way you have to say Simon Stephens work yeah it would be terrible tragedy for Simon's work because the whole thing is uh would it would make us the absolute opposite of what is his intention which is well let's see what and people will have a different way of speaking I hope in 50 years they look at the way I speak this or the way we all speak this in this production I think that's a bit that's a bit you know I hope they do because the way we speak has to develop and in 2050 I hope that was a bit that was on fashion because it should yeah because our ways of speaking with music and the way culture develops you know rap didn't exist when Laurence Olivier was doing it hmm I don't know there's just all these things that we're just listening to every day that or do you know what I also think I think reality television you know this idea of high art and low art always sort of disgusts me I mean I don't know there's some things that are just you know trash television but they're worth it but there are things like what the bit at the beginning stages of when the famous Big Brother when Big Brother Big Brother came on and their beats somebody eating the sandwich in a bit badly let room in the gun I gotta tell that tomorrow what I think of it and there was they would cut to that in bed yes sleep without infrared camera then they go true because because they made drama out of something I'm not saying I'm not saying that's high art of night but it's compelling and the way that they speak in the way we would watch something the way you would watch a drama has to influence the way people what the way people absorb narrative experience you know what I mean so that stuff whether you would deem that as trashy or not and somebody has to be absorbed it's all sort of back to the famous play bizarre though isn't it it's like the centrality of if you watch a story you don't want the story to go exactly the way you know it'll go no like the pleasure of all stories is surprise you and so you know when you watch first dates or whatever you're you're looking for them to do something you didn't expect them to yeah and if it's all like a richard curtis moving and everybody just behaves along the tracks that will set up in the first five seconds that's kind of fine but you're not gonna tell your friends because it's just what you thought it was gonna do you and that's opposed is the other thing about shakespeare that and i never felt that more than when we had really young audiences but as in winter that week when there was a week of for free then being surprised by some of the corners in the story that's was just so exciting yeah because people actually don't know the play at all you can't my car this is that's the way we should treat the play opposite well that's why i mean that's my eyes when I first did Shakespeare I did it at home and something aunty's and I think we serve it and found out that like 85% wasn't that crazy of that audience didn't know the play yeah and we're coming in with no knowledge of the story which meant both that they didn't have any real respect for it okay let's see what this is like yeah if it's boring I'm going home yeah yeah but also they it made Yuri see the play because when you watch Midsummer Night's Dream in the bit where he gets turned into a donkey and has sex with her you the Northeast audience were like what is watching it and thinking actually they're totally right this is weird this is this is crazy and there's so many bits in in in Shakespeare which we have turned into either and you know remember we talked about this quite a lot for this didn't worry about like tragedies are sad therefore sad like I mean totally that it's such a funny play this it really is funny people you know there are things that are just so wishing about the way human human beings relate to each other and if there is no comedy or her likeness or love or any of the best things in life there is no tragedy if it's just coming at you you just see this you know moody day and going you know this is terrible really you think well no wonder you want to kill yourself I do too you mean you have to think what was it like before where was the life life what was it like the air and also the big thing I think in and this is a testament to you is that the play is called Hamlet and it's a great it's a great part for reading the poem for the person who plays how much but but but the other characters are really extraordinary well and I think the paying attention to the love between Gertrude and Claudius and the relationship between Lera T's and Ophelia and Polonius and the loss of their mother and what is what who are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in terminal what is their relation and just have all those because if they are vivid and brilliantly acted as they are in the play it makes the the the central character just they are big at the ambiguity of of of and the reliability of the central character comes in to come to question because if you think actually Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have a point they're just coming here to help out they're friendly they haven't done anything wrong and if they if the if the actors are stand up for their characters then then you go yeah I can I'm bad some people become gripped and that's one because people relate to it because it's not black and white authorities stock characters that we've you go there's Claudius he's he's a yes but we're supposed to feel nothing for him stock interpretations as well right that you kind of go and again it's kind of quite a lot of discipline to try and get your head out of this place but where you come to a plan like this and you're aware that there are certain colors people always paint certain walls didn't mean that you couldn't go Claudius is always bad go to it is often cold sometimes drak yeah Afilias normally just like left white on the sidelines and never feels like she kind of counted very much at least when I'd seen it an experienced and I suppose one of the things that I think he did very very naturally which I suspect is kind of a thing you would do on a new plant in the same way is to go where have I come from but what was it like before yeah and and I always remember that there was an afternoon we what was quite a day oh we're supposed to be rehearsing the closet scene with Julia and we never said a word of the scene because I think we started on what do you think that relationship was like before and then that was four hours yeah and we never said a word of the scene yeah remember you going home going that was a really useful afternoon slightly terrified I do think there's I think that's absolutely true because you think well one of the reasons he's such an extraordinary writer is because he has the ability to see the same situation from lots and lots of area and if you are you know I think the play remains you know the great questions in the play about did Claudia's kill his brother is it the ghost reel is Hamlet mad and like the way you answer only one of those three effects the other two and fundamentally shifts the whole story yeah and I think in all three cases we have tried who knows how successfully what we've tried to kind of gift the audience to those problems and say the problems are actually more fun than if we solve them for absolutely and so here's our version you know he's crazy he's crazy or he's not crazy and like it's what's fascinating about that is if you treat it like that you end up in a place of going okay so if I'm Claudius why would I kill my brother if I did and the only reason to kill someone's brother you know the only reason to kill your brother T and then marry the wife is presumably if you know that the wife would marry you before you killed your brother if that makes sense so there's sort of there's history implied even in the accusation of that quote never mind the fact of it and suddenly you start to see a different story and you start to think what does Claudius been doing in this palace when it was Hamlet and dad Hamlet and mom and the Polonius family and presumably he's never married and has never had kids and has just been living like one of those worlds we can't you know like not not on the front of the papers but absolutely there and still is a person and still has a full emotional life and still has things he cares about yeah and people that he loves and yet you know it the the way we often treat the players to kind of treat it as if it doesn't have any roots that go deeper than its earthy those times and playing that doing the play the word is ugly feels some of the scenes I find quite ugly because they're they they're upsetting a lot of stuff with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern because it's about friendship and it's about people code you know and it's the brilliance of the writing because you feel like this cuz I can still be absolutely can have the courage of my convictions in the as a of the character's convictions but I can also see where they're coming from as well the well I'm you fail in life yeah I think you're just always doubting and it's it's very complex as what um and as it's something he said while I was really tired at one point during the first run but the character sort of he can take tiredness you can sort of take whatever where you are hmm that's a sign you know it doesn't fall apart if it's not brittle is it and there's like lots of routes through the map you're nuts that's kind of extraord you and also I think gives everybody I always feel this about Shakespeare that it's such a shame I mean another another thing that is true of this show is that I quite often I'm afraid I did it last week I sometimes come in and just do some nuts but I will only note the person I'm melting so I don't get them all together and say okay I think we should change these moves I might go out to Luke and say you've been doing that bit on the sofa like that for ages or so 200 I think there's maybe a different route through that you try this but I won't tell everybody so that they're surprised by things that happen live on the night yeah and there's quite a bit of it right where you stand at different places my online Oh every single noise its but for me if it's not not willfully different no no but what it should be we don't we're not sitting here going okay you picked up your bottle last night when I said we started you know that's not the way so we shouldn't hold on there's nothing worse like any actor will tell you that they hate you feel like an actor isn't listening to you because they want to go back to the way that some because it's just fear-based some you can't and that's right it's not live to what you're actually doing and it's maybe a slight reverence towards success or in knee towards the the approval of the audience and I actually think what the audience really respond to as a sensor for my cart they're in a way ignoring us apart from the soliloquies where conversely you have to be right there you know as you know tonight when I do the soliloquies it has to be as alive as the way I'm talking to you now because there's no difference you know what I mean whereas now at the convention is I'm able to see you and so why should that not be when he's talking directly to the audience in the plane needs a big well into a black sort of abyss I salute you the challenge of the Armada of getting someone to answer a questionnaire which I which I did hundred percent yeah when I say my carriage it happened in like was it a preview I said at my carriage which is in I was sort of involuntary so I wasn't it was generous genuine hazard the question I think I'm getting a signal that we have like ten minutes so we should first stop was fast wasn't it yeah 21 performances left yeah 21 left okay we should have some questions what types of questions um ways I'm gonna have to repeat your question bar so everyone here hello so that's the question about Polonius and that he seems less like a comedy figure and did we continue to pose questions about him rather than answer them yes we did well we have the brilliant Peter white who I was so thrilled when he signed up to this gig because finding older actors who ever worked the loads and odd and odd sometimes they just don't want to be directed and when you find someone who does want to be directed and joined the company and like go on an adventure for a director of a play like this it's the best feeling in the world and he is so wonderful it's amazing I sort of don't believe there are any such thing as comedy characters and good plays in the same way I don't think there are comedy people in real life apart from with you Richard but I think you have to give each character a fair hearing and sort of go where is he coming from and yes he's he's got bad points poor so he loves his kids and like again just really simply structurally why did his kids get so upset when he dies if he's a really horrible horrible man hideous yeah or an idiot or he just it feels non plausible to the audience well he's no more a comedy character than Hamlet is a tragic character what happens to homeless is tragic yeah but he's not a tragic figure the reason it's so awful is because he's so full of life and exactly same with Polonius it's not just like oh you can just sort of laugh at me I think maybe sometimes it's just because it's easy sometimes easier to understand something I don't know but it's really true that that's not the way human beings or so that shakespeare's character writing is so specific so like all of them sound different and they all talk in different structures and Polonius does this weird thing where he lists pastoral comical comical logical I remember when first meeting Peter say I think there's anxiety in that I think there's real anxiety in that world to go okay he said he what about the beginning of the scene that we call the audition scene when he comes in the morning and says I think I have to get it out I think I feel that he says for about 20 minutes he says I'm gonna be really quick I'm gonna be really quick because if you're not quick then people get annoyed with you for not being quick and I don't want to be annoying so I'm just gonna be quick okay quick yeah yeah and like in that structure you hear somebody who is losing confidence and in fact he says it a few times in the scene he says well I'm not as sharp as I used to be if that's not true and you think yeah yeah if you've got that thought like you know that that's again that's got its roots somewhere um so yes that's absolutely yes ask us more gentleman down the question is was it was it was it a strategy that you teach the audience with different possible souls first Walter what might be going on no well definitely wasn't a strategy I think why it's so brilliant they will have every scene is kind of really different one of the things I remember us talking was that the idea of him murdering somebody like I would feel about murdering somebody if I killed somebody and I'd never killed anybody before in my life he's close to you I would be forever altered and sometimes I think what happens is it's so good he's when he comes back from England he's sort of like or after he kills Polonius that he's sort of the same kind of you know Prince he kind of guy and I don't believe that that can't have some sort of effect on you so I mean that was one thing that I think he has to read in some way different when he comes back from English I remember I was talking a lot about death as a that the size of death as a life event as the size of death in mark Shakespeare plays yeah like often characters are picked off and Shakespeare plays and it's really like nothing attack doesn't react isn't really and we we spent a lot of time didn't we on going that scene she kidnaps him with Rosencrantz Guildenstern afterwards where they say where's the dead body yeah and that's when the initial shock has come down and he's going he's covered in someone else's blood and it's someone who he loved and and what's happened now where do we go next and and so often I think death in Shakespeare is I dunno it's that kind of porn your clothes on in the morning did a bit it's like such-and-such dies oh yeah and but but but the you know it's the thing about mental health again he's going through a very turbulent time in his life and I think anytime I've gone through a terminator in my life it's not it's not even you know it's your feel uneven and so you try and solve things by putting some sort of disposition on whether it's an antic disposition or not so that you go yeah you know what I am in great for him I'm gonna get really I'm just a party guy now or I'm just gonna stay under duvet or I'm gonna try and solve this intellectually or else oh no you know what I'm really into you know yoga or you know and I think all those things can can really exist at a time when you are questioning everything about the world I think even whether to be alive or not I think you put on a lot of different things and why it's such a great part is that it's it's so far-reaching because there's so many different relationship ships you play play he's a student and he's a lover and he's a prince and he's a son and he's I feel like that alone as more sad so you know he's a lot of different things and so so there's a great pleasure in in and rather than trying to sort of iron the iron the more lines and make it actually to just be white you are in that moment and then there's some of that some of the depart to make the help well you'd have to play the same character in every scene no you don't know exactly because the way people are with their moments is completely different to the way they are when they're in a shop yeah and again we often we sort of have a I suppose sometimes a kind of silly view of that when it comes to doing theatre and we kind of go I'm playing this person who has attribute yeah or to attribute said this or this particularly if it's a famous play right then you got his movie yeah yeah and again I'm just I'm not sure what they we never gave it an outside local Dewey doesn't piece-by-piece went through the relationship I think you said a thing to me which was incredibly helpful which was you're sounding just a little bit Shakespeare II and I do understand what that means we can sort of go in do you think I think this is something that I've heard before right and it sounds respectable but I don't we it's sort of like to go what is what is it because it's me who's playing this part and I have genuinely feel the great good fortune of having a leasehold but for such a little small amount of time even though sometimes it feels but if I'm not gonna bring Who I am to us it's like any any great piece of art if you don't put your own signature on what's the point and so it's amazing that and people have responded to it to the production the way that they have because it it it it is so personal it is really thank you very much thank you Oscar's another one um anyway you were early con so that was what advice would you give to our 13 year old selves and what advice would Hamlet give to his 13 year old self you can only be where you are you know you can only be where you are let me get this right I feel like I feel like you know there's a thing that about your child I think when you're a younger person you know there's a thing but you know it's gonna get better and you know someday you'll have more power or you'll have greater responsibility or all that kind of stuff that's not very helpful I think to people to hear you think well what about now what about today yeah I feel terrible and that sort of continues for the rest of your rest of your life [Laughter] it's about its if I think the thing that I've I've learned is that if you feel a little bit different to people everybody in the world I think it's the thing that I think makes great drama and makes the best people in the world everybody is in some way vulnerable and I think the most unhappy people in the world are the people who don't present any vulnerability at all and so being an adult I think you know there's only reading in the past couple of years I've sort of even begun to understand that what my might if I were to define what being an adult is is the comfort with which we can say I don't know because I think sometimes when you're an adult you are told to say I know now I know but you know why I know because I've got a mortgage and I've got and I've got power and I've got success all the stuff that when you're 13 you don't have and I think so much about being an actor is about playing with children young people are so good at and we we move so far away from that and so I think that the tragedy for a lot of people as they grow older is that they think I have to know and I have to know 100% and actually I think what you have to hold on to and try and be comfortable with is that sometimes uncomfortable situation of saying I don't know and when I say that it continues like that for the rest of your life I think it's I just mean that no one ever really knows for sure anything you can believe and all that kind of stuff and maybe that sounds a little obscure but even if people present to you that they are full of surety they really aren't you know on certain things that's good I can't I thought I can't top that I'm gonna go this hand up over there yeah yeah how does it that was how do you would like to have not personally a weird thing to say but I can't I can't even really separate him from cuz he doesn't you know what I mean he actually there is no real how much you know thirty thirty isn't it's just he's just like a jog and you pour in whoever the thing and then then you have a a drink this metaphor is not coming you know III know what you mean about this sort of this state of because he's a prince and how can and anyone relate to you know you like that sort of like high-class problems I think that's where the world isn't such a state of chasis is because we go oh because that person has lots of money or lots of power that they have to be unhappy when we know actually that's not not true you know any easier losing your mom with your Prince Harry I say I think it probably still hurts according to you and who you are and what your relationship was with the person and I think it's sort of I suspect for any really great actor it's really hard for you to play Prince on us there's an abstract quality it's unplayable because all you can do is play a person who's in a situation and and who seems to operate and and I mean I I this company is Gloria said this but particularly Shakespeare I sort of repeatedly say that there are you know yes there are three million ways that you can get it wrong but there are thirty million in which you can get it right which is to say there's not one route through and so every night different bits of it'll light up differently according to what night is you know the first night we were here was after the general election and the the line the election lights on Fortinbras brought the house down which is you know you which is which is to say you're cooking food that is fresh and alive and it depends who's there in the restaurant and what's happened in the world and that itself is kind of exciting I think how do we go about five minutes over okay we'll take one more question from that lady down there yeah how do I seem to write what is micro I mean the thing is I don't really have a process and I have I suspect fairly severe very severe sense of being an impostor about this because I didn't train nobody ever taught me how to direct or to write in fact it's just things that I did from when I was quite little and I think I don't understand how anyone can have the same and I have real live interaction for people who do but I don't understand how anyone can do the same thing on different plays because it seems to me that you have you walk in on the first day of Hamlet and for some of those people in the room it is their first ever day in a rehearsal room for some of those people that is their first ever day never rehearsing Ramana Shakespeare play for some of those people this is their first ever day in a rehearsal room with me for some of them it isn't their first ever day anniversary with me for some of them we've been going for two years already on this particular play on this particular part and I've been what's happing him photographs of the set design so like it's you can only really do what's right there in front of you and I tend to not like I don't let them sit around the table so there are some things that are kind of the same I I don't like tables I don't like a whole deal of chatting about it I tend to make the whole company do a couple of days together which I think we didn't do and we did some improv work on grief and on families and on just just to sort of get the company together and to censor terrain but because you're it's a bit like kind of going if you were gonna organize a Christmas dinner for your family or for your partner's family or for your best friends how would you do it differently and of course the answer is you do it completely differently because everybody's idea of Christmas is different and you're in a different room and you've got a whole lot of different people so you you have to try and be as honest as possible to who they are and what the thing is that you're trying to build and sometimes that's about giving people the courage to stay away from the bad version and being prepared to say things like you're a bit Shakespeare isn't it it's a what you're saying it's that I don't know no again okay you have to start and go that's what was so brilliant about this experience with you as though you you're open to - there isn't something something you didn't stop something from emerging and you have to in order for something to emerge you you have to start opera so now I don't know rather than I know this is what we're gonna do I mean we have ideas and they're only ever as good as the way they test so sometimes you have great ideas that feel like the best ideas ever but when you're talking about them and what there was someone this what we talked about and we were so wedded to and then we dropped them and you have to be up for that because I think even there were a recipe someone would have figured it out by now and the problem is the times keep changing and the things we thought wouldn't happen happen and the way you thought your life was gonna go isn't the way it necessarily goes and those things are all fine but that means that you end up a slightly I mean we both went through quite big life stuff in in those two years and and we're starting people at the other end of talking about the end of this process than we were when we first signed up to do it and actually all of that stuff goes in the junk doesn't it and in it to pick up that metaphor again it all it all feeds in and you talk about that but of course the different people you've got in the room we're gonna govern the way that goes I have only one rule about it really which is that I think rehearse I think whatever's wrong with the rehearsal room or the tack or the production is you so like if you're the director and it isn't funny it isn't funny because you're not funny didn't mean or if the if they're stressed or they're anxious or whatever you're bringing that to the room and so you always have to a bit likely the first kind of get to know yourself first didn't mean like look to yourself for the problem before you try and find it somebody stop so you can come play Hamlet yeah when certainly that's Michael as you can see we're very very happy to chat about it we love chatting about it but thank you for comfortable thank you so much [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Almeida Theatre

Views: 91,663

Rating: 4.9784656 out of 5

Keywords: andrew scott, shakespeare, hamlet, almeida, robert icke, rupert goold, juliet stevenson, gertrude, jessica brown findlay, ophelia, west end, interview, q&a

Id: ID8uMjgz3LU

Length: 58min 6sec (3486 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 31 2017