Paul Greenwood of the Royal Shakespeare
Company as kindly offered some insights into his life as an actor and the roles
he plays.
A short essay on Richard II
A talk to the Open University
Paul Greenwod talking to the Association of Open University Graduates on
Comedy of Errors
Why do you think people see Shakespeare’s play again and again?
That always amazes me. I mean I did this play seventeen years ago, here. I played David Tennent’s part (Antipholus of Syracuse), the most fantastic part that you can ever imagine and now I am playing the father in the same play which is interesting. It is just a joy when people say to you afterwards is that all Shakespeare or did you make it up, and that is the greatest compliment to him and that’s the way it should be. When we did Twelfth Night, there is the line “I am a great teacher of beef and I think that does harm to my wit”. And of course it was right in the middle of the beef crises and people could not believe that was a line from Shakespeare. They said “Oh you must have put that in”, people who didn’t know Shakespeare and it just used to bring the house down, it absolutely brought the house down.
How do the two productions compare?
It is very interesting. The present one is very different to the one I was in before. It was very funny in different ways and it was much more moving, it was very very soul, very very heartfelt because it was directed by Adrian Noble. It is just the difference you get with one play. The differences, the same words but different the feelings about it. I mean it was just as funny but it was completely different. The twin looking for the other half, he knows there is something missing so he goes off looking for it. The other one has had a terrible life, on the verge of divorce, his life is not right, his bad behaviour shows there is something missing from his life. We explored all that and so the reunions at the end, I hope are moving, but it was heart breaking with tears and laughter and I think that is what it should be like.
Where do the ideas come from?
They usually come from the Director, his ideas. On the surface you would have thought that basically the one I did before, which was very fantastical. The costumes were fantastic, we had blue faces and sort of suits and it was all very beautiful to look at. It was very strange with white walls and some scenery and when I ran away from the wife I fell out of a window backwards and I did a whole speech upside down. It was all very clowny and very very acrobatic. The door was on stage and it would go perhaps upwards and downwards so the door was physically there and the people were that side of the door talking and the people this side would go “whose there”. The door would zoom over somebody’s back and then the other people would be the other side of the door. It was all very physical. We thought this was going to be a slapstick, it was going to be that kind of production. That was the surface and then we started to look at what we were really saying because some of the stuff in the play is absolutely really wonderful poetry. So beautiful and it is very very early stuff. Some people dismiss the play as just a romp but I think it is wrong to think like that. I mean the way it is done now there is more to it and inside there is so much going on. I find that fantastic.
Which is the best company you have worked for?
Well, here because it is the RSC, which is obviously fantastic. You get a pretend set right from the word go. You get the approximation of the area, you get steps, you don’t get the spiral because that is special, so you have some steps there. You have nearly everything that you would need but you don’t see the real thing until three days before you do the play, a sort of technical rehearsal/practice. You could have rehearsal costumes, everything. Whereas in many cases you wouldn’t have that, it really is quite a privilege. Then you get the technical stuff. Sometimes you get to the technical part on the stage and then it all starts to come together.
How does it feel to work at the RST, with the three different theatres?
Oh fantastic. When you start one play the others disappear. It’s almost as if they don’t exist for that time. In the old days there were stories of people coming in a bit late, rushing into the dressing room, putting on the costume and rushing downstairs and they are in the wrong costume for the wrong play. That’s a while ago, it doesn’t happen anymore, its very different now. I find myself sometimes going to the theatre and going through a few lines and realising I am doing the wrong play and that’s just hell. Yesterday we were all doing plays in the afternoon, it would all be matinees of different plays, it’s just the job.
Where do the productions themes come from?
The idea was in rehearsal. The first day we were told it was sort of a Casablanca tower, which makes sense because Casablanca has lots of different nationalities. It’s a port so you have people coming from all over the place. Originally we all had accents which we all fought against very strongly because the logic of having different accents didn’t quite make sense. The clothes are important because you realise you are wearing modernish clothes and it sort of goes in somewhere and stays there. If we had been doing it in more traditional costume we would feel very different. When you put a costume on and it’s a really good costume and it feels right it is extraordinary how the character comes to life, it is fantastic it really adds a new dimension. There are times when you put something on and you think agh………. It’s horrible you can’t have that, very rarely but sometimes and sometimes you say “it says in the script that it is actually this”, because there is a description of the costume.
The Director wanted us all to have different accents, everyone a different accent – Italian, Spanish, whatever. Now if you have different accents that means that both Antipholues, who having been brought up in different places will have completely different accents. One would be from Ephesus so you would think is anybody going to say why are you talking in that funny voice. I think it is wrong. Why doesn’t somebody stop and say why are you talking in that funny voice, an Italian accent you never have done before or vice a versa.
If you have this town and it has an accent and that accent is sort of basic English, that’s fine but then visitors have accents. If the Duke speaks like I am speaking now, that’s fine and everybody who lives there has an accent that’s fine. If the visitors have accents because they are from different parts of the world that is fine but in this play if the visitors, which means the boys from Syracuse, had accents then someone is going to immediately say this is very strange the way they are speaking. It doesn’t make sense so would try to explain it. I think the main protagonists have to be similar or its no joke, there is no play.
Do you think the twins should be played by one or two actors?
We have separate actors. I think that is the best way. Although the other way works but then you end up with tricks at the end. I think the end is very important in all these reconciliation plays. So important. You kind of know that they are going to get together. The audience really want it to happen, they want to see it. Then if you have only got two actors to bring together at the end, you miss that. Shakespeare would have written it in such a way as to accommodate the actor, because he wrote like that.
Its quite tricky. I mean if you look at them off stage you think they are nothing like each other. It’s the suspension of belief. The lad who did it last night is the understudy of Antipholous. When they were walking down the corridor in front of me, I wondered which was which for a split second, which was really good, that’s how it should be. They are twins but they have been brought up in different worlds. I think there is a lot of thought about genetics, nurture as well as nature. Now that is what I find interesting that as an actor you can have the same personality in a way but saying different kinds of things…..
How does the Swan Theatre compare to the Main House?
With the Swan, it is very deceptive. You think the audience is just there but actually you have got to project as much as in the main house and also it is very high. Although it is tricky in that way it is really wonderful and the audience really like it. They love Shakespeare there, it is so intimate. I like the main house, it depends on the set. This set is particularly good because it is sort of forward and very resonant , very alive. The Swan is intimate but you mustn’t take that for granted. You are still along way up and you have to look up and it is a very unnatural way to talk about intimate things but if you don’t people up there feel excluded and its not fair. Whereas in The Other Place the audience are literally closer. As in the present production of Richard II which is just a big white box and the audience are part of the show.
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Paul Greenwood, who plays Mowbray and Carlisle, has kindly written a few notes on the
present production of Richard II. Richard II, which is playing in The
Other Place, opens the Royal Shakespeare Company's This England - The
Histories, a two year cycle of productions of Shakespeare's History plays.
RICHARD II
Although every character in the play is written almost entirely in iambic pentameter,
suggesting that they are all similar in the way they think and speak, we discovered in
rehearsal that in fact all the characters are wonderfully different. Far from being a
hindrance to characterisation, far from limiting us as actors, Shakespeare's verse gives
us all the information we need to create living, individual human beings. Each character
reveals, by the sound of the words they choose, what they are feeling. Are there a lot of
hard consonants in a speech? Perhaps the character is choleric, spitting out spite and
hate. Or trying to make a particular pertinent point. Are the vowel sounds open and wide?
Possibly the character is mournful or forlorn or full of woe.
We looked at the play from a very political point of view, and sometimes this approach can
lead to a neglect of the personal relationships between the people in the play. However,
it soon became obvious that the politics and the passions of this world are inextricably
bound up with each other. During rehearsal it became clear that far from being a dry study
of the political world, the play was a moving account of a man's discovery of himself
The rehearsal process was very detailed and absorbing. Exercises were many and varied. For
example, rehearsing Act 3 Scene 2, we set a chair in the middle of the room and Sam West
as Richard II sat in it. During the scene he had to attempt to get out of it and we had to
prevent him. Sometimes he escaped and we had to drag him back. Exhausting, especially for
Sam! It gave our characters a very real sense of their selfish need to keep the king on
the throne. And Sam became very aware of the impossibility of divorcing the personal from
the political. Once a king, always a king. Until a Bolingbrooke comes along!
