SImon Russell Beale finds scary to play Shakespeare's characters from Shakespeare, “the genre where you walk on stage and everyone bows”. It is surprising, given that he is one of the main theater actors in the country, a king of his kingdom, but also ironic because he has already played most of the Alpha-Mommes of Shakespeare: from Hamlet and Lear to Macbeth, Prospero and a Richards.
However, they are difficult, he insists. “I think you need enormous confidence.”
Which one does not have? “I don't think we don't do it, completely, right?”
Russell Beale is famous different. Seated in the Royal Shakespeare Company Rehearsal studios in London, it looks almost contradictory to be easy, affable but in the eyes of Gimlet, at home with itself and not. At the age of 64, and with an accumulation of the most illustrious parts through the scene and the screen, as well as a brewing of distinctions (three olive trees, a Tony, two Bafas and, in particular, a chivalry), is it not ready to recognize its secure?
It doesn't seem. He talks about never looking on the screen, thinking that a performance is not good enough, sometimes conceding “oh that's good”. But alongside perfectionism and the selection of his performance is an unrivaled appetite for work in general, and what he calls an “unlimited field of exploration” in Shakespeare pieces in particular.
It is so complete that his landing in Shakespeare that even his family thought that he had already played the Roman general holder of Titus Andronicus. “They mixed it with Timon of Athens. Another member of my family said to me: “Why did you decided to do it?” “”
This is a good question. Titus Andronicus is one of the bloodiest works in Shakespeare: even the Greeks could have grimaced with its graphic brutality. The play presents rape, murder and dismemberment (hands, head, tongue), culminating in an attractive final where a mother eats without knowing a pie made of the flesh of her dead children. Titus is taken in this cycle of violence. Another actor could savor his baroque darkness – “Brian Cox said to me: “It's a wonderful game” “- but for Russell Beale, it brings difficult questions.” There are certain games in the cannon that come at the forefront of acceptability. Titus is one of them for me. I don't understand violence. I do not understand why as a public, we feel excited, stimulated, questioned; It's so relentless.
One of the oldest and most criticized works in Shakespeare, the play was rehabilitated in the 20th century, increasing in popularity as well as the increase in real world conflicts. The invoicing of the RSC suggests that this production, led by Max Webster, will speak to the violence of our age, its action refracted by “the objective of the attack of the 21st century”.
Russell Beale refers to the graphic nature of the violence it will bring. “There is a drain on the side of the stage. I find it almost more horrible than everything. It reminds me of the prisons in Syria when Assad fell, and stories of people who enter the rooms where people were tortured.”
It was never good to look at physical violence. “The gouge of the eyes in King Lear always makes me feel sick, watching Lavéva Titus Andronicus Come on, without hands, it's just appalling. But, but, but … we look at him. I made games on sorrow, love and death, but not on violence. It is a very particular element of our makeup as human beings, that we are both attracted and rejected by it. This is what I try to train.
Russell Beale is learned in his knowledge of Shakespeare's cannon, providing an analysis of everything, from the war in Trousus and Cressida (he played the Thersites in a 1990 production led by Sam Mendes, with Ralph Fiennes like Trousus), at the request of revenge in Hamlet (my Hamlet was absolutely paralyzed by this request from his father “).
Russell Beale maintains healthy respect for the written speech of the Bard-describing himself as a “semi-political” in terms of script himself. “I TO DO Remember that it is necessary to recognize that these pieces are mainly written in verse, so you must have a rudimentary understanding of this verse. These are not science rockets – from dum, dum, dum, dum. If you observe the verse form, playing it is easier. What I do, and what I would recommend to another actor to do is mark it when you learn it and forget it. When you have learned it in this rhythm, you can play as many curve balls as you want.
Clarity for the public is essential, he holds, and to this end, Russell Beale – Shock Horror! – Modify the Shakespearean text pieces to make it understandable for modern ears. It therefore substitutes a word such as “wanting” to its modern meaning of “lack” in a certain context, or “lazar” to “leper”.
“I changed a few things in this room – just single words – and I sometimes changed the structure of a sentence that is in the wrong direction. It happened a lot in Timon. I exchanged them just to make it easier. I think that in 200 years, Shakespeare's work will probably be rewritten. Shakespeare put these plays on stage, people adapted them. This point of view can resonate – or otherwise – with those involved in the cultural debate (always stormy) on the updating of the bard texts for the understanding of modern times, or left categorically intact in their original state, As the purists maintains Like the former director of the National Theater Richard Eyre.
While Russell Beale could be better associated with the theater, screen work has always checked live performance from his role as Soviet politician Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria in the 2017 political satire of Armando Iannucci 2017 Stalin's deathIn turn in 2022 in the film franchise Thor, Love and Thunder. The same goes for the case now: this year, he appears in the third film of the Downton Abbey franchise and in the choir, A new scrit's film by Alan Bennett Located during the First World War and produced by Nicholas, in which he was thrown alongside Fiennes.
What roles remain for him on stage? Angelo, measurement to measure, he says, without too much hesitation. It is an old Puritan judge who falls in love with a novice nun and therefore her life returned by this sudden romantic passion. “I love the idea of an older man who was impeccably behaving his whole life to fall into lust with a young woman and knowing in his heart is ridiculous – this awful sense that he knows that she is 20 years old, and yet the first and the last thing he thinks is.”
Russell Beale spoke frankly about the absence of a romantic partner in his life and now thinks that the other type of love fills this violation. “It is interesting that I ended up living near my family” – his father, in the 90s, is still alive, and Russell Beale is the eldest of five brothers and living sisters – “I think it is the great love of my life: the brothers and sisters.” I wouldn’t know what to do without them. I have occasional nightmares on what is happening if they are no longer there. Fortunately, I am the oldest and the most unhealthy, so with a chance, I will go first! “”
The absence of romantic love does not disturb him as she did. In the past, he talked about the love and life of single as a homosexual. He says now: “If you had asked me about 20 years ago, I would have left” damn “or” where is it? “” And if a love with late flowers did Did you get out of blue, as for Angelo? It would be charming, he said, but, after a break: “Imagine the change of lifestyle … reorganizing his books: where is it” – a hypothetical romantic partner – “I'm going to put them?” I love the idea of married couples living in their own separate houses! ”
Some time later, he returned to Angelo: “Maybe I should have a word with Nick (Hytner) about the measure to measure.” Talked with the wearing of a real king of the Shakespearean scene. Hopefully Hytner says yes.
