Tag Archives: Shakespeare

Drawing: Meera Syal in Romeo and Juliet

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Meera Syal

In another life when I trod the boards, I once played Peter in the Bard’s classic romantic tragedy ROMEO AND JULIET. Not a major character, but the one charged with adding comic relief to the sad tale – the story of my life.

Peter was the loyal servant of Juliet’s Nurse, a major character who acts as a go-between for Romeo and Juliet and is the only person besides Friar Laurence to know of the star-crossed lovers’ wedding. I say this as a feeble intro and my loose connection to the Nurse, a major role in Shakespeare’s archetypal love story.

Meera Syal plays the Nurse in the Kenneth Branngh Company’s latest revival at the Garrick Theatre in London. The comedian, writer, playwright, singer, journalist, producer and actress is probably best known for her portrayal as one of Britain’s most loveable Indian personalities, Sanjeev’s grandmother Ummi in THE KUMARS AT NUMBER 42.

Meera signed this sketch for me as she arrived for Saturday’s matinee.

Drawing: Samantha Spiro and Simon Paisley Day in The Taming of the Shrew

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Samantha Spiro Simon Paisley Day The Taming of the Shrew

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is Shakespeare’s most outrageous comedy. One of theatre’s great screwball double-acts with a couple hell-bent on confusing and out-witting each other. First performed in London in the 1590’s, it was farcical and probably hilarious to Elizabethans, but it’s message of ‘taming’ a woman  with a fiery personality and making her subservient to her husband does not always sit well with modern audiences.

Toby Frow’s  production for The Globe in the summer of 2012 featured double-Olivier Award-winning actress Samantha Spiro as Katherina and Simon Paisley Day as Petruchio. It Included  the ‘induction’ by the character, Christopher Sly who takes to the stage as Petruchio, so the ‘play-within-a-play’ is more a fantasy, wishful thinking rather than reality, tempering the misogynistic theme. The Guardian’s Michael Billington wrote as “both actors go at it hammer and tongs” throughout the entire play that this is a “…knockout Shrew that doesn’t go in for much psychological depth and presents Katherina’s final speech of submission without irony.”

Jane Shilling in The Telegraph describes Samantha’s Kath as “a compact, muscular spitfire whose gentlewoman’s education has evidently included self-defence classes”, as she drops her suitor to the ground on their first encounter.

I ‘drew the Shrew’ with this in mind, but never got it signed… until… as per chance, both actors were on the London stage over this Christmas period past But alas, not on the same stage. Samantha was in A CHRISTMAS CAROL at the Noel Coward and Simon in THE LORAX across the Thames at the Old Vic. Still that’s why there’s seven days and nights in a week and it took two of them to complete the mission.

Drawing: Geoffrey Rush in King Lear

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Geoffrey Rush

One of my favourite films is SHINE in which Geoffrey Rush won a truck-load of awards, including the Academy Award for his portrayal of pianist David Helfgott in 1997. He’s one of the few people to have collected the ‘Triple Crown of Acting’ – an Oscar, Emmy and a Tony – covering the big screen, small screen and the stage’s highest accolades. But, Geoffrey was in no rush (sorry) to take to the big screen. A ‘late bloomer’ who was 44 before embarking on his movie career. He’s has made up for it since. “I’m a stage actor, I was rolling along in theatre and having a good time. Movies was not where I was heading”.  Then his career turned a sudden corner with SHINE and, as he put it, “over indulged in cinema” and dropped out of theatre for a decade.

That all changed after a chance meeting with celebrated British director Stephen Daldry, who rekindled his theatrical roots. Having played the Fool twice in a 30 year journey with  Shakespeare’s KING LEAR, Geoffrey finally takes on the title role in the Sydney Theatre  Company’s production directed by long-time friend and collaborator Neil Armfield. It is “the greatest play in the English language, certainly Shakespeare’s greatest achievement,” Geoffrey said.

“Capturing characters whose estimation of themselves is completely out of step with reality is Rush’s metier. He does good self-delusion, particularly because he has within his Arsenal the vulnerability and anguish of someone when their delusions are punctured,” wrote Dee Jefferson in TimeOut.

I did this montage of Geoffrey expressing Lear’s pathos as the ‘wonderfully pathetic ex-King,” and mailed it to him in Australia. I noticed that there is my namesake, another ‘Mark Winter’ in the cast. Mark Leonard Winter plays Edgar, described in Dee’s four-star review as ” thrillingly on the verge… who appears to have gone mad in the process of going mad,” – a state I am familiar with, collecting signed sketches has its drawbacks. Maybe Geoffrey thought it was his fellow thespian, taking up his 4B pencil in a moment of admiration and gladly complied with the signing request, before realising that it was the ‘other’ Mark Winter. Returning it to the UK may have been a giveaway. Maybe not.

KING LEAR finishes tomorrow at the Roslyn Packer Theatre in Sydney.

Drawing: Janet McTeer in The Taming of the Shrew

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The Taming of the Shrew

I was very pleased to hear that Olivier and Tony Award winner Janet McTeer has returned to the London stage and is in currently appearing in LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES at the Donmar Warehouse. Not only is it a chance to see this wonderful British actress perform, but an opportunity to meet her and, naturally the possibility of having a sketch or two signed crossed my mind ( and yes, before you think it… not a long journey). This particular drawing is based on her role in Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female production of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW at the Shakespeare’s Globe in 2003.  She played Petruchio, a young man, intent on taming the ‘shrew’. Blurring the fringes between genders has been a rewarding theme in Janet’s career. Her Oscar-nominated role as Hubert Page in ALBERT HOBBS is another recent example. Actually I read that after hearing of her nod for that role, she and her husband had a low-key celebration, drank some champagne, ate cheesecake and watched DOWNTON ABBEY. “It doesn’t get better than that”, she said. With that type of down-to-earth philosophy I thought she wouldn’t mind signing my sketch. I was right.

Drawing: Romola Garai in Measure For Measure

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Romola Garai

It’s become a tradition for my wife and I to celebrate our wedding anniversary by taking in a bit of Bard. This year we went to see Joe Hill-Gibbins radical version of Shakespeare’s ‘problematic play’ MEASURE FOR MEASURE at the Young Vic.

It featured Romola Garai as Isabella and opened with the cast emerging from a mass of inflatable sex dolls, not your typical interpretation of Will’s work. The Guardian’s Michael Billington described Romola’s performance as ‘astonishing’.

Her interesting name is the female version of Romulus the founder of Rome and Garai is Hungarian. She has three siblings called Ralph, Roxy and Rosie to complete the alliteration quartet. Interesting name and interesting person with a Master’s Degree in English and she plays the violin.

As a presenter of the Best Male Comedy Performance gong at the 2013 BAFTA TV Awards she prefaced the announcement of the winner by saying, “After the recent birth of my child, I had the misfortune of having 23 stitches in my vagina. So I didn’t think I would be laughing at anything for a long time. But tonight’s nominations have proved me wrong.”

I didn’t get this sketch of Romola as Isabella signed at the theatre because I missed her going out and asked the wrong person! Sometimes the understudies do look similar and I have had the odd identity crisis at stage doors, but the Young Vic have extended the similarities to members of the crew, who was very pleasant about my faux pas. I had no such difficulty at the BFI this week where she was participating in a Q&A after the screening of her latest TV feature CHURCHILL’S SECRET in which she play’s the iconic wartime leader’s nurse. It did help that I was able to differentiate between her and Sir Michael Gambon who plays Churchill.

Drawing: Rebecca Hall in Twelfth Night

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Rebecca Hall

I drew a quick portrait of British Bafta-winning actress Rebecca Hall with a fine point biro about five years ago, which she signed for me at a screening of THE TOWN at London’s West End Odeon. For this more detailed one of Rebecca as Viola, I used the same pen, but a gazillion more lines. It was in the daze before my current 4B regime. In late 2010, she put her blossoming film career on hold to return to the stage for her father’s anniversary revival of TWELTH NIGHT at the National Theatre. It was Sir Peter Hall’s fourth production of the Shakespearean comedy and Rebecca’s debut at the National, which her father previously ran for 15 years from 1973 to 1988, succeeding the founding artistic director Sir Laurence Olivier. Naturally pleased to see his daughter back on the boards in one of his plays, he said, “If you want to have good theatre you need Hollywood movies because they pay, theatre doesn’t.” Shakespeare casted boy actors to play girls dressed as boys in love with boys. Sir Peter cast his daughter in the same way, “with mysterious and alluring results,” wrote Warwick Thompson in his Bloomberg review.”…a lady who decides to pass for a lad, and who then causes a storm of erotic triangulations.”

Rebecca signed this one for me at the stage door on a fresh February evening. It may have even been the month’s 12th night…maybe not. I think it was a Wednesday, like today,so what better reason to post it.

Drawing: Rory Kinnear in Othello

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Rory Kinnear

“Rory Kinnear is a National Treasure”,states The Independent, and they may well be right. Throughout the summer of 2013, the brilliant British actor played the Shakespearian villain Iago opposite Adrian Lester in the title role of OTHELLO at the National Theatre in London. Both won the Best Actor Award at the Evening Standard Awards with Rory going on to win his second Olivier. The Mail’s Quentin Letts wrote it was a “fine performance from Mr Kinnear, who cements his reputation as one of our stage’s stars”.

His last theatre success however was as a playwright with his debut play THE HERD, which opened at the Bush Theatre in September 2013. It was shortlisted for the Most Promising Playwright at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards and has just ended it’s first American run at Chicago’s legendary Steppenwolf Company.

Rory is currently treading the boards, or in this case a 15m long moving ‘travelator’ as Josef K in Richard Jones’s production of Nick Gill’s adaption of Franz Kafka’s THE TRIAL at London’s Young Vic. During rehearsals for the play he was also required for night shoots on the next Bond film SPECTRE, reprising the role of M16’s ever-dependable Tanner. He said he would finish at 5am and then be required at rehearsals between 11 and noon, so sleep was in short supply. A punishing schedule made all the more extreme when he is on stage for the entirety of the interval-free production.

Then, just when you finish a Saturday evening after a long week, looking forward to the Sunday off, you are confronted  at the exit by a serial sketcher wanting you to sign a drawing. But, true to form, Rory was his usual amiable self…’Ah, another masterpiece”, he complimented. (Rory actually has a HAMLET sketch I did of him, framed and hanging on his wall at home.) Sleep deprivation I modestly thought.

Sketch: Simon Russell Beale in King Lear at The National Theatre

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SImon Russell Beale

Simon Russell Beale is not only a great stage actor and an extremely pleasant chap to meet, he’s a brilliant subject to draw. Hence the frequency of my sketches of the man considered by many to be the best actor of his generation. This is in fact my second study of Simon as KING LEAR when he took to the vast Olivier stage at the National last Autumn in the exceptional Sam Mendes-directed production. This was the seventh Shakespearian collaboration for the actor-director combination. Jasper Kees commented in his article for The Telegraph that  when classical actors play HAMLET , a clock starts ticking down to his LEAR with a decent hiatus in between. He lists such notables as Ian McKellen, with a 36 year gap, 32 for Jonathan Pryce and 31 for Derek Jacobi. For 52 year-old Simon it was 14 years and if it wasn’t for Sam’s commitment to SKYFALL and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY the gap would have been a lot less. however that hypothesis flies out the window when it was revealled that this is not Simon’s first LEAR. Oh no, he played the tragic monarch as a 17 year-old while still at Clifton College, so it’s a 35 year gap between LEARs for him, punctuated with a HAMLET.

That aside, I  caught up with Simon to sign my sketch at the Donmar Warehouse after a Saturday evenings performance of TEMPLE in which he  currently plays the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in Steve Water’s new play inspired by the London Occupy Movement and the events surrounding the hallowed venue in October 2011. As usual he was very gracious and happily signed this version of LEAR, remembering the zillions of others he had also graphed.

 

Sketch: Timothy West as King Lear

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Timothy West

Seasoned British actor Timothy West, noted for his great power and command on the classical stage, has played King Lear three times. The latest was in 2003 for English Touring Theatre on a UK tour and at the Old Vic in London.

The Stephen Unwin directed production toured for three months in autumn 2002 to great acclaim, winning West a Manchester Evening News Award for Best Actor. His moving portrayal of the fallen king at the Old Vic received rave reviews and bought in the crowds, extending the season less than a week after the play opened.

Timothy has played other roles in the Shakespearean masterpiece, including Gloucester to Ian Holm’s moanch ain the National Theatre’s 1997 production, directed by Richard Eyre, that was also filmed for the BBC.

I caught up with Timothy as he left the Donmar Warehouse last night, where he is part of a huge ensemble cast for Josie Rourke‘s The Vote.  I showed him my sketch of him as Lear asking him if he wouldn’t mind signing it, and he smiled, saying, of course and duly ‘graphed it.

Sketch: Rory Kinnear and Clare Higgins in Hamlet

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Hamlet Clare Higgins Rory Kinnear

Rory Kinnear’s portrayal of Hamlet in the 2010 production at The National Theatre is considered by many of the theatrical great and good to be a generation defining portrayal of the Great Dane. It was the National’s former artistic director Nicholas Hytner’s first time directing Shakespeare’s most famous play. His Denmark is a modern dress production set in a surveillance state.

The Independent’s David Lister called it , “a chilling production that demanded to be seen”. He said, “A great Hamlet is not only a Hamlet of this time, it can be a Hamlet that defines his time”.

“Kinnear shows a Hamlet whose depression can be seen in fits of unwarranted aggression, withdrawal, manic high pitched laughter, intense unhappiness or simply desperate attempts to make sense of anything “. He won the 2010 Evening Standard Sward for his portrayal. He was praised for a his, “bold reinvention of the Dane”.

Lister makes special mention of Clare Higgins, “revelatory Gertrude… predicatably, the marvellous actress redefines the role. Gone is the weak, lovestruck pliable and guilt ridden mother and wife. This is more realistically a woman who will have a drink when it suits her, is more than capable of barking out orders herself and knows exactly what she wants out of life”.

Not always an easy place to catch cast members, given the many exits available at the National Theatre, I was very fortunate to catch both Rory and Clare who loved the sketch and were more than happy to ‘graph it for me.