Tämä on ehdottomasti yksi mun tän vuoden teatterikokemusten kohokohtia (joiden joukossa on olleet myös molemmat Englannin Macbethit, Peter and Alice, Othello, The Tempest, The Drowned Man, Mojo). Kas kun puolet niistä onkin Shakespearea :-)
Mutta Henry V:n harjoitukset ovat menossa, ja ennakot alkavat jo tämän viikon lauantaina! Niinkuin kahdesta alemmasta kuvasta näkyy, luvassa miekkojen melskettä!!
That’s pretty essential if you’re going to tackle Henry V, which forms the final play in Michael Grandage’s remarkable West End season. As Grandage, who directed him to acclaim in his Shakespearean debut as a hauntingly febrile Hamlet four years ago, observes: “One of the things a good Henry needs to have is the ability to show the men around him that he can pull it all together even if the odds are heavily stacked against them. In the middle of that mix is charisma. And Jude naturally brings that to the role.”
“I’m in an 18-hour-a-day relationship with Henry,” he says, with a laugh. Over the past year he has read widely, watched the films of Olivier and Branagh in the role, and even consulted the former English rugby captain Lawrence Dallaglio for a session in testosterone-charged leadership skills — “very useful”.
All this aims to make sense of a man who — despite the fact that Grandage will give his production a theatrical framing-device that allows the play to speak to the present while re-enacting the past — hails from a medieval world of divine right and a fledgling British state.
“There was a little part of me – and I’d be a liar if I didn’t say this — that thought ‘Well, I gave Hamlet a good stab, I can go into Henry with a little bit of confidence.’ Of course what you forget is that it’s a completely different part, completely different demands, you’re starting from scratch again — none of that held water whatsoever. Prior to rehearsals, I was thinking I was going to “find” a character — who he was. And it has become apparent that, similarly to Hamlet, he has to be you. You’ve got to find that man in you, be truthful in the moment, and allow those moments to culminate into an arc.”
Currently, he is relishing the “life-affirming” stress and slog of a West End schedule. “It’s a wonderful way to spend a few months, it really is. I love film but ultimately in my heart I’m a theatre actor. I’m tentatively optimistic about it.”
As we part, he points me in the direction of Henry’s St Crispin’s Day speech . “He talks about going down through history, how if they get through this they’ll be remembered. That’s all anyone wants, isn’t it? You want someone to talk well about you. For someone to say: “Oh I remember that bloke, he was a good man”. Or of an actor – ‘I saw him on stage once and he was magnificent!’”
Mä en tiedä miksi tää välillä antaa upottaa videon blogiin, ja välillä ei? Menkää katsomaan YouTubesta sitten, näytelmän traileri.
kuvien copyright Michael Grandage Company
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