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INTERVIEW: Patrick Stewart returns to the Chichester Festival Theatre
Patrick Stewart is known to millions as Star Trek's Captain Jean Luc Picard and as X-Men's Professor X from his high-profile Hollywood days.
But the deepest satisfactions have always been found on the stage, he says.
In the past six years, since his return from Los Angeles, Patrick has devotedly pursued his love of Shakespeare in a string of acclaimed productions, not least Macbeth and Twelfth Night three years ago here in Chichester.
Now he's back at the Festival Theatre once again, this time
taking his love of Shakespeare to the next level.
This time, he really is playing Shakespeare, the man himself, in Edward Bond's Bingo: Scenes Of Money And Death which opens this year's summer season in the Minerva tonight (April 15-May 22).
It's a project which fills him with pleasure.
Prior to taking command of the Starship Enterprise, Patrick had established himself as one of England's foremost leading actors.
He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, launching a
26-year association which saw him work with directors Trevor Nunn, Peter Hall and Peter Brook and star in productions including Anthony And Cleopatra, The Merchant Of Venice, Henry IV and Richard III.
And it's to this side of his career that he's now returned.
"I came back to this country because I wanted to see if I could relaunch my career as a classical actor in the UK", he says.
"I didn't know if it was possible. I didn't know if I had been away too long, if I would be allowed to jump back into the theatrical community.
"But I knew I had to give it a shot. While I was busy and successful working in Hollywood, it was never really what I wanted to do."
The opportunities certainly existed in the States including memorable productions of The Tempest and Othello: "I did do some classical work, but I wanted to really immerse myself."
Which is exactly what he's now done – with spectacular success.
So did it feel like he'd ever been away?
"I think that my instincts are more developed now than they were. I did a lot of challenging work in the 17 years that I lived in LA – work in film and TV and stage.
"But I think one of the things that the experience gave me was confidence, a lot more than I had had before – and that's something that I have been able to bring into the work in the last five or six years.
"And they have been without doubt the best years of my life to date."
As he says, who would have thought that Chichester Festival Theatre's production of Macbeth, in which he starred, would end up on Broadway with six Tony nominations?
Alongside it was 'the glory' of Chichester Festival Theatre's production of Twelfth Night, in which Patrick starred as Malvolio.
"It was the experience of a lifetime," says Patrick, particularly playing the two alongside each other, "brilliant comedy in the main theatre and terrifying tragedy in the Minerva."
And that's why ultimately the theatre will always offer the greater satisfactions: "I gave 12 years of my life to Star Trek and I am very very proud of the work, and that goes for X-Men as well, wonderful experiences and very high-quality work, but the inner personal extended satisfaction is something that I get by being in front of a live audience every night."
And the great thing is that there is every chance those audiences
will be boosted by his X-Men and Star Trek baggage.
As he points out, when he was Claudius to David 'Dr Who' Tennant's Hamlet, there were most definitely plenty of people in the audience who weren't necessarily first and foremost there for the Shakespeare.
Which is absolutely fine by Patrick.
"Our job is to get them into the theatre in the first place and give them an exciting experience that makes them want to come back.
"You get them in for a unique one-off experience which is never
to be repeated... and hope they will come back to see other people more exciting than David and me!"
Waiting for my number to come up
Bingo is a play Patrick has long wanted to come back to – a play he has done before, but perhaps too soon in his career.
The piece sees Shakespeare faced with the prospect of losing the land he bought with the money made from his plays. Suddenly he finds himself in the same situation as one of his greatest characters, Lear.
Using contemporary documents and what is known of him as a writer and a man, writer Edward Bond shows the contradictions of Shakespeare's life and time are uncannily close to those of our own.
Big local landowners are enclosing land on a heath outside Stratford-on-Avon. Shakespeare owns some of it. The landowners intend to drive off the tenants, which means Shakespeare will lose the rents on which he lives. He is old and the inspiration to write has gone. He cannot make his money again, and the prospect of poverty terrifies him.
"There was a plan to do another project in this slot (in the season) and it fell through," Patrick explains. "No problem. It just didn't happen.
"But (CFT artistic director) Jonathan Church asked if there was anything else I was particularly interested in doing. I had been wanting to do this play for 20 years.
"I think it is fair to say the last major revival was with the RSC 28 years ago when I played Shakespeare and it has stayed with me all these years since because I was a little bit too young
at the time.
"It was a marvellous production, but I was not done with it. It was probably very simply because I had not lived enough to play this part at the time.
"Because of my experience of Shakespeare and his plays since and because of my experience of simply being in the world, I thought I might be able to bring something new to the play now.
"I have always been an admirer of Edward Bond's work, and this is one of his finest plays – and yet it is not that well known. I like Bond's politics and I like his social conscience and his sense of the relationship of both with art and creativity.
"Bond deals directly with that in Bingo – a play about the final weeks and days of arguably the greatest writer in the English language who nevertheless seems to be utterly obsessed and preoccupied now
with matters much more appropriate to a city financier than a great cultural icon.
"He isn't writing. He has turned his back on London and on the theatre that was his life, and one wonders why it all came to a stop with The Tempest."
But the point is that finances and creative genius are directly connected in the piece: "You learn a great deal about this relationship, about his art, about society, about his response as an artist.
"The question is whether it is enough to have written King Lear, Hamlet, Twelfth Night and the sonnets. We have no difficulty answering that question, but Shakespeare does…"
Quite why perhaps is for Patrick to bring out.
"I think I do feel qualified now to play the part. I have been performing Shakespeare since I was 14. I have devoted most of the past five or six years to Shakespeare – along with Beckett and Ibsen.
"Since I returned to work exclusively to work in the UK, I have played Anthony in Anthony And Cleopatra, Macbeth, Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Claudius in Hamlet. I do feel a very strong connection with this playwright.
I have lived for years in and around Stratford. My main home is still only 25 miles from Stratford."
All of which gives him a direct insight into Bingo. The point is
he knows and can visualise the places it mentions – all of which adds to the authenticity of his performance.
"I can describe to my fellow cast members exactly what we should be looking at."
All of which, for Patrick, underlines the sheer magic of the theatre.
"I am so excited to be telling this story to Chichester audiences."
Bingo is playing at the Minerva until May 22. For more information contact the Chichester Festival Theatre.
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Sunday 05 February 2012
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