A Times Best Book of the Year 2023 – My Shakespeare by Greg Doran
August 14, 2024
Acting, Articles, Book Extracts
“To piece Shakespeare’s plays together as a whole is to be awed again and again.” – Greg Doran, Artistic Director Emeritus of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
My Shakespeare: A Director’s Journey through the First Folio charts the personal and professional journey of Greg Doran, Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 2012 until 2022 and “one of the great Shakespearians of his generation” (Sunday Times).
During his illustrious career, Doran has directed or produced all of the plays within Shakespeare’s First Folio – a milestone reached in the same year that the world celebrated the 400th anniversary of its original publication.
Each chapter looks at a different play, considering the choices made and weaving in both autobiographical detail and background on the RSC, as well as giving insights into key collaborations, including those with actors such as Judi Dench, David Tennant, Harriet Walter, Patrick Stewart, Simon Russell Beale, Paterson Joseph and Doran’s husband, the late Antony Sher, as well as seminal practitioners such as Cicely Berry, John Barton and Terry Hands.
The book also includes 16 striking pages with stills from some of the RSC plays. It uniquely captures the excitement, energy, surprises, joys and agonies of working on these greatest of plays; sheds new light on these plays through Doran’s own research and discoveries made in the rehearsal room; and gives unprecedented access into the craft, life and loves of this exceptional director.
Out now in paperback, My Shakespeare is also available in audiobook format from audiobook retailers.
Below a sneek peak into Greg Doran’s insight into the direction of Richard III and how he debunks the idea of a ‘definitive performance.’
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Taken from Chapter 35, Richard III
Arthur Hughes is the first disabled actor to play Richard III at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
In February 2022, Arthur travels to Stratford so I can show him around. He comes up to the house for our first proper face-to-face rehearsal. After lunch, I take him in to Tony’s studio, the room in which he loved to paint and write. It’s full of light.
I show him the cabin trunk that Tony brought with him from Cape Town, as a shy teenager, in 1968. Before he died, we packed it full of all his scripts: a fifty-year career of work, going back to the Liverpool Everyman. I open it. Here are his scripts for The History Man, and Mrs Brown, for Mike Leigh’s Goose-pimples, for Pam Gems’ play Stanley. And all the RSC scripts, Moliere, Tartuffe, Red Noses, Maydays, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Roman Actor, The Malcontent, Death of A Salesman; the scripts he used playing the Fool, Macbeth, Leontes, Iago, Falstaff, King Lear. Tucked in the corner are a stack of the old Penguin editions, which the RSC used to use: Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, and on top, Richard III.
A sharp intake of breath at my side. ‘Is that his actual script?’ says Arthur. ‘Here, have a look,’ I say, handing him the tattered copy. ‘It’s not holy writ.’ It has all Richard’s speeches underlined in red and on every other page there are little snatched sketches in the margins, of Roger Allam as Clarence, Malcolm Storry as Buckingham, Brian Blessed as Hastings, and Penny Downie as Anne. Tony’s bravura performance as Richard III scorched its mark in the annals of Stratford like a thunderbolt.
‘Listen,’ I say to Arthur, ‘there is no such thing as a definitive performance, or a definitive production of any Shakespeare play. You are part of a continuum. That’s what’s so exciting about doing Shakespeare at Stratford. It’s both inspiring and intimidating in roughly equal measure. You’re in a line of actors who have played these parts here for a nearly a century and a half. Back to actor-managers like Frank Benson. In 1911, he made the first silent film of Richard III, in what is now the Swan Theatre. Tony’s performance was highly celebrated. Unbelievably, I never saw it. Perhaps that is a good thing. But we will do what we will do in this moment, alert to the world we live in now, and as long as we bring open minds and full hearts to that endeavour, we can be proud of whatever we achieve. Richard is in your hands now. It’s your right. The RSC isn’t just its famous history. It’s you, now. You are the RSC.’
Propped on one of Tony’s easels is a black-wrapped crutch. ‘Is that one of the actual . . .? Can I see?’ Arthur asks. He’s almost whispering now. Like every actor tackling Richard for the last forty years, he’s been reading Year of the King, though he wasn’t even born when Tony played the role.
There is an irony seeing Arthur try Tony’s famous crutch. Arthur doesn’t need to do any of the research into Richard’s disability that Tony describes in such detail in his journal. Arthur has insights into the character of Richard that I haven’t heard before.
He has radial dysplasia in his right arm. He refers to his ‘limb difference’, a much better way of describing it than the self-deprecating phrase ‘banana-hand’, which he used to use at school, to counter the name calling (‘four-fingered freak’), which was hurled his way.
As a disabled man, he talks about the way he has often felt overlooked, underestimated. He tells me a story about when he was at drama school in Cardiff and was walking home one night when a group of young men blocked his way. They were spoiling for a fight. But when he pulled his right hand from his jacket pocket, they backed off:
‘Oh, see lads, he’s got a funny hand. Best leave him.’
Arthur was furious, he wanted to fight them just to show them what he was really capable of. Their threat might have scared him, but their pity enraged him.
This is Arthur’s moment.
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My Shakespeare: A Director’s Journey through the First Folio is now available both in hardback and paperback via Bloomsbury.com
