clearly about to indulge in a sexual fantasy, and there was a feeling that we shouldn’t be in this room with him, and neither should Sir Toby, Andrew, and Fabian, who were hiding behind the screen.
Donnellan: We decided to take the character of Malvolio absolutely seriously. This made the pain and humiliation that Malvolio experiences all the more serious and real, which in turn made it all the more funny. Comedy always has its feet in pain!
Bartlett: It staged itself. We were working on a bare stage, and didn’t need a box-tree because we already had a grand piano to hide behind, so it was just a question of working out, move by move, how three people could hide from a fourth on a bare stage as he shared his predicament with the audience … my only rule was that he could never stand still or face one way for very long—otherwise there’s no gag, they’re just safely upstage and he’s safely downstage. The whole point is that the scene is a virtuoso demonstration of the fact that love is blind; even though they’re right there with him, he never sees them. Of course it helps if your Malvolio (John Lithgow) is six foot three and a natural physical clown.
Sir Toby and Sir Andrew are often perceived as especially lovable characters, but Malvolio’s view of them as idle drunken parasites is not without justice, is it?
Mendes: No, I think they’re complete liggers! They’re total leeches, especially Sir Toby. They live off other people, they don’t do a stroke of work. But at the same time they’re not entirely wrong when they seem to ask, “What’s the point?” For me, the key to Sir Toby and Sir Andrew is that they’re older characters, coming into the twilight of their lives, dealing with past disappointments, and learning to come to terms with compromise. They’re not young and vivacious, they’re drinking to stave off melancholy, and to forget. There’s a tangible sense of disappointment about them and Toby’s cruelty emerges out of that: his own self-loathing, his own sense of regret. However, it is Sir Toby who in many ways drives the action of the play, particularly in the second half.
Donnellan: No, I think there are things to be said for and against all of Shakespeare’s characters. Shakespeare is anti-sentimental and he is great precisely because he is nonjudgmental about his characters. Like Chekhov, Shakespeare invites us to draw our own conclusions about the characters he presents.
Bartlett: Some of my best friends are idle, drunken parasites. What’s your point?
Is the gulling of Malvolio taken too far, when it comes to the darkened room? And does he recover his dignity at the end of the play? Whether or not his final exit line (“I’ll be revenged …”) gets a laugh—or what kind of laugh it gets—is often the test of a production .
Mendes: Too far compared to what? It’s taken as far as it needs to be taken in order to articulate the darkness in the story. I pushed it as far as I possibly could without distorting it. I think it tips over into cruelty, yes. I think that there is a streak of cruelty in Feste. He taunts Malvolio beyond what might seem funny or humane. I love those moments when darkness enters the comedies, they are the most exciting for me. Does Malvolio recover his dignity? Well, he recovershis seriousness: whether he recovers his dignity is in a way up to the director and the actor. You can have him recover his seriousness then have him walk off with his clothes flapping around his heels and he’s funny. I didn’t want him to make him funny. I wanted to make him frightening.
I didn’t go into this production with a set of preconceived ideas or a heavily conceptual framework. I went into it with an open mind, and it was very unformed, image-based ideas that seemed to lead me. The only idea I presented to Simon Russell Beale [Malvolio] at the beginning of the process was to wonder how it would be if we were given access to Malvolio’s inner space. So the
Donnellan: We decided to take the character of Malvolio absolutely seriously. This made the pain and humiliation that Malvolio experiences all the more serious and real, which in turn made it all the more funny. Comedy always has its feet in pain!
Bartlett: It staged itself. We were working on a bare stage, and didn’t need a box-tree because we already had a grand piano to hide behind, so it was just a question of working out, move by move, how three people could hide from a fourth on a bare stage as he shared his predicament with the audience … my only rule was that he could never stand still or face one way for very long—otherwise there’s no gag, they’re just safely upstage and he’s safely downstage. The whole point is that the scene is a virtuoso demonstration of the fact that love is blind; even though they’re right there with him, he never sees them. Of course it helps if your Malvolio (John Lithgow) is six foot three and a natural physical clown.
Sir Toby and Sir Andrew are often perceived as especially lovable characters, but Malvolio’s view of them as idle drunken parasites is not without justice, is it?
Mendes: No, I think they’re complete liggers! They’re total leeches, especially Sir Toby. They live off other people, they don’t do a stroke of work. But at the same time they’re not entirely wrong when they seem to ask, “What’s the point?” For me, the key to Sir Toby and Sir Andrew is that they’re older characters, coming into the twilight of their lives, dealing with past disappointments, and learning to come to terms with compromise. They’re not young and vivacious, they’re drinking to stave off melancholy, and to forget. There’s a tangible sense of disappointment about them and Toby’s cruelty emerges out of that: his own self-loathing, his own sense of regret. However, it is Sir Toby who in many ways drives the action of the play, particularly in the second half.
Donnellan: No, I think there are things to be said for and against all of Shakespeare’s characters. Shakespeare is anti-sentimental and he is great precisely because he is nonjudgmental about his characters. Like Chekhov, Shakespeare invites us to draw our own conclusions about the characters he presents.
Bartlett: Some of my best friends are idle, drunken parasites. What’s your point?
Is the gulling of Malvolio taken too far, when it comes to the darkened room? And does he recover his dignity at the end of the play? Whether or not his final exit line (“I’ll be revenged …”) gets a laugh—or what kind of laugh it gets—is often the test of a production .
Mendes: Too far compared to what? It’s taken as far as it needs to be taken in order to articulate the darkness in the story. I pushed it as far as I possibly could without distorting it. I think it tips over into cruelty, yes. I think that there is a streak of cruelty in Feste. He taunts Malvolio beyond what might seem funny or humane. I love those moments when darkness enters the comedies, they are the most exciting for me. Does Malvolio recover his dignity? Well, he recovershis seriousness: whether he recovers his dignity is in a way up to the director and the actor. You can have him recover his seriousness then have him walk off with his clothes flapping around his heels and he’s funny. I didn’t want him to make him funny. I wanted to make him frightening.
I didn’t go into this production with a set of preconceived ideas or a heavily conceptual framework. I went into it with an open mind, and it was very unformed, image-based ideas that seemed to lead me. The only idea I presented to Simon Russell Beale [Malvolio] at the beginning of the process was to wonder how it would be if we were given access to Malvolio’s inner space. So the
Similar Books
