A Piece of Work
Playing Shakespeare & Other Stories
by Simon Russell Beale
Abacus Books
Simon Russell Beale has been one of our leading classical actors for over thirty years. In this book he details his approach to many of the parts he has played; in Shakespeare, principally, where the list is quite astonishing. It includes – in no particular order – Cassius, Hamlet, Richard II, Richard III, Iago, Leontes, Malvolio, Benedick, Ariel, Prospero, Thersites, Lear, Macbeth, Edgar, Timon and Falstaff. There are also mentions for the Restoration fops that in his early career seemed, a little worryingly, to be his default casting, for Marlowe (he has played the king in Edward II), for Chekhov and Ibsen, and for his role in The Lehman Trilogy that proved such a great hit on both sides of the Atlantic (earning him a Tony Award); and there are his – only relatively – brief excursions into film and music documentary. But his main focus is Shakespeare. He writes fluently and, in tone, modestly; he almost never quotes his press reviews, nor mentions the ‘Tony’ or his other innumerable awards, let alone his CBE or his knighthood; and he admits to failings or poor choices where they have occurred. But the substance of the story is of one fabulous offer after another, with almost routine meetings with numerous Hollywood ‘greats’, and of lauded performances right across the world. Unemployment – the lot of most actors from time to time – seems not to figure, and self-doubt rarely makes an appearance; at least not after his student years, when a musical (possibly operatic) career was planned but then rejected in favour of the life of an actor.
For the general reader, particularly Shakespeare enthusiasts, this will prove an engaging and fruitful insight into the mind of a deeply thoughtful actor. Fellow actors and directors will inevitably – Beale recognises this in his introduction – disagree on details of interpretation and have the occasional cavil. Mine were actually very few: about Malvolio, who, as the Steward of a great estate, is surely so much more than ‘a domestic servant’; and, rather more seriously, the blunt assertion that Macbeth ‘is a professional soldier, so he is used to killing people’ – Shakespeare’s text says nothing to substantiate this claim.
But I found much to enjoy as well. I particularly valued his account of Cassius in Julius Caesar. It is refreshing to read of him as an insecure man, probably in awe of Brutus and a ‘committed and sincere republican’ in place of the purely cynical manipulator of tradition. And, as one of the few actors who have had the chance to play the title character in the intriguing but profoundly unloved Timon of Athens, it was equally fascinating to hear his encounter with that character in Nick Hytner’s modern-set production at the National Theatre in 2012.
The book’s fly-leaf promises thought on Shakespeare’s mind and politics – chiefly on the old question, was he socially conservative? In the event he avoids such general issues, admitting to no authority to talk generally about Shakespeare, only specifically from within each character in that extraordinary list. I can understand an actor’s nervousness about getting into what might be considered to be academic territory, but I would have liked him to have taken the risk. With such a wealth of experience, there must be trenchant thoughts of some value lurking there, unvoiced.
Review by Andrew Hilton
Founder & Artistic Director of Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, 1999-2017
Photography credit: Marc Brenner/Lise Leino
