Our How We Staged Shakespeare series ends with the celebrated actor explaining why he keeps coming back to the much-misunderstood role of Shylock in The Merchant of VeniceThe Merchant of Ven…
The actor and theatre-maker had such a good time playing Malvolio in Shakespeare's comedy that he wrote a whole show for himIn the mid-90s, I acted in a production of Tom Stoppard's Rosencra…
One of the hardest things about doing Shakespeare? Making sure the comedy is actually funny, says the director who transported his early play to the jazz ageYou see some Shakespeares so ofte…
Designer Nick Ormerod on how he brought Shakespeare's ancient Britons into the 20th century for Cheek by Jowl's production of CymbelineDesigning for Cheek by Jowl is very pragmatic. We're a …
After touring Hamlet in 1980, the actor succumbed to the 'worm of doubt' " but a job playing Shakespeare's quick-witted hero forced him to face his anxietyI'd been on a world tour of Hamlet,…
Goold's wife Kate Fleetwood was cast alongside Patrick Stewart in his Soviet-styled 2007 production " the 'luckiest' show the director has worked onI was in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2006, abou…
The opera singer played the jealous general opposite Imogen Stubbs and Ian McKellen in a 1989 RSC version. He remembers the play as a crushing experienceOver the years, people have asked me …
When he played Bolingbroke in a 1960s Prospect production, West discovered a play divided between his character and the king " and learned that McKellen is a white-wine actor while he's defi…
The Donmar Warehouse chief on directing a darkly witty drama about our destiny as a nation " and why it reminds her of The West WingIn 2006 and 2007, the RSC decided to do a Complete Works s…
Verdi was 80 when he finished turning Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor into a comic opera. Gatti's 2012 production aimed to draw out its tendernessGiuseppe Verdi was in his late 70s and …
Lesley Manville as a post-punk shepherdess, Juliet Stevenson in pinstripes and a forest of silk … the designer behind the RSC's As You Like It in 1985 explains his approach to the playsWhe…
From Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev to the opium hallucination scene in La Bayadère, artist Mark Wallinger talks about how ballet had him hooked from an early ageI first saw Margot Fonte…
Henry V is a play about war yet we only see two conflicts " and the way the characters do combat tells us plenty about them, says fight director Terry KingIt's one of the simplest stage dire…
For the BBC series, Eyre took Shakespeare's histories out into the country they portrayed, shooting on location to give a broad vision of EnglandShakespeare's history plays are all about con…
Jonathan Pryce had never seen Hamlet on stage " and thought Olivier's film version was mannered. But the violent death of his father prompted him to take on the Dane, and radically rethink t…
Text adviser Giles Block on how the Bard made everything from pauses to awkward phrases sound as natural and intensely theatrical as possibleIf I had to describe what I do in a sentence, I w…
Director Ivo van Hove describes how he turned Shakespeare's Roman plays into a six-hour study of murder, mistrust and the modern-day mediaMy interest in Shakespeare's Roman plays was their p…
The Comedy of Errors features not one but two sets of identical twins who, if they don't look alike, must at least act the part. The National Theatre's Wendy Spon explains the challenge of f…
Designer Jonathan Fensom explains why the costumes have to work overtime at the Globe " and asks how much Shakespeare himself thought about designWhen Dominic Dromgoole said that he wanted t…
Composer Claire van Kampen on staging Shakespeare's late play with her husband Mark Rylance " and how music is his thumbprint as a playwrightThe first time I was involved with a production o…
Sandra Smith, the head of the RSC's wigs and makeup department, on how to stage Shakespeare's grisliest play " and how to get the stains outThe first thing you think when you're asked to wor…
In our series to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, stage designer Rae Smith explains how she conjured up some fairytale magic for a landmark productionIt's a fascinating cha…
In a new series to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, leading actors, directors, designers and others offer their own guides to his plays. Harriet Walter starts off with a tr…
From Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev to the opium hallucination scene in La Bayadère, artist Mark Wallinger talks about how ballet had him hooked from an early ageI first saw Margot Fonte…
'She can sound like a seductress, a mother, a man, or Elvis.'Wuthering Heights was the first Kate Bush song I ever heard. It was the early 1990s and I was 14, watching her on Dutch TV. I was…