[SPHBHT: BT-WEEKEND-PAGES <BTL-012-013> [FIRST -12 ] ...
02/04/10]
l12 theatre/tv
Waiting for The Tempest
Filling time before getting to a helipad ahead of an impending storm, the actors of the Bridge Project –
including the enigmatic Stephen Dillane – chat about Shakespeare and Singapore. By Clarissa Tan
S
IX in the evening, and a group
of Shakespearean actors are
clinking champagne flutes at
the New Asia Bar on the 72nd
floor of the Swissotel. The sun
is bright but there are rumours of a storm.
Everyone’s waiting to go one floor up, to
the helipad.
Meanwhile, they gaze out of the glass
walls and there is much ooh-ing and
aah-ing – at the streets below, at the
tri-pronged Marina Bay Sands and at the
Esplanade, where their play, the Sam
Mendes-directed The Tempest, will be per-
formed. These are not jaded, cynical thes-
pians by any means.
“We went to Little India this after-
noon,” enthuses a radiant Juliet Rylance,
who plays Miranda, the daughter of the
usurped duke and magician Prospero.
“And there were these lovely old houses
on the way. It’s wonderful.”
Christian Camargo, who plays the air
spirit Ariel (and who is also the husband
of Rylance), points at a spot in the dis-
tance and asks: “What’s that one? Is that
the Raffles Hotel? Beautiful.”
When asked if there is anything they
dislike about Singapore, Ashlie Atkinson
(the goddess Juno) comes up with: “I can’t
find shoes big enough for my feet.”
Rylance, who is from the UK, says that
it upsets her a bit to see the vestiges of the
British Empire here as it reminds her of co-
lonialism and usurpation, “which are iron-
ically what The Tempest seeks to exam-
ine”. These seem to be really, really nice
people.
They are also members of the famed
Bridge Project, a three-year venture that
seeks to join the finest stage talents of the
US and the UK. (Its collaborators are the
Brooklyn Academy of Music, the
Mendes-headed Neal Street, and Lon-
don’s Old Vic, led by Oscar winner Kevin
Spacey.) Last year, its inaugural season,
the project brought us a wondrous Win-
ter’s Tale, also a Shakespearean romance.
This year’s Tempest – if a sneak preview of
the play’s recent Hong Kong run is any-
thing to go by – looks to be every bit as en-
chanting, if not more so.
Amid the whirlwind of chatter sits
Stephen Dillane, almost an island unto
himself. Dillane, who has won a Tony
award and a Bafta but who is the kind of
actor who is famous for not wanting to be
famous, plays Prospero, the sorcerer ban-
ished to another shore. Dillane wears
flip-flops, turns up at press conferences in
bermudas, and is not the sort of person
who will give you sound-bites just so you
can have something nice to say in your
newspaper tomorrow.
But once the spell of silence is broken,
he proves to be warmly empathetic,
thoughtful and a football fan (he’s a Chel-
sea supporter). “I think there’s a place for
celebrity,” he says. “There are certain
films that benefit from it. It’s just not
something I’m very well suited to, with my
temperament.”
The role of Prospero, he thinks, may
Author:KATMAN
CAST ON AN ISLAND
(From left) Stephen Dillane, Thomas Sadoski, Ron Cephas Jones, Juliet Rylance and Christian Camargo taking time out to visit
some of Singapore’s sights. (Below) Camargo as the air spirit Ariel in a scene from ‘The Tempest’ and (below right) journalist-turned-actor
Dillane plays the sorcerer Prospero
well be unplayable. “Shakespeare didn’t
write the connective tissue for this charac-
ter. In fact, I feel Shakespeare isn’t interest-
ed in character a lot of the time, in the
sense that he writes poems; our obsession
with character came later on.
“ There are roles that are more vehicles
for ideas, and Prospero is very much like
that. But in order for an audience to listen
in this day and age, we feel that we must
provide them with somebody they will rec-
ognise. This attempt to create somebody
they might recognise – without taking
away what this ‘thing’ called Prospero is
there to do – is quite hard.
“A character is a much more fluid and
intangible thing than we imagine. I always
Date:05/04/10
JOAN MARCUS
find myself a bit nervous when people talk
about character because I don’t really
know what they’re talking about.”
Before becoming an actor, Dillane was
a journalist. He quit after three years be-
cause he couldn’t stand it. “It became very
clear that every story is written before you
arrive. You’re simply filling in different
names to them, so you’re not being partic-
ularly creative. And you’re always asking
people questions that you personally
don’t want to know the answers to, which
means you’re not engaging in an honest
relationship.”
If he were in a journalist’s position,
what kind of questions would he ask him-
self? Dillane looks both amused and con-
Time:11:27
THE BUSINESS TIMES FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2010
ARTHUR LEE
ARTHUR LEE
cerned. “That’s a very good question . . .
hmmm, I don’t know really. Do you want
me to write your article for you?"
In a way, says Dillane, journalists and
he will always be in a paradoxical relation-
ship. “When reporters ask actors what
they are trying to do with a role, I will re-
sist. It’s because I feel that anything I say
will interfere with an audience’s reception
of a play. My aim is not to prejudice the au-
dience in any way, so by definition, in a
way, you and I are in conflict. The play’s
the thing.”
Dillane finds Singapore “fascinating”.
“You kind of get the feeling it’s the future
in some way. If we’re lucky enough to find
a way of enabling the whole world to live,
then places like Hong Kong and Singapore
THE BUSINESS TIMES FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2010
– though very different – are the models
for it. Highly compressed, high-density
city-states with very clear rules of engage-
ment about finance and consumerism
and all those things.
“My feeling so far is that Singapore is
very tranquil. I took the subway and every-
one looks quiet and intelligent. For my
18-year-old son, he might say: ‘Where’s
the trouble, where’s the angst?’ But for
someone of my advanced age, it’s rather
pleasant.
“There’s always something selfish,
even decadent, about us wanting the
world to be more troubled, when 80 per
cent of the world’s population would be
happy to live here and to be fed and to be
peaceful.”
It’s now night, and magical lights have
sprung up, lining the streets and twinkling
on skyscrapers. There’s now news of im-
pending lightning, but the implications of
this have not struck home yet.
“Where’s Jazz at Southbridge, do you
know?” asks Ron Cephas Jones, who por-
trays the trapped, earthy Caliban. Jones is
a jazz poet himself.
Then Gaurav Kripalani, the artistic di-
rector of the Singapore Repertory Theatre,
which brought the Bridge Project here,
breaks the bad news – because of the ex-
pected lightning, it’s now too dangerous
to get up on the helipad. Singapore has
one of the highest rates of death by light-
ning in the world, he says.
Groans all around, and then an excla-
mation from Thomas Sadoski, who one
can see why Mendes cast as the lively, nev-
er-say-die Stephano: “Man! Death by light-
ning. Check that out. What a great coun-
try!”
✎ ‘The Tempest’ will run at the
Esplanade from April 2-10.
Wed-Sat 8pm; Wed & Sat 3pm.
Wed matinee: $150 (VIP Box), $120,
$100, $85, $70, $55.
Fri and Sat evening: $255 (VIP Box),
$195, $165, $150, $135, $120.
Sat matinee/Wed and Thur evening:
$235 (VIP Box), $180, $150, $125, $110,
$95.
btnews@sph.com.sg
Raising the bar for realistic war shows
By Christopher Lim
A LACK of battlefield music is just one of
the many Hollywood cliches missing from
new World War II TV mini-series The Pacif-
ic, the two-episode premiere of which
kicks off tomorrow night at 9pm on HBO’s
regular and high-definition (HD) cable
channels.
Of course, each of the 10 episodes does
open with a tasteful soundtrack score by
the likes of composer Hans Zimmer, but Ji-
mi Hendrix rock songs don’t blare like in
Forrest Gump, nor does cheesy orchestral
fare intrude like in the Rambo movies.
This sober commitment to realism be-
fits a mini-series that focuses on a portion
of the war that’s been somewhat over-
looked as a result of the numerous TV in-
terpretations of the battles between the
British and Germans in Europe, and the
Chinese and Japanese in China and
South-east Asia.
The narrative is driven by a few Ma-
rines whose paths cross in the horror that
was the American push into the Pacific
theatre/tv l13
Free spirit
By Clarissa Tan
IN The Tempest, the air sprite Ariel – played by Christian Ca-
margo – appears at one point with huge wings that have steel
blades as feathers. Camargo’s own career has had a wide
span, ranging as it does from Hollywood (most notably in The
Hurt Locker, which picked up the Oscar for Best Film) to a seri-
al killer in the hit TV series Dexter.
The Iraq war movie The Hurt Locker, in which he played
psychiatrist Lieutenant Colonel John Cambridge, had a
low-key start, Camargo recalls. He was right there at the
screenplay’s earliest phases with director Kathryn Bigelow.
“We would sit around her dining table and read the
script,” he says. “Kathryn is a friend of mine; we have known
each other for almost 10 years, since I was in her previous
movie K-19: The Widowmaker, with Harrison Ford.
“She wanted to do The Hurt Locker very much on her own
terms, which meant doing it for no money. For financing rea-
sons, distributors want celebrities in their projects all the
time. But she’s not a director who is led by celebrity; she just
wants the best actors to embody her roles.”
Bigelow, says Camargo, knew that the relatively lit-
tle-known Jeremy Renner was right for the lead role. “Jeremy
was not a celebrity actor, and yet she did not back down from
that. She’s a real fighter – tenacious and unwilling to compro-
mise. So she took a group of people who were willing to go on
the ride even though the budgetary constraints were seeming-
ly impossible.” CHRISTIAN CAMARGO
CAMARGO
Camargo didn’t expect to portray Cambridge at first. “I
While ‘The Hurt Locker’ has hurtled him to the Hollywood
thought the part was going to a celebrity. But in the last
minute she got the financing she needed, and was so kind as high stakes, he is more often recognised on the street for
to want me to do that part for her.” his serial-killer role in ‘Dexter’
While The Hurt Locker has hurtled Camargo to the Holly-
wood high stakes, he says he is more often recognised on the The part allows Camargo to make various costume chang-
street for his role in Dexter, where he portrayed the Ice Truck
es, including into a suit and an evening gown.
Killer, a serial murderer with a tortured past. And now there’s “We decided that instead of being a woman, I really am a
Ariel, the captive spirit who finally earns his freedom from his man in a dress, there’s almost a drag quality to it. Ariel is a
master Prospero.
spirit both masculine and feminine. We wanted to present it
“Generally, Ariel the spirit is either a very effeminate, small
symbolically that there’s a feminine side to Ariel.”
man, or a woman. I think Sam Mendes the director wanted to
So who’s the designer of his fabulous, Veronica Lake-style
go against the grain. He thought, let’s take a man, a tall man,
gown?
and someone who’s played serial killers and other dark char-
“The dress is custom-made,” he says, grinning. “Only I can
acters – I’d just played Hamlet – and put him as Ariel. It’s nice
because it’s made people to see the character in a different pull it off. Or not.”
way. Ariel has been so stereotyped.” btnews@sph.com.sg
Theatre of World War II, which included in close-ups, with a wide variety of loca-
Australia as well as little-known islands tions that required the building of over 90
like Guadalcanal and Pavuvu. sets, the planting of 350 coconut trees and
It’s set long before the film Flags Of the excavation of more than 62,000 tons of
Our Fathers, which covers the climactic in- earth.
vasion of Iwo Jima that The Pacific eventu- The more intimate shots rely heavily
ally builds towards. When the mini-series on the principal cast, especially the star
opens, however, the war is just starting for trio playing real-life soldiers Private First
Class Robert Leckie, Corporal Eugene
the United States, and the soldiers begin
Sledge, and Gunnery Sergeant John Basi-
with idealism before being twisted by jun-
lone, whose accounts of the war provided
gles and mad battles.
material for the mini-series. It’s a good
The visual style borrows from the jerky
thing the actors rise to the occasion.
documentary camera angles in vogue
James Badge Dale is particularly strong
these days, which are contrasted with rela-
THE SAVAGERY OF WAR as Leckie, with frazzled hair that prevents
tively static steady shots that effectively il-
The narrative of ‘The Pacific’ is driven by a him from looking too pretty, and a brood-
lustrate the amount of mind-numbing few Marines whose paths cross in the
ing intellectual spirit that baulks at the sav-
waiting that occurred between major skir- horror that was the American push into the
agery of the war and the toll it takes on the
mishes. It’s the kind of quality one would Pacific Theatre of World War II human spirit.
expect from executive producers Steven
✎ Follow new episodes on HBO on
Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetz-
lion in the series, which is double what
Saturdays at 9pm. The two-episode
man, who were behind HBO’s Emmy-win- Asian premiere will be repeated on
ning series Band Of Brothers, which dealt went into Band Of Brothers, and makes it April 9 at 8pm on HBO Signature.
with US soldiers fighting in Europe. HBO’s most expensive mini-series to date. ‘The Pacific’ will also be on HBO On
But The Pacific has big shoes to fill be- You can see where all the money went Demand.
cause of that pedigree. Perhaps that’s why though. There’s uncompromising dedica- Rating: B+
HBO has invested a whopping US$200 mil- tion to detail in large-scale shots as well as limchris@sph.com.sg