Antony Sher was not only a superb performer but also an insightful observer on the craft of acting and the theatre – as shown in these extracts
- Antony Sher, celebrated actor, dies aged 72
- Consummate Shakespearean and a man of staggering versatility
What have I sacrificed for my art? Peace of mind. All the creative arts involve struggle, and I do three of them – as I also write and paint. You don’t often find yourself feeling calm.
February 2013
Performing a playwright’s work for the first time is an experience quite unlike reading it, or seeing it staged. Now you’re on the inside, feeling the author’s emotions and tasting his language in a very personal way. With Arthur Miller, I have been astonished by the rawness of his writing, by his anger and humour. His play Broken Glass, which I have been performing for almost a year now, has the fearlessness of a young man’s response to the world – yet Miller wrote it when he was 78.
September 2011
Torch Song Trilogy is a remarkable piece of work: Fierstein takes the most exotic of creatures, a New York drag queen, and turns him into Everyman. It begins as a very gay play, but then the second act talks about straight relationships, and the third talks about parent-child relationships, so that by the end, the play has wrapped its arms around every single person in the audience.
May 2012
Iago doesn’t explain himself, not even at the end. I’m not sure he can. The man’s a psychopath. I think there’s something very wrong with him, sexually. He can’t open his mouth without sexual imagery pouring out – and it’s ugly, filthy language, as sensationalist and shocking as [that of] a tabloid journalist. People having intercourse is “making the beast with two backs” – that’s a very, very savage image. We never pinned down exactly what was wrong, whether he’s impotent or sterile, but there’s a medical condition called morbid jealousy, where you become falsely convinced that your partner has been unfaithful. My instinct is that Iago suffers from the same thing.
July 2015
If you’re Jewish, you can’t avoid being interested in Shylock: it’s a terrific part in a very difficult play. Shakespeare writes him in three dimensions: the great “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech is a wonderful cry of pain from an oppressed man, but when he flips, and becomes unreasonable in the trial scene, the man who has been persecuted becomes the persecutor. That is a syndrome that has fascinated me all my life because of my South African upbringing.
May 2011
from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3GaSY3T
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