Here’s David Yelland rehearsing Henry IV in the play of the same, for Bath Theatre Royal, earlier this year. Wonderful performance, amazing verse-speaking. I couldn’t get a good full-figure portrait of him in rehearsal, because he kept moving, so this is a close-up on a face battered with guilt and the weight of his crown.
"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown"
Here’s another charcoal sketch from rehearsals of Henry IV for the just-opened production at Bath. Ben Mansfield plays the fiery Harry Hotspur. Pouring over the map of England, dividing it up between the ‘rebels’ he doesn’t like the size of his share. “Methinks my moiety north of Burton here…” (type these words into Google to see the rest of the speech)
Ben Mansfield as Harry Hotspur
This is my first try at doing a sketch of my father Sir Peter Hall, during rehearsals- a process he adores and where he has spent so much of his life. I was grappling with the difficulty of making his likeness as he gesticulated and talked with the actors, consulted the text, perhaps now and then referring to the fight designer or stage designer across the room, or the Shakespeare scholar in the corner. For his part he was grappling with the difficulty of staging Henry IV P2. It’s just a little sketch – not perfect. But I think it conveys something of him in the thick of his creative process.
Peter Hall in rehearsal
This is a quick sketch- the last I’m posting in this actors series- of Philip Voss, rehearsing as Worcester in Henry IV P1 [Scene III, London, The Palace] which will be playing at Theatre Royal, Bath this summer.
Philip Voss- playing scheming Worcester
More sketches of actors- this is Robert East as Owen Glendower. My sketchbook is full of smatterings of lines that I wrote down as I heard them spoken. The actor I was drawing wasn’t necessarily speaking the line – they were just snatches of text that caught my ear.
Robert East rehearsing Owen Glendower
Shakespeare as a blue collar worker, in a sort of hunky “Because I’m worth It” pose, with added flowers.
The hedgerows near my nursery school in Henley-in-Arden are what I always think of when I hear him naming his litany of flowers, like eglantine and gillyflowers, like cuckoo-bud and violets. (I believe Elizabeth Gaskell was also among the alumni).
I’m thinking of doing quite a few pieces on this subject.
Ah Shakespeare
