Shakespeare Magazine 11

Samira Ahmed
Shakespeare seems to happen on a kind of
dream level. And obviously Freud was very
interested in Shakespeare...
“I’d recently watched The latest Hollow Crown
on TV when I went to see Richard III, with
Vanessa Redgrave’s haunting Margaret, and had
memories of Fiennes’ Henry VI for the RSC too.
It all merged, and I dreamt of Sophie Okonedo’s
Margaret covered in blood – absolutely drenched
in it, with more blood being poured over her.
Interestingly the Fiennes/Goold production has
almost no blood in it. The horror is all in the
presentation and the ghastly menace on stage.
To be fair, my dream was as much about stagecraft
– I was thinking about how much stage blood was
left in the bucket. It wasn’t about Freud at all.”
When you were working for the BBC in Los
Angeles, you covered the shocking and
hugely controversial OJ Simpson trial, which
I think at the time, 1995, was already being
described as ‘like a Shakespearean Tragedy’.
What are your recollections of that now?
“I’m sure I never said it was Shakespearean. It
wasn’t. When you stripped away the celebrity status
and the circus of news media around him it was
an all too familiar domestic violence case. A man
who had beaten up his wife, then stalked her after
their separation. I guess there’s something of the
and director Michael Pennington.
arrogance of celebrity that matches the delusional
self-importance of Shakespeare’s royals.
“I don’t think Brits have ever understood
that OJ Simpson was to Americans what David
Beckham is to us. A golden idol. People didn’t
want to believe that he was a nasty wife beater. I
remember the details of the knife wounds, how
the civil court damages included amounts of a
few hundred dollars for the slashed clothing of
Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. I worry that in
covering these real-life cases too many news reports
underplay the violence. I watched the American
news journalists and they were caught up in the
glamour. Some even went to a barbecue at his
house during the civil trial. I couldn’t believe it.
But I don’t think there’s anything tragic about OJ
Simpson. I remember seeing him outside court.
He was a handsome man with a warm smile, a lot
of money and a great lawyer. I’d seen him in those
comedy films he made, and never had a clue about
what went on behind closed doors in his home.
There are many more men like him who abuse
their partners, but they’re not famous.
“I notice how often good productions
emphasise the long, drawn-out violence of murder
– like the death of Desdemona in the Adrian Lester
Othello. But if we’re honest, Shakespeare’s audiences
got titillation out of them. He knew what he was
doing. Look at Titus Andronicus. I think we’re
fortunate that his writing is so good that these acts
of violence take place in plays that are emotionally
powerful and moving, too.
“Michael Pennington told me recently the
power of Shakespeare is the catharsis, which is
why he doesn’t think Lear is unbearable to watch.
I think that play actually is unbearable. I would
prefer a happy ending. I really would.”
I saw an interview with you where you
discussed your fashion influences – things
like Bette Davis and Rita Hayworth in the
’40s and Eleanor Bron in the ’60s. I wondered
if this aesthetic preference extended to
productions or films of Shakespeare,
favourite actors and actresses and so on?
“I saw a Powell and Pressburger-style RSC Merry
Wives of Windsor at the Old Vic some years back
in ’40s costume. It was wonderful. They had gas
masks and everything. I think there’s a lot more
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