Pennington’s
love letter to Shakespeare, his best friend
In
1955, at a performance of Macbeth at the
“It
was extremely atmospheric,” he remembers, “real blood and thunder Shakespeare,
and it absolutely did it for me. It was like hearing music for the first time.
That was the night my life was pretty much settled.”
More
than 50 years later, now 64, Michael’s name is synonymous with the great
playwright. The Islington actor has performed almost the entire canon around
the world with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National, or with his own
contemporary company The English Shakespeare Company
(set up with the renowned theatre director Michael Bogdanov).
“I’ve
done so much to do with Shakespeare I thought it was time I accounted for it,” Michael
admits. “This is like a love letter to your best friend who happens to be a
very famous author.”
Sweet
William, Michael’s one-man show which plays for a week at the Little Angel
Theatre in Islington from Monday, is a heartfelt dedication to the author who
has formed the cornerstone of Michael’s celebrated career, interweaving the
bard’s history and his work with the actor’s own opinions and experiences.
Though
there are speeches from Hamlet, Cleopatra and Richard III, Michael insists it
will not be the “usual chestnuts”. Speeches from Timon of Athens, The Winter’s
Tale and the rarely performed yet blood-curdling speech by the hunchbacked
Richard of Gloucester (soon to be Richard III) in Henry VI Part III all
feature.
There’s
humour too. “Shakespeare is one of the dirtiest writers who ever wrote,”
proclaims Michael. “He couldn’t resist a dirty joke.”
Recently
Michael has been playing Robert Maxwell alongside Mother Theresa in The Bargain
at the Theatre Royal Bath, Charles Dickens in a play about his love life, plus
a turn as Bomber Harris in the HBO-produced film Churchill at War.
Yet,
without doubt, Shakespeare has been the “vertebrae of his working life. “The
dream roles change over the years,” he says. “I missed out on Romeo, but it’s
Hamlet when you’re a young man, and Lear when you
reach my age. That’s one thing I haven’t done and I’m slightly daunted by –
Lear is enormous.”
He
adds: “There’s a myth about Shakespeare that we don’t know anything about his
life. In fact we do know quite a lot about him, it is just that his talent
baffles us. Nothing you could find out would explain his genius.”