When the Globe Theatre’s all-male productions of “Richard III” and “Twelfth Night” swept into New York last November to great acclaim, Mark Rylance deservedly received raves for his dual performances as the venal homicidal Richard and the Countess Olivia. But not far behind in the critics’ esteem was Samuel Barnett, the 33-year-old actor who holds his own opposite Rylance as both the tragic Queen Elizabeth in “Richard III” and the shipwrecked Viola of “Twelfth Night,” a play that calls upon the young man to play a girl playing a boy.
The Yorkshire-born actor is no stranger to rave reviews, having won approval and a Tony nomination for his last Broadway outing in 2006 as the lovestruck gay student Posner in Alan Bennett’s “The History Boys.” That Barnett has now triumphed in two such strikingly different roles is somewhat ironic in that he had previously declared himself “not of fan” of Shakespeare. As a student of the London Academy of Dramatic Art, he’d performed scenes from the plays. And his Quaker grandmother, an actress who’d also trained at LAMDA in the 1930s, loved quoting Shakespeare to him, especially Viola’s famous “ring speech” from “Twelfth Night.” But despite the pedigree and an acting bug acquired at age 6 when he played a mouse in a local community production of “The Wind in the Willows,” Barnett had found the Bard resistible until Tim Carroll, who directed the smash-hit productions AT THE GLOBE, unlocked the language and specific world for him. “If you find Shakespeare to be boring or difficult, what you need is a brilliant teacher and Tim is that as well as a brilliant director,” says the affable, self-deprecating actor. “It’s like learning to speak French. It’s become such a pleasure to act and to hear Shakespeare that it makes you want to do more.”
Barnett recently spoke with ARTINFO about other challenges inherent in playing women who must use their cunning and wiles to survive in an often hostile, if not deadly, world.
How did you feel when you looked in the mirror having put on the respective costumes for Viola and Queen Elizabeth?
When I looked in the mirror as Viola, I thought, “Omigod, I look like Boy George in the ’80s!” I went to the costume lady and asked if we could do anything to make me look less like him so she curled my hair and pinned up one side of the hat. It was different with Queen Elizabeth because the dress is much more striking to me. I didn’t even recognize myself. I really felt like I was a woman in that costume. It was remarkable because we’d been rehearsing for so many weeks and I kept wondering, “How am I going to pull this off being like a woman, moving like a woman. The audience will have to suspend disbelief so much.” And then putting on the costume was what made it.
What have you learned about women that you didn’t know before?
I’ve definitely learned that if you want to have power as a woman in Shakespeare’s time, and it’s still relevant today, that you have to play a different game than men play and you have to be a lot cleverer. I hate to generalize but as an actor, you have to play the character and Shakespeare has written these women who have a much quicker access to their emotions than some of the male characters in the play. In the games that they play they have to cover up a lot more and yet they have access to their emotions much more easily than men.
In “Twelfth Night,” you play a shipwrecked young woman trying to survive with few resources and in “Richard III,” a powerful queen. How is it to play these two different sides of power?
You can’t assume status. People have to give it to you in the way that they defer to you. Viola is aristocracy, but she’s not queen and she’s pretending to not be highborn when she disguises herself as Cesario [the male emissary in the court of the Duke Orsino]. Elizabeth is obviously royalty but she has all of her power stripped because her only power is linked to the men in her life, her husband the king and her son who is the future king. It’s taught me a lot about the differences between male and female power, which I think is relevant today. Elizabeth has to use her sexuality and femininity as a kind of political power, which the men don’t have to do.
In historical reality, Elizabeth Woodville was quite a cunning player was she not?
Yes. And that’s what I wanted to bring out in her. I didn’t want her to be a victim of her circumstances. I think she was an extremely clever political player. The tragedy is that because of her gender, she has less freedom to move around in this male-dominated world. According to historical records, she made the match for herself with the King but it was because she wanted to raise her family up and that’s a much harder thing to do.
In what way is Viola’s use of power different?
She’s more clever than Elizabeth has to be because she’s doing something in a patriarchal society that a woman would never do, pretending to be a boy. She’d be completely shamed, if not drowned, or called a witch for behaving in such a manner. But she’s a real survivor and the only way to survive without being taken advantage of is to become a man for a while as she figures out what to do. And she is torn between her duty to the Count Orsino and her love for him. Both Elizabeth and Viola are engaged in two very different power games, but it really is life and death for them.
Has playing Queen Elizabeth made you more sympathetic toward your own present-day monarch, Queen Elizabeth II?
[Laughs] It’s tricky. I guess I’ve grown to admire Queen Elizabeth II more. I’ve always struggled with my feelings about the Royal Family. I am a supporter. I’m not someone who thinks we should get rid of them. But what I’ve struggled with is the lack of emotionality that the Queen seems to share. Charles gets much more emotional about things and he seems a man who is in and of the world. Queen Elizabeth always seems to be kind of removed and has such a high class, arty, cut-glass accent that I just go — she is of her time and yet seems very much old school. But actually, I’ve admired her commitment and staying power and how hard she works for her country.
Were you able to draw on her for your portrait of Queen Elizabeth in “Richard III”?
Not really. Because I’m playing someone much older than I am, I could look at other actors who are very grounded but also very feminine. But, like the Elizabeth I play, Queen Elizabeth is a monarch who actually moves with the times. She gets new information, assimilates it, and changes in order the fit in with the way the world is moving. I admire that.
You’re playing opposite Mark Rylance, arguably one of the greatest actors of the English-speaking stage. Has that been challenging?
Absolutely. I’ve become a much better actor working with Mark. He’s very fresh, very in-the-moment. You have to be in the moment more, really receiving what someone is giving to me rather than something I’ve made up in my head that I’m going to do. I’ve also had to learn to stand my ground. Mark is such an incredibly powerful performer that you could get blown away if you don’t hold your own ground. He’s so quick-footed and quick thinking that I might get left behind. I’ve developed more acting muscles with him. Definitely.
Was it helpful to do research into this unusual tribe of boys in Shakespeare’s time who were called upon to play all the female roles because women were banned onstage?
I did do some research but it wasn’t really helpful because they were up to 20 years younger than I am with unbroken voices. And voices broke much later then, when one was well into your teens. When you have freshness of youthful skin and a smaller frame on which to put that dress, then it’s less work to be convincing. We’re a lot older than these boys, bigger physically and so our work was quite a lot different to play women. I had to find my own way. Viola was much trickier because I am boy playing a girl dressed up as a boy, softening my body language, raising the pitch of the voice. And then you hope that the audience’s imagination helps you to do the rest of the work.
