Angelo

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About Liam Brennan

his is Liam's fourth season at Shakespeare's Globe. Last year, he played Henry Bolingbroke in Richard II and the titular role in Edward II. During the 2002 season he played Orsino in Twelfth Night, and in 2001 he played Macduff in Macbeth. He has also performed at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, the Traverse Theatre, the Salisbury Playhouse and the Sheffield Crucible. His television credits include Swine Fever and Taggart.

Rehearsal notes 1

  • Back again
  • Preparation
  • Reaction
  • Rehearsal
  • Angelo

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Back again

I can’t believe this will be my fourth season on the trot. I find that quite amazing because it doesn’t feel like that long at all. Actually, I suppose I’ve only done three seasons so far; I originally came to play Macduff in Macbeth, then returned the following season to play Orsino in Twelfth Night, as well as a part called the Old Woman in a new play by Peter Oswald called The Golden Ass. Last year I played Bolingbroke in Richard II and Edward II in Edward II. This year I’m playing Angelo in Measure for Measure. We’re only in one play this season so it's going to feel slightly different – but easier! The Rose Company is the last of the three to begin rehearsals so our season will be a little shorter too. I think it will only be five months in all because of the way things have fallen, and that's going to be much more relaxed than last year: that season was just enormous – about ten months in all, including the American tour of Twelfth Night. Each of the seasons prior to that was a full six months, so I was expecting some differences this time round. The fact that a show [Romeo and Juliet] opened two days after we arrived made me feel like we really were coming in late. Much Ado About Nothing will open in about a week and a half so the strangeness is still there. It's very weird, as though you’re a late arrival at a party!

Preparation

I think I was offered the part relatively late. We started rehearsals on the fourth of May and Mark contacted me towards the end of February. Again, that differs from the process last season: I found out about Bolingbroke and Edward II quite early on and spent a lot of time mulling over them through the winter. This time I made quite an instinctive decision not to do lots of work beforehand. There's just the one play, and the part is lovely – it's quite big but not massive like Edward II, and that allows you to be a wee bit more relaxed. I thought ‘No, I’ll just work really hard during the rehearsal period this time.’ I read the play through a few times before we started though. In one sense, there isn’t the same scope for research prior to rehearsal this time. Measure for Measure isn’t a history play like Edward II or Richard II, and a lot of my preparation last year concentrated on Bolingbroke and Edward's ‘real’ characters. I enjoyed reading the background history and taking trips to the places where the characters had been born or had visited during their lives. I’ll just have to go on little trips for the sake of it this time [laughs].

Reaction

I jumped at the part when it was offered – if I’m honest, I wasn’t sure how I would react if I happened to be offered something this season. Four consecutive years is a long time at one theatre when the productions take half a year, and I had wondered about taking a break from the Globe. However when the phone rang and I was offered Angelo, I said ‘Okay, that's lovely. Thanks very much, I’ll have a think’, but as soon as I put the phone down I thought ‘Yes, this feels right.’ I didn’t know I was going to feel like that. I felt like I had jumped at the chance, so I accepted. There will be different challenges this year. We have a new director and a mixed company. There are also five or six people in the cast whom I don’t know, which is quite nice and helps to keep things fresh.

Apart from Edward II, which was directed by Tim Walker, I’ve always worked with Tim Carroll. Each director has an individual style and works at a different pace. You just have to find a working rhythm that feels comfortable for both of you. John Dove [Master of Play] is taking his time and going into the scenes in very thorough detail at the moment. We’re not actually that far through the play at this point [second week of rehearsals] whereas another director might have gone through the whole thing in a less meticulous way by now. Everyone's approach is different and that's partly why working on these plays is still interesting.

Rehearsal

Rehearsals don’t actually start on day one at the Globe because we have a big ‘Meet and Greet’ session. It gives the Company a chance to bond and introduces everyone to the building and each other. Since day two, rehearsals so far have mostly involved working through the play in quite a straightforward way… when you reach a new scene for the first time, you read it round the table and then you go back through it and thrash it out, making sure that everyone knows what everything means. We didn’t do a read-through as such, which seems to be happening more frequently these days. I don’t think it's a particularly great loss; they’re a bit nerve-racking really. We just went straight into the opening scene.

The process is quite static to begin with, because of the detailed text work. After we’re clear about the meaning, we tentatively put the scenes on their feet. As I said, we’re taking time. Tim Carroll would probably go plunging in, just get to the end and come back to close textual analysis later on. John's just doing something different. It will be interesting to see what happens. I have to say, I think it's a hard play. I had to read it about four times before I had a clue about what was going on… okay, I’m exaggerating a bit – but it definitely took me four readings before I knew what was going on at certain points. Hopefully what will happen is that the lines will become much clearer when you see them acted out rather than reading them on a page.

I feel that Measure for Measure suffers because the first couple of pages are incredibly difficult, and picking up the thread of the story is tricky. The play jumps right into the action and you don’t have much time to get your bearings. The first speeches [I.1] are quite complex. Basically, the Duke is taking himself off for a while and passing over authority to me but the way we speak isn’t easy to understand and it's always problematic if people are put off by difficulties right at the beginning. We’ll have to make very sure the story is as clear as it can be so that no one recoils ‘Oh crikey, what are they talking about?’ I think after the first couple of pages it will get easier. Angelo doesn’t say very much in that first scene; it's mostly up to Mark [Rylance, Vincentio] to make the situation clear to the audience. I suppose it's enough that two high status people are saying farewell to each other and that power is being handed over. If people grasp those fundamentals, then that's great.

Angelo

It takes some time for us to find out what sort of person Angelo is. He gets talked about a lot and it's always tempting to play what people say about you, but I think you have a responsibility to sit down and take a bit of time looking closely at the lines. We don’t necessarily go about displaying the all characteristics that other people identify as being part of our persona, and there are other characteristics that people will miss. If someone else wrote a three page description of me, I wouldn’t necessarily recognise myself at all, or maybe I would only recognise bits of myself. It's like that with Angelo: we don’t find everything out at once. He goes on a journey and he does change, although once the story gets going, I suppose we do move very quickly. The play spans three or maybe four days – as often happens in Shakespeare, events take place in a condensed time-frame so things seem to happen at pretty break-neck speed.

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Rehearsal notes 2

  • Breathing space
  • Rehearsals
  • Lines
  • Scenes with Isabella
  • Angelo's character
  • Motivation
  • Marianna & Isabella

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Breathing space

I don’t really have anything to say this week because I haven’t been in rehearsals for about five days! I’ve been doing the jigging rehearsals and I’ve been doing the group sessions, but we’ve basically hit this chunk of the play that I’m not in – Act III and most of Act IV. I’m in this afternoon which is good: it's nice for a couple of days because you get a breather and sit back from it for a bit, but after that it does start to feel strange. You just feel a bit detached. We’re coming towards the end now for the first time, working through it. I’m not exactly sure where we’re going to stop for the interval, but roughly looking at it on paper I’m not in about three quarters of the second half.

Funnily enough, Angelo's part is distributed across the play in almost exactly the same way as Orsino's in Twelfth Night: your good stuff is in the first half, you’re off for most of the second half, and then you are back again at the end. Last year my characters, Bolingbroke and Edward II [Richard II and Edward II] were on regularly all the way through, which is actually better in that rehearsal feels slightly more unified.

Rehearsals

We’ll read through a scene then really look hard at what might be going on in the lines. I think we have worked quite slowly – not too slowly though. I suppose by the end of this week we will be half way through rehearsals, and we’re just coming to the end of the play. But then there are set backs that you can’t help; we had an accident yesterday. Ed Peel [Escalus] snapped his Achilles’ tendon so he's out now, which is a shame. We’ll be finding out today or tomorrow who we’re going to get to play that part. It's a shame for Ed; he's a really nice guy. It's just one of those things. It happened so quickly – we were leaping around in a movement class and suddenly he just crumpled.

It was a bit unsettling for everyone. We were working in smaller groups, and certainly for those of us who were in the room, it was quite weird. I have a few scenes with him, so it will be interesting to see what happens next. The scenes aren’t huge but we’ll obviously have to go back and do them again. When the Duke puts me in charge, Escalus is like my second in command.

I’m expecting the play to change a lot when we go back and look at the earlier scenes. By then, it will be three weeks really since we worked on them, which feels like a long time. I’m not so bad with the two Isabella scenes [II.2 and II.4] because we did those more recently – they take a little while before they happen, about a third of the way in. So they don’t seem so long ago, but we’re going back to the first one of them this afternoon then we’ll go back to the second one again tomorrow afternoon. I’m glad about that. I feel like I’ve kind of put the parts of the play together again, which is good.

Lines

While I haven’t been in rehearsal, I have been learning my lines. I don’t know them all yet, but I will do by the beginning of next week and that's fine. I don’t have a massive amount of text so if I learn them for the beginning of next week, that still gives me half the rehearsal period off book, which is what I usually look for. This morning I had a session with Giles [Block, Master of the Words]. We looked through a couple of my speeches. I haven’t made any major discoveries with Giles so far, but he's always really helpful. He points out things and Shakespeare is so dense that you do miss things; to have someone who just listens to you read and gently suggests thoughts and ideas is great. He just asks ‘Have you thought about this?’ and ‘Have you thought about that?’ They’re not huge things, but everyone does find it very helpful to have a one-to-one session with Giles. It's a little bit of a boost for the next try at rehearsal. You just feel more clued up with the words.

Scenes with Isabella

I’m looking forward to this afternoon and tomorrow because when Sophie [Thompson, Isabella] and I did them previously we both had our noses in the book. I think Sophie knows the lines now as well, so hopefully it should be more interesting this afternoon. We can think about things other than ‘What comes next?’ They’re great scenes, and one of the problems is I think they both actually should go quite briskly. It's a bit odd – in a way you think ‘It's over before you know it.’ You are just beginning to enjoy yourself and then you go ‘They are actually quite quick’. Sophie has a lot more to do than me because she has several scenes with the Duke, as well, which I don’t have. But I know she likes these scenes as much as I do. We bumped into each other on the street the other day and just sat down under the Millennium Bridge and did the lines from the first scene [II.2]. That is was fun to just sit in the sunshine and do it.

Angelo's character

He does something absolutely appalling, but I always think that these plays are so good and these parts are so good that you should never feel that the characters are so evil as to be completely alien from us. I think we should always be left thinking that you can smell a little bit of yourself in one of these parts however awfully they behave. I just think that they are so well written that they are that human. Angelo does face Isabella with an appalling dilemma, but I don’t think he should be such a monster that you can’t relate to him at all, and so you feel safe.

In a way, Angelo is the ‘baddie’ in the piece - although I personally think the Duke's quite a dodgy character as well - but I find the fact that Shakespeare gives Angelo soliloquies really interesting. I don’t know why he has them unless we are supposed to… not necessarily feel sympathy for him, but at least go with him on this, on what's happening to him. If he's so appalling that we hate his guts, why would we want to listen to him when he is talking to us? I think you just have to go with that and discover and play him, and try and find out why that is. It's easy enough to watch a complete monster if they are acting with other people and you’re watching them do something at one remove, but when they are actually speaking to you and asking you questions, I think that you have to find them interesting.

Motivation

I think Angelo discovers lust for the first time. This happens when he's been put in this situation where he also has power and the combination of the two things tip him over an edge. He decides to follow through with that ultimatum because he can. I think the reason is simply that, for whatever reasons, no one has ever had this affect on him before. Isabella has a devastating effect on him when he meets her and it happens to coincide with a time when he holds an all powerful position. That combination spoils him.

Angelo could have any woman he wanted but he wants Isabella, and she's going to say ‘no’ so the ultimatum is the only way; that's what he tells us and I don’t see why there's any reason to disbelieve him. He has led this incredibly virtuous, celibate, holy life so far and that obviously must be part of her appeal. She is just about to take her vows to become a nun, so there is a big connection there. In an odd roundabout way, that has got to be huge part of the attraction for him.

Mariana and Isabella

My feeling at the moment is that Angelo's relationship with Mariana was probably the only one, actually. He seems inexperienced because of the way he deals with it, and there is no particular reason to believe that there has been any consummation of the relationship with Mariana. I find it helpful to think that there hasn’t been. He has the meeting with Mariana and who he thinks is Isabella, but I think there's something interesting in the fact that it is his loss of virginity as well. I mean, yes, he's engineered it and he's in the driving seat, but there's something human and interesting about it almost certainly being his first sexual encounter as well. Although he's being rotten about it, obviously it's a big deal for him, too. It's not something obvious that you can play; there's nothing you can do to kind of get that across, but I just think it's a useful thought to have whilst you’re playing the scenes. We haven’t touched the final scene at all, so I have no idea how he responds to the news of the marriage. He certainly is paired up with Mariana at the Duke's order, but I don’t know how he feels about that. He's as silent as Isabella at the end, really, which is perhaps another nice parallel between those characters.

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Rehearsal notes 3

  • Progress
  • Familiarity
  • Opening fast
  • Clothing
  • Gradual development
  • Another perspective
  • Soliloquy
  • Regret & redemption
  • Scenes with Isabella

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Progress

We were just about to get to the end of the play last time I spoke to you. However, the actor playing Escalus got injured and he's been unable to come back into rehearsals. His replacement started at the beginning of the week, so we went back over some scenes to help that actor settle in. I don’t think Angelo's relationship with Escalus is particularly close – actually he gives Escalus quite a hard time in the scene with Elbow and the Provost [II.1]. I suppose they're thrown together when the Duke leaves - under very strange circumstances.

Going back over those early scenes slightly delayed our getting to the end of the play, but yesterday we got to the end for the first time. Measure for Measure reminds me of Twelfth Night in that it has a big act five with almost everyone on stage – so many things are revealed and sorted out, the guilty people are punished and the good people are rewarded. Angelo is married to Marianna and sentenced to death, then the sentence is revoked and Claudio appears, alive. It would be too much for Angelo and Marianna to become close straightaway at the end of the play. Hilary [Tones, Marianna] and I discussed it, and we think we’ll keep some distance there. Angelo and Marianna get to dance together in the jig at the end of the play (like the Duke and Isabella), so hopefully that will give a sense of their togetherness without finally resolving what happens next.

Simply getting everyone onstage at the right moment in Act five is rather confusing, but at we’ve made a start on it now. At least you really can spread people around on the Globe stage. I feel good about getting to the end of the play; I’ve got a better sense of the shape of the story and the character's journey. I haven’t learnt all my lines for Act five (not many people have), so that will be the next thing to do. Getting ‘off book’ gives you more freedom to experiment which is exciting.

We’re in week four of rehearsal. We still have another two weeks. We’ve worked on all the other scenes at least two or three times, we still have two weeks of rehearsal and a technical week as well… so yes, I'm not worried about where we're at!

Familiarity

The Company knows one another now, and a comfortable familiarity certainly helps when you have to play big intense scenes. People don’t necessarily know each other at the start of rehearsals. Soon you’re playing big intense scenes where your character is in love with someone, or you’re married, or you hate a person and you want to kill them; that's quite difficult when the person for whom you’re meant to have such strong feelings is a total stranger! To get to the point where I play a scene truthfully or convincingly, I have to spend some time with the person. The way you love or hate somebody is completely tied up with the fact that it is that particular person – that face, that body, that voice. I don’t think there is any substitute for time passing, which is why it's nice to have six weeks of rehearsal at the Globe.

Opening last

Measure for Measure is the final show of the season and that's quite strange for me, as I’ve always been in the first show to open. There are two plays up and running so when we have our week of technical rehearsals, we’ll have to stop at about half past five because there will be a performance that evening. It's nice to know that when I need a little break and I want to think about something other than the part, I can just go and watch one of the other shows. Watching is still helpful because the actors on that stage, they are doing Shakespeare, they’re wearing similar clothes to the ones we’ll be wearing... hopefully your brain is doing a little bit of homework as well.

Clothing

I’ve got a fair idea of what I am going to look like now I’ve had several fittings. I’m predominantly in black – black doublet and hose – but I have cream-coloured sleeves. That feels right for Angelo's austere, sombre side. Some of the cast have been wearing shoes or corsets in rehearsal, to get used to the feel of these things. If you haven’t worn original practices clothing before, it can seem awkward at first. I haven’t worn my shoes in rehearsal this time, but I hope that will be ok because I have worn the same kind of shoes in previous seasons. As all the clothing at the Globe is recycled from season to season, I might have even worn bits of Angelo's costume before, though I wouldn’t recognise them: they’re cleverly disguised to look different. Mark [Rylance, Duke Vincentio] had the idea that the Duke should leave his Court in the middle of the night; he does an unexpected thing at an unexpected hour. If we play it that way, Escalus and I will come on in the Elizabethan equivalent of our night clothes so there’ll be some costume changes too.

Gradual development

For me, a character comes gradually – I don’t tend to make big discoveries. It's more to do with saying the words and becoming familiar with the scene. I think that's probably healthier than reading a play and starting rehearsals, then getting hit by a major realisation, discovering something that you hadn’t seen before. I think that would worry me, actually. So it sounds a bit un-dramatic, but you hope to be on the right track from early on.

Another perspective

I went to see another production of Measure for Measure recently, which was interesting. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t like the way Angelo was portrayed. What I felt he was that he was the creepiest guy in the world, and maybe the character gets played that way quite often. As I watched, I thought hang on a minute. Angelo is celibate. Initially that's what makes him stand out in the world of the play – his celibacy. In Elizabethan times, it would be enough to be known as a celibate for no other reason than your own personal choice, for people to say things like ‘Oh, his blood's ice.’ The play goes on and he does do something appalling, but it seems to me that this is much more interesting if he's made as real and normal as possible.

Of course, you have to stay within the bounds of what actually happens in the play; you have to do what the play tells you to do and ultimately Angelo does something appalling. However, this part is a bit like Macbeth… it's written well enough for you to recognise that the character is an appalling person but at the same time there's a part of you that understands. I think great writers remind us that we do all have a dark side. If you portray a character as very creepy and odd, then the audience is let off the hook. We can feel safe because the character does just seem so weird and horrible that they’re on another planet. There's no chance of a tiny glimmer of recognition.

The portrayal I saw was very tortured and angst-ridden. It was possible to have sympathy but you could never think ‘I once knew someone a bit like that’ or even ‘I might one day meet someone like that.’

Soliloquy

Angelo has a soliloquy where he tells the audience how he is feeling after his first meeting with Isabella and he turns round to the audience and literally asks ‘What's this? What's this?’ [II.2.163]. He's talking about the way he's feeling; this is the first time he's been blown away by someone, and he's experiencing lust. I think that's the crucial moment, really. Angelo's experience isn’t normal but there must be a way of making it credible and real. We don’t know at that moment that he will present her with an appalling ultimatum.

Regret and redemption

I think Angelo does regret his actions. He says he's very repentant at the end of the play. Of course, that's when he realises that he hasn’t gotten away with it – the Duke knows everything – but the way the lines are written does make me think that his repentance is genuine. I also think it is genuine because sleeping with Isabella doesn’t help him in the way he expects (even before he knows Marianna took Isabella's place). He thought this was going to make him complete and it hasn’t. I think there might even be a sense of relief and release when he confesses at the end, and says ‘No, put me to death, because that's what I deserve.’ He's let off by the Duke, though, and told to marry his betrothed (whom he had sort of jilted before he ever met Isabella). I suppose his journey involves a kind of redemption. He's very honest if nothing else; he's very honest with the audience and very, very direct. Even when that's uncomfortable, he tells us exactly what's going on.

It will be interesting to see how the audiences respond to the character, because if I had a penny for every time somebody said to me ‘Oh, you’re playing the baddie’ I would be rich! It's a responsibility to play someone and you can’t afford to think of it in such shallow terms as ‘goodie’ and ‘baddie’; you’ve got to try to make the person credibly well-rounded and human. To say ‘Oh he's a baddie…’ seems so black and white, but I think an audience who know the play might be inclined to approach the character that way.

Angelo asks a lot of questions in the soliloquies. That's always a bit scary at the Globe because there will be times when someone in the audience actually gives the character an answer. I’ll have to think about that because I’ll probably get some responses – after all, what Angelo does is so extreme and he does invite responses. For instance, after my first encounter with Isabella, she goes off and I turn to the audience and say, ‘What's this, what's this?’ [II.2.163] and then immediately after that, I say ‘Is this her fault or mine?’ Now, I think there will to be times when the audience respond there. The next line is another question: ‘The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?’ Then there's a one word – ‘Ha?’ That has another question mark. It's almost as if he's persevering until someone does help him with an answer. After the questions, he answers himself and says ‘Not she, nor doth she tempt; but it is I.’ [II.2.165] I don’t think it is right to make up responses to what the audience say, but I think we can get away with kind of tweaking the next lines in the script as a kind of response. That's not cheating too much.

That moment in the soliloquy is brilliant. Angelo is a great part and the two scenes with Isabella make it; they’re the substance of the part. In terms of the pattern of time on stage, Angelo is very like Orsino [Twelfth Night], who I played at the Globe a couple of Seasons ago. The ‘good stuff,’ as it were, is in the first half. He's off for three quarters of the second half then comes back at the end in a big Act five: exactly the same pattern as Orsino. It's a hard part too, but everyone thinks that about the character they have to play.

Scenes with Isabella

Before I got to know the play I thought Angelo was alone with Isabella in both their scenes, but there are other people on stage when they first meet [II.2] and these people say the odd line too. In the second scene it's an empty stage. Isabella and Angelo are alone and that progression feels right, but it's tricky. I want the first scene to feel as intimate as the second, but a state of frustration in the first scene is right; Angelo may very well want to be on his own with Isabella, but he isn’t – it's been written that way, and the choice seems important. I don’t want fight it. The fact that they aren’t alone in the first scene increases the passion in the second scene too. The whole relationship is upped a gear because in the first scene he's in a state of shock; either by the beginning of the second scene or in the course of the second scene, he actually makes the decision to proposition her. To imagine that thought was in his head in the first scene would be jumping too far ahead. I don’t think Angelo would act differently in Act two, scene two, if the onlookers weren’t there. He would probably conduct himself in the same way – it would be too soon for anything else to happen. I’d say there isn’t a rift between the public and private man in him until he meets Isabella – then he experiences a massive turn-around. He strikes me as someone who spends a lot of time on his own… that's interesting because I think that's the way Mark [Rylance, Vincentio] feels about the Duke too. In some ways the Duke and Angelo are balanced against each other.

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