The most important question to ask
when you're reading a play in terms of staging it is,
"What is the dynamic of the play?
"What's the main action of the play?"
And in Comedy of Errors, it would be a displaced man tries to find
his... his family, in a way, or find his place in the world.
And that action, that intention, is the motor of the play.
I to the world am like a drop of water
that in the ocean seeks another drop...
LENNY HENRY: 'Antipholus of Syracuse is the fish out of water.'
And Antipholus of Ephesus is the big fish
'in a small pond. And when my character arrives,'
everybody mistakes me for the other guy. And I just think, "They're so nice here!"
[HE LAUGHS] Imagine Antipholus of Syracuse
was just kind of a provincial African nation coming to somewhere like London.
The play is to me really about the idea of being estranged from who you are
and being an outsider.
'So, with our production, that was the key idea -
'the kind of mental state that goes with being an outsider.'
LENNY HENRY: 'I think all migrants who have had to leave somewhere'
to go somewhere else have this feeling of...
'If you become separated, it's the most awful thing,
'but you still have to leave, because if you stay where you are,
'there's no life for you.'
Shakespeare knew this, even back then -
that the life of a migrant, the life of somebody other,
these things are worth writing about
and these things engender story.
DOMINIC COOK: I mean, we played in Comedy of Errors
with an idea of kind of point of view quite a lot,
'so that we were very anchored in to Lenny Henry's character's point of view
'a lot of the time.
'So we were viewing our city through his eyes.'
BUNNY CHRISTIE: 'The great thing about Shakespeare
'is that it can be in so many different worlds.'
It's actually incredibly freeing in terms of design.
'I think when Dominic spoke to me about the look and the feel of the production,
'he wanted something that was really vibrant.'
He definitely wanted to set it now,
and we were setting it very much in London.
'So he wanted something that was fast-paced and gritty,'
edgy, moments of feeling kind of dangerous,
'but that really lively, multicultural, crazy kind of atmosphere
'that you get in big cities.'
And that was a big kind of note that he gave me
to get to the kernel of the atmosphere of the piece, really.
That's where the design comes from.
DOMINIC COOK: 'We decided to put the scenes in some much more concrete places,
'recognisable settings around the city,
'to give it a feeling of city life,'
because I wanted to anchor the play in something recognisable and true,
rather than some kind of cartoon world,
'which is the way that it's often done.
'If your interpretation of the play'
or your basic kind of principle you're working from
is rooted deep in the text,
it will release the actors.
And it should help them, rather than be something that's going to hinder them
and make them feel constricted.
Shakespeare makes sense when you're in the moment,
when you're facing somebody and you're having a conversation with someone.
When you're trying to read and understand it as a book without being directed,
without the physicality of it...
You've got to put it in your body, otherwise it doesn't work.
You have a theory and you test the theory out in front...
in real time with the actors
and see what comes out. And you have to be open
to what they bring. And it's very important that the actors feel
that they're being creative, that they're finding things and discovering things
and that the process in the rehearsal room is alive.
Your responsibility is making a clear and very exciting, um, interpretation
for that moment, and for that moment alone.
And I think the more one thinks about it as being ephemeral, just of that time,
the better it is,
'because you can't define the play forever.
'You're defining it according to your response
'and the people you're working with's response at that moment.'
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