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Robert Glenister, here in The Seagull at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London (2022). Photo: Marc Brenner

Coriolanus, Royal Shakespeare Company, Aldwych Theatre (1978)

I was doing Coriolanus for A level, so I was taken to see Terry Hands’ Royal Shakespeare Company production at the Aldwych Theatre, starring Alan Howard. I’d have gone anyway because the previous year we’d been taken by my school to see the RSC’s Henry V at Stratford and I had been bowled over by it.

There were these two huge doors at the back of the stage and at one point they opened and Alan was revealed. He was very much a warrior, not a politician, not a diplomat: the professional fighter. I’d already joined the National Youth Theatre but watching him confirmed for me that this was what I wanted to do. Not to become a great Shakespearean actor, because I’m not, but just seeing that power, authority and control over what he was doing. It was just spellbinding.

Looking back, it was an extraordinary cast. Charles Dance had a tiny part, Maxine Audley was Volumnia, Oliver Ford Davies was one of the tribunes. It has stayed with me ever since. I can visualise it. It wasn’t ornate in any way – the costumes were greys, blacks and silvers and the set was a sort of matt grey, which sounds really dull but it completely worked because you absolutely focused on the characters and what they were saying. I think Jamie Lloyd does that a bit now. I worked with him on The Seagull and that, too, was stripped down. People told me they really focused on the words. That’s what I felt in Coriolanus: no distractions. You weren’t told what to focus on, but you were guided.
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