Every Inch A King

Nadine, you’re best known as an acclaimed singer songwriter, but how do you feel about making your first appearance at the Exchange as an actor? Is it a theatre that you’ve been aware of?

Nadine Shah: I should lie, shouldn’t I? But this is the thing, it really wasn’t on my radar. For me, it’s always been music venues, like Carnegie Hall in New York, the ones you’re desperate to play.

I’ve got a brother who’s an actor [Ricky Shah] and he was the one to tell me, ‘It’s a really big deal to perform at the Royal Exchange, for many people, it’s a dream’. I take this really seriously.

On the first day of rehearsals, talking to the cast  members, I could see the excitement in their faces, rushing through their veins.

“I’m very aware of the legacy of this incredible building and all that’s been created within in.”

Conversely, David, you have a long, rich history with the Exchange, right back to starring in Riddley Walker in 1986. What was it about this particular production that brought you back?

David Threlfall: Matthew [Dunster, director] said, ‘do you want to do Lear?’ And I went, ‘oh, with you? Yeah, thanks very much’. I’m just very grateful to be asked, to be working, to do such a part. I’m the same as Nadine, I’m very straightforward. I’m not being facetious. It’s work. I mean, it’s great work. I just wanted us to be part of a company, not a downstage centre-spotlight version of King Lear. And it won’t be that… but I’m certainly not going to be saying what it will be.

Obviously, as a piece of theatre, King Lear looms very large indeed. Is there a particular moment in the play, a line or a scene, that still pulls you up sharp and hits you hard?

David: There’s a lot of them aren’t there, really?

Nadine: There’s so many. I mean, I struggle being opposite David. I’ve been laughing a lot, because as Goneril, so much abuse is hurled at me from Lear. It’s horrible. I think it’s a nervous laugh, because it’s just awful, the things she says. But then again, you see Goneril give it back. It’s that thing of ‘hurt people hurt people’. I really enjoy playing those scenes, the ones where Lear and Goneril tear into each other.

As director, what do you think Matthew Dunster’s trying to bring to this production?

David: Clarity. We’ve had meetings for about the last 18 months or so, where I’d say [about the text], ‘what does that mean there? What’s that, what’s that?’ – just to try and find a way through it, to make it clear. And he’s then gone away and done his edited version of it. Then, when actors come in as the interpretive beasts of the process and go, ‘I don’t think that quite…’ – he allows that. So it’s a very easy process. Tough, but easy and tough. I mean, you have to work at it. There’s no slacking. But that’s, I think, what he’s up to.

Nadine: It’s my second Shakespeare with Matthew – I only do Shakespeare, let that be known! – he always describes working with Shakespeare as a collaborator. I love that. Matthew loves to collaborate. As a musician, I love to collaborate. That’s where I make my best work.

And in terms of any language being changed, there’s not a jot of dumbing down in this play. That would have been something I was, you know…

David: …a bit trepidatious about?

Nadine: Yeah, I really was.

David: I agree with that. We’re in the same boat. There are ways of changing it to keep it accessible without losing the prosaic quality of the play itself. We’re thorough about it. We’d like to think we’re thorough, anyway.”

These are obviously very complex characters. Are they characters that you personally like – or does that not matter? Do you have to like a character to inhabit and play it?

David: I think you have to like, or even love, some part of whoever you play, even if… I mean, Nadine referred to it earlier, but I’m not a person, I’d like to think, who would use the language Lear uses when arguing or shutting down his daughter in the way he does. I’ve found that quite difficult to access. It’s not the way I would deal with it. But the lovely thing about acting is, you get to play somebody who does that. And that, to me, is what’s really good about getting up in the morning.

Nadine: I do have a love for the character that I’m playing. I haven’t got a lot of experience in acting, but I’ve found my own personal way into that character – which I wouldn’t divulge to anybody ever. But I’ve found my way in to playing her and understanding her. I was worried that I wouldn’t, but I did. That makes it far more enjoyable and interesting for me, and hopefully for an audience.

David, back in 1983 you played Edgar to Laurence Olivier’s Lear for a Granada TV production of the play. Is that something you have strong memories of? Is it something that might inform what you’re doing now, even?

David: No, it doesn’t inform… actually, I had to unpick what was done then – literally, the syntax of how it was done back then, as opposed to the version we’re  doing now. There is a sense memory of rehearsing and recording the [Granada] thing: ‘oh, I remember that day, remember that’. Certain things stick that are supposed to, I guess. Those things are sort of around and useful. It’s like having your own shed full of tools. You think, ‘oh, there’s something there at the back, and I can draw on that, maybe’.

Nadine, how did you approach making the music for this production? Were you going for a particular tone or feel?

Nadine: There were specific things that Matthew had asked for but generally he just gave me free reign. Matthew is a huge music lover. He’s obsessed with music, almost to the point where I think, ‘you wanted to BE a musician’.

“I wanted it to keep it modern sounding. It’s a brutally macabre play, but if you put too many strings on something, it can sound like Game of Thrones all of a sudden.”

I didn’t want it to be too grand and expected, but I also didn’t want it to be too purposefully alternative. I think I’ve arrived at a good balance of the two. This has been one of my favourite musical projects to work on to date. I love that I’m not singing… well, there might be a tiny bit, some ‘noises with my face’, let’s say. But there’s so much in this that I’ve not been able to do in my own work, under my own name. I get to flex the composer side of my work and not the artist. I’m really enjoying it. It’s been an incredible experience and I’d like to continue to make more.

This production is perhaps the centrepiece of the Royal Exchange’s 50th anniversary year. Is it meaningful to you, to be involved with the Exchange for its anniversary in this way?

David: Well, I’ve not really let that come into it too much, otherwise it might… you know, it’s like playing at Wembley. It’d be a bit too much. It’s just nice to be back. And back in a theatre that I helped do the get-in for, when I was at college. [Royal Exchange forebear] Theatre 69 were doing shows in Manchester Cathedral at that time. Whoever was running it, they called the old Poly [Manchester Polytechnic, now MMU], where I was for three years, and said, ‘have you got any likely lads who want to do an overnight thing for £11.50?’ And me and Mick Dowling and Rob Bettinson did an overnight. ‘Take those scaffolding poles and planks – right, they’re not to be thrown away, they’re going in the Royal Exchange’.

And we went in this building. It was just a big, empty cavernous room, with the clock and the signs from the last day of business. Talk about sense memories: I remember the sound of throwing these scaffolding poles right the way down the hall, before the theatre was even built. ‘Yeah, just throw them down there, because we’re going to use them as scaffolding – we’re going to build a theatre in this space’. And here we are, so certainly there’s a significance.

Nadine: I just love being in Manchester. Don’t tell Glasgow I said this, but Manchester’s my favourite city to play, Glasgow think they’re the best music audience, but Manchester gives them a run for their money! They’re always the first city to sell out on my tours. I’ve spent a lot of time there.

“It holds a very special place in my heart, that city, I owe a lot to it.”

Andy Murray is a writer, journalist and lecturer based in Manchester