Brian Blessed and his daughter Rosalind are strutting the Guildford stage together in King Lear. The veteran actor tells Emily Horton why Shakespeare's enduring tragedy is a play for today
Brian Blessed and daughter in King Lear
In the incongruous setting of Guildford’s Holy Trinity Church, Brian Blessed seizes his cue. It may be 35 years since he delivered one of the most quoted movie lines in history, but its power shows no sign of waning.
“He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive,” booms the boisterous star of stage and screen, whose Prince Vultan in the 1980 classic Flash Gordon earned him that coveted, almost indefinable attribute: cult status.
Guildford Magazine January 2015
Brian and Rosalind Blessed
“Even now, wherever I go, I find myself saying ‘Gordon’s alive!’ To the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker – even in the O2 arena to 30,000 people,” he exclaims. “Flash Gordon is universal. I was once halfway up Kilimanjaro when someone asked me to yell the line.”
Back at ground level, the 78-year-old Blessed has an even more enduring icon on his mind. For the latest instalment of the life of Brian is a season as King Lear, courtesy of the Guildford Shakespeare Company. For the GSC – whose energetic, innovative renditions of Shakespeare, in venues ranging from castles to pubs, have earned acclaim far beyond Surrey – it’s the theatrical coup of the year. For Blessed, it’s the chance to star for the first time alongside his daughter, Rosalind; who, in an intriguing twist, plays Lear’s eldest daughter, the villainous, power-hungry Goneril.
This morning at Holy Trinity, where the 29 performances are to be held, the pair welcome me with enthusiasm, Rosalind’s sparkly eyes and hearty laugh exuding the same wit and mischief as her dad. In theory, I am here to interview them both. But as Blessed Senior hits his stride, it becomes clear that monologues are much to his taste. And on the subject of the GSC and the forthcoming production, his fervour is evangelical.
“I’ve been heartbroken at some of the Shakespeare I’ve seen out there,” he reveals. “But this GSC production is a miracle. The purity and simplicity of it. I’m far more excited to be doing it than something with the Royal Shakespeare Company or at the National.
“I see this as an immense challenge, because the play should relate to every bloody thing that’s happening in the world right now. Halfway through, Lear sees the ordinary people for the first time. He has been leading armies, he’s been making money, but he has forgotten the people. And then, he starts to see them. So, I will go and meet the audience in the rows…
brian blessed and rosalind blessed king lear
“‘I didn’t know you were having trouble with your investments! I didn’t know you didn’t have any money!’” he pleads, slipping into character. “‘I didn’t know you Gurkhas were having a bloody awful time in Aldershot. It’s all fallen apart. Now I remember you...’”
Eyes wide, hands outstretched imploringly, the Yorkshire coal miner’s son acts out his regal remorse. Here is Shakespeare’s tragic hero rocketed from Ancient Britain to the present day at Flash Gordon speed. In the mouth of Brian Blessed, Lear is alive.
“Shakespeare does not belong to the Royal Shakespeare Company,” he reiterates. “It belongs in places like this. I saw Rosalind do Othello here last year, which was absolutely lovely, and I also saw the GSC do an ingenious Henry V in the cathedral. It worked an absolute treat and I knew that it was the sort of thing I’d been looking for.”
So when Rosalind told the GSC of her father’s interest, the company’s search for a Lear reduced to a shortlist of one.
“I’m looking forward to being part of the team,” says Brian. “I don’t love myself in this role – one is a servant to it. As Stanislavski, the great Russian actor and director, explains in An Actor Prepares, there are two types of actor – the one who loves the art in himself and the one who loves himself in the art. It is a big problem when you start to believe your own publicity.”
Nonetheless, Blessed’s previous experience of King Lear – he co-directed and starred in the 1999 film version – looks set to prove an invaluable asset this time around.
“When I was doing the film, I offered the title role to three different actors, all of whom were going to do it and then shat themselves in total fear,” he explains in a matter-of-fact way.
“So, with three days to go, I had to cast myself. But because I had to read the script so quickly, my brain was on stalks and I had insights, didn’t I?”
A brief gesture towards Rosalind duly provokes the anticipated nod.
“I found things in the play that I don’t think anyone had found before. For example, Lear has a tremendous sense of humour. Not ‘ha ha ha’, but lots of gentle, wry humour which I think is always lost. Things are often comical when life is at its most tragic.”
Then there is the frequent tendency to portray Lear as a senile old man. Another big mistake, insists Brian.
“I see productions and I think: ‘It’s going to last for five hours and I’m going to be bored shitless. Why don’t they just dig a hole on the stage, so that he can get in it and they can bury him? Then we can all go home.’
“In truth, although he is preparing to retire, he is very much going out at the top. Everyone adores him – his soldiers especially so – even though he has a bit of Genghis Khan about him. So the insanity thing is always misunderstood. He suffers from brainstorms. It’s awful, but you see it in real life, when people push atrocities to the back of their head.
“My cousin was a leading psychiatrist and he advised me never to play Lear as old and senile. He told me about one of his insane patients. Lear is definitely not that.”
Surrey Downs Magazine February 2015
Such confident judgement springs from the experience of more than 50 years in the profession. Born in the industrial town of Mexborough, near Doncaster, and forced to leave school at 14 after this father suffered an accident at work, Brian had a variety of jobs before enrolling at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol.
His big break came in the classic TV series Z-Cars in 1962, while subsequent triumphs included roles in two of the most successful BBC productions of all time: the 1976 adaptation of Robert Graves’s I, Claudius and the iconic comedy Blackadder. He has also appeared in four Shakespeare films directed by Kenneth Branagh – a man of whom he is accustomed to speak with reference to a father-son relationship.
“I’m the son, he’s the father,” he jokes.
However, it is the father-daughter relationship that is centre stage at Guildford this month. Blessed père is convinced that, for anyone playing Lear, the key thing is to know what it’s like to have children. But to have one’s only child on stage at the time adds a whole new dimension.
“Rosalind always surprises me,” says Brian. “Now, that may sound very condescending, but she has this amazing imagination and is frightfully clever – certainly cleverer than me.”
“That’s not entirely true – ” interjects Blessed fille, diving into a rare paternal pause. But her self-effacing protest goes unheeded, and soon Brian is charging on, as deaf to persuasion as Lear himself.
“She has this enormous force which, I think, is so important. She was amazing as Amelia [in GSC’s Othello] when she had to tell Othello he’d killed his wife. There was this huge power: ‘Get to it, you f*king idiot.’ She bollocked him and bollocked him and bollocked him. Such devotion to the subject matter…”
Another pause and Rosalind is back in.
“I think a lot of the trouble for Goneril is that she shares so many characteristics with her father. She is capable, ambitious and intelligent and has that same dark sense of humour. She shoulders a lot of the work and feels underappreciated. Also she is very calculating because she has spent her whole life managing someone highly volatile. At least, that’s my view. But then, as an actor, you never see your character as pure villain.“
It is good to hear from Rosalind, if only fleetingly. It’s something to which, for the next two months, Guildford audiences can expect to become accustomed.
“The nice thing about doing a play with Dad is that there are scheduled points during the evening when he stops speaking and I start,” she exclaims. “Not many, but one or two!”
Holy Trinity fills with the sound of big, booming laughter. For once Brian Blessed has nothing to say.
Brian Blessed – Absolute Pandemonium, at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre on October 11, 7pm
