The Tempest

“It’s week three of rehearsals now,” Bell chuckles. His voice, unsurprisingly, is rich, velveteen – one can only imagine the conversational delights were he ever to have held court with Richard Burton or John Gielgud. “It’s a little like chopping our way through the jungle, but it’s all starting to become clearer. Gaps of light are starting to shine through the canopy.”

Bell has performed the coveted role of the betrayed magician, Prospero, thrice in the past, and so his insight into what is regarded as Shakespeare’s final play is significant. But rather than don the cloak one last time, Bell decided instead to take the mantle as director, and leave the creation of the character – the idiosyncrasies, the speech, the meat beneath the words – to another. Under Bell’s watch, such creation is very much an act of collaboration and, to a point, anthropology.

“One half of me would love to take the part, of course, because it’s such a great play and a great role. But I’ve done it three times now. It would have been greedy to do it again – it was time to give somebody else a go. I was pretty altruistic, I would say,” he laughs. “It’s a very different experience, directing as opposed to acting. Acting, you think about the character, you tend to try and live with them, to see life through the character’s eyes all the time, to find a certain rhythm. You try to adapt their perspective, be it optimistic, pessimistic, aggressive, whatever. You tend to take on those characteristics yourself, if only to a degree. It’s a bit like testing yourself against the character.

“In directing, it’s always working out strategies. How to keep everyone at the same pace, keep them enthusiastic, and looking out for any trouble spots. If people are at all disgruntled, is it because they’re insecure about themselves, about someone else, what’s going on? It’s like trying to read minds all the time. One is objective, one is subjective. It’s really as simple as that.”

[Picutred John Bell in The Tempest rehearsals. Photo by Daniel Boud]

There is, of course, a certain poetry to Bell’s decision to exit his career as artistic director with The Tempest. A story of transformation and illusion, of legacy and generations, love and bewitchment, you would struggle to find a more appropriate fit. Yet the circumstances of choosing the text were much more fateful than they were planned.

“We were just looking around for what were the best shows to do for our 25th anniversary, and Hamlet was our first choice. We hadn’t done Hamlet for a while, and never on a national tour. The Tempest we hadn’t done for some years, As You Like It we hadn’t done in ages. It was a matter of figuring out what had been silent for six, eight years, and construct a really popular season. That was really all there was to it, to ensure it was going to be a season that would really keep people entertained. Only after we programmed it did I realise there was a certain synchronicity between a guy giving up his magic and retiring into private life. It was definitely an afterthought more so than any motivation.”

The show has already begun selling out, bolstered by the fact that this is to be Bell’s company swansong, of course, but also because after a quarter of a century, audiences have developed sincere faith in Bell Shakespeare. This is a cadre of performers and creators like no other, and though the show will go on for years to come, Bell has left a significant shadow to fill. His instincts for theatre are unsurpassed, a talent he credits to ensuring each production starts out as an undiscovered country.

“I think that’s essential. I think when you’re a younger actor you think, ‘I need to find the method, I need to find that key,’ just try to establish some kind of game plan you can fall back to. And that’s fine when you’re starting out. I think with the older you get and the more you trust yourself, you are more comfortable with a group of people in a room, you’re more willing to just see what happens.

“What I sometimes do is say, ‘Let’s play it like De Niro,’ or ‘Try and play it like Downey, Jr.’ That’s a somewhat lazy way of doing it, however. I far prefer modelling on real-life people and just take certain characteristics. But rather than just take one person, I guess what I would do is try and take, say, 12 different people or personalities, and take a bit from this one, a bit from that one, take somebody else’s body language, somebody else’s sense of humour. It should rarely be just mimicking one person, but drawing from a whole realm of different role models. You must try and approach every show very differently.”