Kenneth Branagh is a master of the Shakespearean stage but things haven’t always gone swimmingly for the Oscar-winning star of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) upcoming version of The Tempest.
Speaking to the BBC’s Today program this morning, Branagh recalled a time when things went badly wrong for the budding young thespian during a production of Henry V in Stratford-upon-Avon when he was just 23 years old.
“I forgot the gloves that I needed to return to the character at the last part of the play upon which much of the plot depended,” Branagh admitted. “So I made up a lot of the Shakespeare [lines] and I thought I had got away with it.”
Branagh, who went on to be twice-Oscar nominated for 1990’s Henry V movie, thought all was fine but on his way home, “a car slowed down and someone yelled out, ‘Very nice performance, seamless… oh by the way loved the gloves’.”
Branagh recalled the charming anecdote as a rallying cry for people to go and watch Shakespeare in the theater rather than spending time viewing content on their phones, because they will be able to “experience things going wrong that no one else will ever see.” The titan of the stage will play Prospero next year in the Richard Eyre-directed Tempest, and he will join Oscar-winning Helen Hunt who makes her RSC debut in Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Our Breaking Baz interview with Hunt and Eyre can be found here.
Branagh said he relishes the challenge of convincing today’s audience to turn up for Shakespeare. “It makes the battle more lively,” he said. “We have to work harder to earn the audience’s attention but the thrill and surprise is the arrival of the audience and there is nowhere with a greater sense of adventure than the Royal Shakespeare Theater at Stratford-upon-Avon.”
The Tempest will run from May 13 – June 20 at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.