Forever. It happens in theater as well. If you get a whole audience focusing on one topic or one story in the case of shakespeare and theyre all in the same room. Feels our individual minds are capable of something more when were together focused on something. There is an intersection of poetry and emotion that shakespeare is the very best example of that. You can look at it purely in terms of the beauty of the language, or you can look at it in terms of the power and shakespeares extraordinary empathy. Rose a celebration of William Shakespeare when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Kenneth Brannen is here. He is currently starring in and codirecting macbeth at the park avenue armory in new york city. The production comes here from manchester, england, has received extraordinary reviews. Michael billington of the guardian said at times he evoked Golden Memories of olivier in the role. Heres a look at the trailer. shouting thunder what . Can the devil speak truth . Looks innocent. thunder is this a dagger which i see before me . singing lock that. Order rose im pleased to have sir Kenneth Brannen back at this table. Welcome. Thank you. Rose have you been waiting to do this . I have, circling it. Its the copy of the play i first came across was on our Kitchen Table when i was about ten or eleven years old. My brother was five years older than me. He was doing it at school. I saw three weird sisters on the cover. Asked him what it was about. It was my first introduction to macbeth. The same copy i have at the park avenue armory with me every night. Its been waiting 40 years for that, i think. Rose do you need to do it at a time in your life . I think i have a great old acting School Mentor from the Royal Academy of dramatic art, and we often talked about this part, you really have to wait till you tier right age. In my late 30s and early 40s, he said youre still too young. I didnt understand it, but when i listened to him, i revered him. Somehow it came together through the manchester festival and meeting the codirector and finding the right elements to relate to macbeth. Things started to fall together and it became the right time to do it. Rose but youd had a tenyear absence from shakespeare. Yes, i had. Like many things in my career, others they look at it and view it differently. These sort of accidents happen. You find yourself on wonderful diversionary tracks. My wife says to me, oh, does he read shakespeare . Is it by the bedside . Does he read it . I said, what do you tell them . I told them, yes, you do. Youre always doing that. So ten years away from doing it and quite a loft years of just reading it. Rose how is this macbeth different . Well, i suppose every time a Different Group of people do it, it makes it different. Rob and i were keen to elemental parts of the piece be open. So maybe the first thing we do is to take a speech at the beginning of the play spoken by a character called the bloody sergeant which is essentially the description of a battle in which macbeth is brave and fearless, interesting for a character who was fearful for most of the play. We took that away and put what he describes on stage. We wanted to do it for a couple of reasons. First, when you meet macbeth, you know a littl of what they really mean about this fearlessness, the savagery, a man you would imagine should not have the problems he has later on, when faced with another murder. In battle, hes fearless. We wanted to introduce a theatrical energy which is he can tick and hurtling which they can be viscerally be part of, the he can tick nature of the circumstances, which mean these two fundamentally at the beginning of the play good people making very bad decisions because the play, circumstance the plot, doesnt give you time to rose ben brandy who loved the play captured that very thing. He said you hurtled forward by the beginning of the play and it had that kind of energy. Were all interested in this as to what goes on in the corridors of power and one thinks about why and how these two people could do this extraordinary thing. One thinks about it, it could be easy to think about it in mel dramatic terms, but this man kills a friend of his, the king, whatever, and does it swiftly and does it even though other people describe him as being conscienced. The other people dismissed the play and said its absurd because it happens too quickly. Our production was trying to say perhaps these things only happen quickly without thought. Rose would he have done it without his wife . Well, she, i think, accurately describes him as being not without ambition but without the sickness. There are lots of remarks about essentially a good nature. But once he had this amazing success, the reviews are brilliant, as it were, the duncan says fantastic, im going to give you im planting you and youre going to be having all sorts of rewards. Rose a new name. Yeah, exactly. You get a great big honor, but actually im giving my job to him h, my son, and immediately macbeth is suddenly is a man with a witchs, you know, pronouncement in his mind just a few short moments ago saying well, why should he be in the way . Ill have to either a step that lies in my way on which i must fall down or else or leap, which means basically murder in this context. So its a wonderful play for putting people in this unusual and extreme position rose but its great, you see him opening up in a stone hedge kind of thing, and there are prophecies one by one so you have to believe something. What do you feel about this, in the lives of the good and the great, as it were, the power of suggestion . Some people would say macbeth is a silly play because its about a man who believes his horoscope. Rose i think men and women believe in myth, too. Interesting, yeah. And this idea of what the legacy is, you know. Macbeth and lady macbeth not to be able to have children or havent had them successfully, so immortality is not guaranteed by family, so now immortality can perhaps be seized by having your name in the history books. Rose but the relationship between the two, shes more ambitious than he is . I think shes differently ambitious. We tried to bring in the savage world where she says goodbye to him and he goes off to battle. The idea whether he comes back is heavily questioned. When they do come back, we wanted to present a functioning relationship. They fancy the pants off each other and its very passionate. Rose the passion comes out. Yeah. He said years ago, there are no successful marriages in shakespeare except the macbeth, which is strange because they both die and kill a king along the way. I always thought in the first conversation with alex, for me central to the show and performance, is he adores her, and shes a natural companion for him, and i think that, you know, the breakup of the relationship rose is she stronger or weaker . Well, again, i would say you know, they both at different times invoke the dark world. Rose they do. Shes the first one to say, im inviting evil into the room, were in a world where we believe in it, audience youve just seen it because they were hanging around stones and theyre scary, im inviting them in. She has balls enough to do it first time out. But he but then the balance of power within the relationship switches and she at least interestingly interesting from the malefemale point of view hes the one who says lets not do it tonight, she says you have to seize the opportunity, then they get it, he becomes president as it were and she says leave everything alone. But for him, he has to be president and rose wasnt part of that prophecy from the witches, too . Scared because of what they said, so therefore he went off killing anybody. Yeah, essentially trying to square the circle with all those things, and the key thing, whos predicted to be the father of cirntion tries to kill her and his son. His determination to leave no stone unturned means he will never sleep again and there is no satisfaction. The first moment we see him as king, hes with her and they celebrate and they walk down at the coronation and he sits down and he says, to be thus is nothing but to be safely thus. Im here, ive got a crown and a throne, and its nothing rose but to be safely to be safely thus, you know. And then a splurge of paranoia comes out. And in his royalty of nature, hes off on a rose no one that i know of more identifies with shakespeare as a living actor today. We have a number of people who played a number of parts, but you because of so many things, producing and acting. There is the question, when you prepare to do macbeth, can you go look at every production that you can get your hands on to see olivier and to see whatever the form you could get your hand on . Well, over the years, i suppose i have done that, but in preparation specifically for this, no, i did the opposite. Theres a point i knew that i was going to do it, or at least i wanted to do it very much when i stopped looking at other productions. Rose thats when you thought the time is for me. But also that i didnt want now my brain to be taken with the brilliance of other people. So i thought we have to find our own way to it. So i stopped with the growing and understanding that i felt ready to have a go. Rose i read somewhere you thought about doing it way up in the future, a very futuristic. Gliew what drew you away from that to where you are . This difficult thing of when you come up with a sort of what you might call a strong concept for the world of the play, and all these plays are very elastic so they can accommodate them, and shakespeare survived anything we might try and trip him up with. But many times the idea ultimately has some reductive quality. You might get, you know, in the new yornew York Stock Exchange y get resonance with the world of money but its about love, the fifth act is whether the girl is going to choose the boy or whatever it might be so, ultimately its the futuristic macbeth felt as though it potentially denied the savagery and the primitive nature of some of the motivation. Attend of the play, malcolm, the new king to be, said were going to make those who helped me hear to bto be earls, the first scote had, where people give you an honor and you wont be fighting them. Rose its interesting about shakespeare, james the 5th would come to shakespeares plays . Yes, instead, and was the author of a famous book called demonology. So he was interested in the subject macbeth dealings with. Rose and got it from the chronicles yes. Shakespeare was fantastically comprehensive in where he went for all his stories and he knew how to borrow and he knew how to be inspired. When we did recently cleopatra on radio, theres a famous speech in there, a bar she sat on, he talks about burned in the water. Rose there is a comparison they make. Yes, certainly in terms on the central focus on a relationship between two complicated people, a powerful man with a brilliant woman, and they have sort of balancing impacts, but the botch speech in thomas norths lives of the ancient romeups, et cetera, shakespeare pilfers comprehensively so. He gathered his gatherings. Rose every writer a great writer steals a lot. Yeah, yeah. Rose there is also this in terms of this, when you there are sillo questions and lines that you have, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, did you approach those differently . Did you have a mindset about them that you wanted to, in your own vision, not because you wanted to be alike or different than anyone else who had been macbeth, but some sense of how you wanted to take these pivotal moments . Well, they rose and deliver them . Its an interesting question that we, for instance, on tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, it seemed that it grew on bankly out of this idea that aside from the vast and dense existential howl that you might describe it as being, it is also, particularly at the beginning of the speech, sort of a speech of mourning for his wife, and in our production that sort of underlined the passion between them, that the dynamic between the simple painful personal loss of a woman that he adored through his own in his own strutting and fretting and idiosy, if you like, informed the way that that came, so it became very personal. We wanted to take away from the show in what weve seen in version of this play that it might be too dry. Rose you didnt did not want that . I didnt want it to be dry. Rose what did you want it to be . Visceral, passionate, that there is as much Emotional Intelligence as philosophical intelligence. It can can get very dry because the poetry is very dense and complex. But the doubleup with shakespeare is if you can connect all of that brilliance and stance, intellectual fire power at this incredible level with the sense that youre watching real, live human beings and there but for the grace of god go all of us. Rose dealing with all the issues everybody faces in life, life and death or jealousy or rage or guilt or in this case guilt. Guilt, and people, my goodness, you can feel the atmosphere in the audience, when they have done swiftly within 20 minutes of the beginning of the play, in an atmosphere where the audience is backing away and the thing is throbbing, and theyve done it. So they put the cold steel in the flesh of the person they knew. So king duncan getting, no, i killed one of our friends and now what do we do . And suddenly they become like children, almost. That irrevocable moment, people may understand they may not kill a king but they will do things from which they can never recover and life will never be the same again. And you can feel those people going, oh, my god, that could be knee either because of choicous maude or things thrust upon you. Yes, and of course its terribly moving. People find the particular production moving. Why should you feel moved or sympathetic to characters who perform such heinous acts . But somehow shakespeares mastery allows you by the tend, when he allows you by the end when he loses her and when he can convey either in Lady Macbeths dissent into what appears to be madness, you already sense with macbeth at the end, the bleakness in his soul is so profound, its chilling. The glimpse of a kind of dark eternity that he shows us is so terrifying that you cant help but be moved because the price he has paid for this moment of reckless ambition is so deep and profound as to shake one to the very core on his behalf. Rose and lead to his death . Yeah, yeah. And one thing, isnt it strange, you know, at the end, we talked about, hes fearless in battle at the beginning. Through the powerful of suggestion he is fearful and guiltridden, dreamladen and sleepdeprived for most of the play. And right at the end, what does he have left that shakespeare seems to admire in some of his male characters, particularly the soldier potes poets, he has you know, so hes right there at the end, im going to kiss the ground before malcolms feet. The forest moved, and you werent born of woman, you know what . Come and get it. Its sort of a ridiculous quality. Shakespeare says, what else do you have . Show me something and he hangs in there. Somehow theres a profound respect for this. So i never ran away. And he talks to her and compliments them both. Two times he uses the word dauntless. He add myers that and shakespeare admires that people no matter what life throws at them they put one foot in front of the other and get up. What else can you do . Shakespeare says that. It ought to feel grander than that but sometimes all there is to do is show up. Rose in your own pantheon, is there a one, two, three among shakespeares works . Oh, gosh, what a question. Your life changes and rose you have more experience, seen more. You react differently to things. Its so comprehensive. Youve had many different conversations with harold bloom who said shakespeare invented the human. The polish scholar in the 60s called him our contemporary. John guilder says playing hamlet sums up the process of living. I feel that applies many of these plays. Now ones soul is shaken by what macbeth does to the audience. We are there. We are the lucky vessels through which this thing passes, currently, in this particular show. Rose five minutes before youre going on, what are you doing . What are you thinking . What are you saying to yourself . Im meditating is what im doing. Rose clearing your mind . Yeah, im getting ready. My favorite quote from shakespeare is the end of hamlet, the readiness is all, and it applies to everything. My whole day is getting ready for that moment. Thats all i do. People say, are you having a wonderful time in new york . Well, yes, but partly because im at the theater hours and hours and hours before any sane human being would be. I do my meditation, i listen to tapes, i read, do the lines every day, you do the whole plays in varying ways, you trick yourself to keep it fresh. Five minutes before you go on, you meditate. I swear this is the most fantastic thing to be able to do. I mean, its really tingly and you know its not an easy thing to do, given if ones aware of the sort of effort of it in terms of what we do, but its absolutely glorious, glorious thing to do. I sometimes feel like im a big fan of sports, generally, and it feels like youre in the tunnel waiting to come out before a huge gauge and its like tournament tennis or something. Some of its up here, some in the body. In our case we start with a fiveminute battle. Rose just revs you up. Oh, man. Because we have to practice the fights every day. Its dangerous, raining, in the dark, 25 enormously butch fellows coming at us with cold steel. Rose you have to be athletic, too. Its an allconsume thing. I think ive learned more about the discipline for doing this on this particular job than ever before. Rose great to have you. Thanks very much. Rose back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose mark rilance is here, won a tony for bowing bowing in 2007 and second tony for jerusalem in 2011. Back on broad way at the velasco theater playing the lead in two shakespeare plays, king third and richard in olivia. He served as artistic director from 1995 to 2005. Charles isserwood of the New York Times says his presence provides a miniature acting class in shakespearean acting. Welcome. Thanks, charlie. Rose what a nice tribute from mr. Isherwood. Yes. Rose how did this happen, these two plays for you to come show your stuff . Its taken years. The artist and director and clothing designer and set director and the musical director and the kind of core players were people that worked with me a lot when i was artistic director at the globe, and when my ten years finished, i immediately set about wanting to, i suppose, preserve or carry on the essential core work of what we did, which was a very careful, and i hope, rigorous a