SAMUEL WEST
Played Hamlet for the RSC, 2001-02
I loved Mark Rylance's first Hamlet, in 1989. He was unbelievably inventive, brilliantly lonely. I've seen the play about 20 times, but only once since I played it. It is the ultimate part for a young actor and you can never get it entirely right. But you get to do a lot of working things out; you can be pathologically self-centred, then you get to have a really good sword fight at the end. I'd love to play it again.
Three days from the end of the run, I was heckled. That told me I was on the right track. Our director, Steven Pimlott, always maintained that a soliloquy should be directed to the audience: "If you ask the questions in the right way then eventually someone will answer." And they did!
It was the "rogue and peasant slave" speech. I said "Am I coward?" And someone yelled out, "Yes!" The next line was, "Who calls me villain?" And he said, "Me! Last row of the circle, don't know the seat number!" Stage management met me in the wings and said, are you all right? I said, "It's the best thing that's ever happened to me!"
Tags: Samuel+West, Sam+West, theatre, theater, RSC, Royal+Shakespeare+Company, Hamlet, Shakespeare, William+Shakespeare, Mark+Rylance, Steven+Pimlott
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