EVENING STANDARD, December 14, 1999

            Ralph prepares for his double gladiator battle

            Robin Stringer

           

             

PAYING their first visit to the old Gainsborough Studios in Shoreditch, where they will soon confront each other in Richard II

and Coriolanus, are two of Britain's finest young actors, Ralph

Fiennes and Linus Roache, writes Robin Stringer.

They are the protagonists in the Almeida Theatre's most ambitious

undertaking to date.It will cost more than £1 million and involves the transformation of the old film studio into a 750-seat auditorium.

"It is a place full of extraordinary resonances," says director

Jonathan Kent, who four years ago took Fiennes' Hamlet to Hackney

Empire with such success that it transferred to Broadway.

"The studios are where Alfred Hitchcock directed and James Mason acted, and the two theatres where Shakespeare began to act and write

more than 400 years ago were just down the road.

"Then there is the excitement of creating within them a new space

dedicated to these two plays." At the heart of both works are

gladiatorial confrontations, on the one hand between Richard and the

usurping Bolingbroke and on the other between Coriolanus and his

enemy-turned-ally Tullus Aufidius.

"Both plays are about men in the shadow of another," continues Kent, "which is why it is so important to have a balanced cast."

           

Hence his delight at having secured Roache, Helena Bonham Carter's

lover in The Wings Of The Dove, to play opposite Fiennes as well as

a very strong cast for both plays that includes Oliver Ford Davies,

Barbara Jefford and David Burke.

           

Work on the project will start in earnest in February and lead to

the opening of Richard II in April and Coriolanus in June. Both

plays will then play in repertory until 22 July.

The performances will mark the end of the old Gainsborough Studios. They are due to be knocked down immediately afterwards for redevelopment.

           

           

(Thanks to Antonieta, who sent me this article. Mari)