The Lion in Winter by James Goldman is a complex layered work that takes some of the most intimate struggles of loving someone you hate and hating someone you love, and the myriad ways that family can fuck you up, and plays these out through the surrogate battle of royal succession. It’s a mid-twentieth-century work (with some of the flaws that implies) that still has something to say to a contemporary audience, and it says it in bitingly witty dialogue that flows beautifully on the page and on the stage.
It’s a story that’s lived, rent-free as they say, in my head since I was a teenager and was gifted with a DVD of the 1968 Katherine Hepburn/Peter O’Toole version. I’ve watched it every December for more than twenty years, and even now nurture the hope that one day I’ll get my shot as Eleanor. It was while talking about the movie that I made the very short walk from ‘if I were going to direct a show, it would be Lion‘ to ‘hey, I think I want to direct Lion‘, and I was lucky enough that James Turpin and Judy Snow of Th’YARC decided to let me shoot my shot.
Aside from familiarity and wit, why Lion? I adore the characters — well, admittedly, I didn’t much care for Alais until I put her in the capable hands of Grace McGray — in particular, Henry and Eleanor. The rich complexity of the lead roles and the enormous emotions that emerge as Henry and Eleanor battle wits, share the bitterest recriminations and the brief moments of tenderness would be a remarkable show all by itself. But then you take the half-step back and you see their struggles playing out in their surrogates, the children they’ve had together and raised together, and the story, on that level, becomes about the ways in which narcissistic parents fuck up their children and pass on their trauma. And I’ve got plenty to say about that, too, from lived experience.
Perhaps not shockingly for material that I’ve known so well, there were elements of the show that there in my mind almost wholecloth from the inception and it was a gift to be able to recruit such diverse and talented theatrefolk to help me bring this story to life, starting with my Stage Manager, Kevin Frost, without whom I’d have been lost. The production designs that began with my truly rough sketches on scrap paper, and ended up with one of the most beautifully painted sets I’ve ever seen, thanks to the incredible paintbrush of local artist Kelly Harding — they’ve already been reused for a Panto and I’m told that with Shakespeare planned in the next little while, pieces of ‘Lion’ will haunt Th’YARC for some time to come. It was amazing to have such a rich ‘play house’ for the cast, and the costumes that my partner of twenty years (and my Phillip) Alden pulled together from Th’YARC closet, Frenchy’s thrifting and a deft hand were also a next level combination of period touches and rock’n’roll. (And yes, love, one last time: you were right that that hideous shirt we thrifted was the perfect piece for John.)
As a director, my take on Lion was grounded in finding the beats of genuine emotion amidst the power-plays, and to invite the audience in with us to love, hate and sometimes pity these people as they hurdle through Christmas 1183. My take on directing was collaborative: I wanted to allow my actors to tease out the humanity of these characters, to find ways of relating to each other, and to play with the ever-present power dynamics in the room. We discovered a lot along the way, and it was a pleasure to feel my sense of these characters evolve with the show and take on the shape that each of my actors brought with each of their choices. Ian Travis’ Henry has completely surpassed Peter O’Toole for me, and Sarah Fells’ Eleanor went toe to toe with him the whole way. None of the movie versions of the sons have ever really worked for me so James Turpin, Joel Howe and Kiel Mercer (utterly without self-consciousness in his first large role!) had a lot of leeway in finding the Plantagenet boys, and blew me away collectively and individually. Our French royals (Grace McGray as Alais of Vexin and Alden Mathieu as King Phillip II) rounded out the cast with sass, sex appeal and verve.
At the outset of this project, I was warned by another director that I would be haunted by a ‘woulda, shoulda, coulda’ of all the elements that failed to come off. I am very happy to be able to sincerely report that, for me at least, The Lion in Winter stands up exactly as it is, was and ever will be in memory.
Once again, many thanks to all involved for your passion, hard work and incredible talent. I was a very supported, very lucky first-time director.
