King Lear
Alfred Enoch (Edgar)
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Edgar disguises himself as a vagabond, calling himself ‘Poor Tom’.
Already a familiar face to UK Shakespeare fans, the versatile young actor talks about Talawa Lear.
Stage to Screen is still a relatively new genre – do you have prior experience of a filmed theatrical performance? And did you adapt your own performance to take the cameras into account? “I’ve done a few filmed performances, I’ve done a couple of NT Lives. I was in a production of Timon of Athens at the National and a production of Coriolanus at the Donmar. It’s interesting, because it can be a challenge from an acting perspective, just because you’re trying to gauge how much to be aware of the cameras or not. That’s something I thought about as we were getting ready to film Lear. We absolutely trust the crew and leave it completely up to them and, because we don’t have to police ourselves in that way, that’s one of the nice things about it. We’re not trying to make the movie of King Lear, we’re trying to give people a sense of what it would have been like to be in this room for the performance and get a feel of what that live performance is like.” How did you end up getting the role of Edgar in this production of King Lear? “I was mid-way through the second season of How To Get Away With Murder, which is a job I’m doing over in the States, and the way the season works is that we shoot for seven months of the year
and then have a five-month gap. So I wanted to come back home and do some theatre, hopefully some Shakespeare. My agent let me know that they had fixed me up with a taped audition for Lear. They told me Don Warrington is going to be playing King Lear, Michael Buffong is going to be directing, and it’s going to be at the Royal Exchange, and I thought ‘This is exciting!’ I had my recall, in person, in London and they gave me the good news in November, which was lovely.” This play has of course seen you working closely with Don Warrington. As a young actor, are you thankful for experienced role models like him? “It’s important on a job to have someone at the helm of it. Don playing King Lear is such a big part and he’s got so much responsibility. One of the main responsibilities – that some people may not actually realise – is he sets the tone of how the things go along with the director and in the rehearsal room and the way he conducts himself. “Don’s been fantastic in that respect, he’s created a lovely atmosphere here and he’s very open and very precise. Working with someone like Don, with all his experience, is fantastic and – for me, certainly – it has been a pleasure to get to play scenes with him.” shakespeare magazine
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