INTERVIEW: Daniel Evans talks about playing the lead in ‘political thriller’ Edward II at the RSC Swan Theatre

It’s Hamlet press night and there’s a proper buzz in the air when I meet with Daniel to chat about Edward II. A two-for-one of ill-fated royals on at the RSC.

It is a bright and crisp blue-skyed morning along Avonside as we rendezvous at the RSC offices to discuss his production ahead of its opening. It’s always easy to chat to Daniel – he’s an engaging, warm and witty conversationalist. There’s always a spark to him too, but today he seems to be radiating an extra actorly energy as he swaps crowns, from artistic director to peformer.

Why Edward II, what’s the appeal?

I made it clear when Tamara and I were going for the job [as RSC co-artistic directors] that I wanted to act.

I’ve never given up acting. Anyway, we got the job, and Tamara and I talked about what kind of thing I would do. I knew that I wanted to work with Dan Raggett, the director.

We looked at a whole load of plays, and zoomed in on Edward II, partly because it’s rarely done.

The Swan was originally built for Shakespeare’s contemporaries. And you don’t get much more contemporary than Marlowe – they were born in the same year, three months apart.

Both working-class boys. But Marlowe went to university, and Shakespeare didn’t.

Then there was also this idea about homophobia in the 21st century, and particularly homophobia in public life. And thinking, what would happen if Charles, or say, William, suddenly came out and said I want to be with my male partner? What would happen? Initially I thought, oh, we’d all be fine, we’d all deal with it.

And then I thought, no, think about the right-wing press, and the rise of the right. Think about what’s happening to trans rights in America. Think about what’s happening to gay adoption rights in Italy… And suddenly we thought, this feels very, very contemporary and resonant and pertinent and frightening. It became quite a powerful idea. We then read the play and decided quite quickly then, oh, this was what we would do.

Tell me about Daniel Raggett and how you encountered him.

He wrote to me when he was a very young director, directing his first show ever at the Gate Theatre – it was a production of La Voix Humaine.

This is now going back maybe nine years. So we started talking and I was at Chichester and I was saying it would be good to think about you coming to do a show for us. Eventually, in my last season, we managed it – The Vortex, which went incredibly well.

He has done loads of assisting of people like Robert Icke and people like Ivo Van Hove, so he has gleaned so much of their excitement about what makes a theatrical experience alive. But he’s also a very, very kind and gentle person. When I was talking to Tamara about who I would like to work with as an actor, he was first in my mind.

When an RSC artistic director is in your cast, it must be daunting, is that a relationship you've had to negotiate?

You'd have to ask him, of course. But we have talked about it a great deal, me, Tamara and Dan.

And Tamara becomes a very important figure in the relationship because it means that he can go and discuss things with Tamara that he doesn't feel like he wants to discuss with me. But I have to say, it's been a joy and it's been very collaborative.

There have been moments where I've been able to say to Dan, OK, I'm going to switch my hats now and I'm going to put a co-artistic director hat on and I'm going to want to talk about this. Or he's been able to come to me and say, OK, co-artistic director hat on, I need to talk to you about this. And I hope that's been very useful.

But I don't underestimate the pressure that he must also be feeling. And, you know, I'm also feeling it.

Remind me, you last acted here quite a while ago, 2003?

Oh my God, that's 22 years ago. I was a very bad Angelo in Measure For Measure. And I was in a wonderful production of Cymbeline, directed by Dominic Cooke, and both productions starred Emma Fielding. That was Michael Boyd's first season. It was an odd year in many ways because you felt Michael's presence, but as an observer.

I did my first job here – in 94, I left Guildhall early to come and work here, my first job out of drama school.

I believe in cycles – and there feels like something very cyclical about being back on stage on The Swan. I can’t explain it. It’s part sentimental, an emotional attachment.

I celebrated my 21st, 30th and 50th birthday here. Something has just drawn me back, something in the universe.

What was your thinking about wanting to return to acting [Daniel was last on stage in 2011]? What was the driver?

There were two things. One was very personal to me, which is that I hadn't done it for a long time and my need to act again was really increasing.

It's hard to explain why, but it's been brilliant to remind myself what happens to you as an actor. It's not therapy but it is therapeutic especially playing a part like Edward, because you get to expiate all kinds of stuff that you're experiencing.

There are moments where you feel incredibly vulnerable, where as the character you have to be vile to certain other people, which you wouldn't dream of doing in life, but somehow or other you get to act things out. And that gives you a kind of release. So that's my personal bit.

And then the second bit is that I really wanted to know what it was like for an actor to come and work at the RSC again, to be on the shopfloor. That has been brilliant, to reacquaint myself with that.

Just experiencing my costume fitting – seeing the care, the detail, the passion of the makers – the craftspeople in the costume workshop rooms. I thought, this is the RSC at its peak. I don't think you get that anywhere else in the world.

You get two fittings, one where it's half made, and then one where it's made, and it's a really special experience.

What's the costume like? I saw the trailer where there's quite a bit of pomp.

There's a lot of pomp. The costume tells such a clear story of the whole play. Because we start with a funeral, and then the coronation of Edward, so full on: ermine, chains, medals, swords. And then I end up in a prison, wearing next to nothing, and then eventually nothing. So, there's a symbolism to even the journey of the costume throughout the play, that is mirrored by the story of Edward's tragic fall.

There is a nudity warning, how does that come into play?

Well, spoiler alert here, people who know the play, will understand that Edward had a pretty gruesome, brutal death. Where he is, erm, penetrated, for want of a better word, with a poker.

And, you know, the form of that death, I think is obviously chosen specifically by the playwright.Because it's a very homophobic death.

And so obviously to achieve that he can't be fully clothed. He's stripped by his captors, and then is basically cauterised from within.

We were reading about what actually happens to you when you die like that – your body temperature rises to 180 from within. And they did it, I read, to preserve his outer body.

So that if he was ever on display, which he wasn't, or examined, there would be no outwardly signs of how he died – it would look natural.

He was buried at Gloucester Cathedral, where there’s a tomb with his image – have you made a pilgrimage yet?

I haven't yet, but I will. Interestingly, no one else in the country wanted him, but the Bishop of Gloucester took him in.

Then, apparently, and I hope this story is true, it might be apocryphal – so many people came to visit his kind of gruesome tomb, that he started to charge money and was able to rebuild the cathedral with the proceeds. The pink pound, alive and well in the 14th century! The tomb is sort of referenced in the play at the end.

Many people assume Marlowe was gay – but what do you make of the play's take on homosexuality given it ends with sodomy with a poker as a punishment? What’s the message?

It's a really interesting question, and I've thought a lot about this, but I think you have to try really hard to get your mind into 16th century England and London. Because obviously there wasn't such a thing as homosexuality as we know it. And even though sodomy was against the law, it seems, from history books, that it was rarely punished, or if was it wasn’t reported.

It was a kind of don't ask, don't tell scenario, a bit like one imagines that happens in many countries in the Middle East now, in those cultures where homosexuality is illegal.

I think Marlowe's choice of death is specific. Death by sodomy with an object is particular. And I think Marlowe might be saying part of the tragedy of this man is that he wasn't able to be fully who he was. The system the firm – the royal family, the nobles – came down on him in a way that was brutal.

I think that's one of the things that's been interesting for us, is the intersection between leadership and queerness. There's a beautiful line in the play, he's asked, why do you love him who the world hates? And Edward's answer is, because he loves me more than all the world. And it's as simple as that.

I just want to be with the person I love. And they won't allow it.

In the play, how sympathetic a figure is Edward?

We've also talked a lot about this. I find this quite hard because obviously when I play him, I have to be inside him and I can't judge him, I just have to understand his motives. But if I do allow myself to step back, I can obviously see that strategically, it's not brilliant tactics: handing out awards and positions willy-nilly, as if they were kind of sweets.

And also really not paying attention to both foreign and domestic wars. On a very simple level, he doesn’t take people with him – and if you can't do that as a leader.

But one of the things that I think is really excellent in the play, and I find it very moving but also tragic, is that there is a strong sense that Edward learns about leadership way too late. So, in the scene where he eventually gives up his crown, which he does when he abdicates, he says to the Archbishop, ‘Commend me to my son and bid him rule better than I’. In that there must be an acknowledgement that, yeah, I didn't go about this in the best way, but it's now too late.

The poor Queen is married to a gay guy who ignores her.

She's in a terrible position. The thing that's interesting about that is, I think that still happens. That men come out later in life, I know a few, and either stay with their wives and they come to an agreement or they leave.

It's a terrible situation for the woman, and of course it happens the other way around, too. But I think what's interesting in the play is that she's the recipient of so much misogyny, and Edward is particularly misogynist.

There’s vile behaviour towards her. Within the power structure, she finds a way to what she thinks is a form of protecting herself and her son, and therefore the crown.

Historically, she was the daughter of the King of France, and she was known as an incredible diplomat. Isabella was betrothed to Edward when she was 12, and got married four years later when she was 16. It's mind-blowing.

But what's interesting in the play is that her power grows as her relationship with Mortimer deepens, and gets more complicated and I think it gets better drawn as the play goes on.

What will audiences get from it, in terms of entertainment and the dynamic of it?

Well, first of all, it's going to be an hour and 40 minutes straight through. So it's going to be a

kind of intense, shorter version of the play, which just hopefully gets shot, like an arrow from a bow.

What I've loved is seeing how Dan, the director, has worked with us all, in terms of the court, courtiers, nobles, prince, king, queen, lover, and the production keeps ramping up the tension. At moments it’s like we're watching House of Cards, at other times it feels like we're watching Game of Thrones, because it gets that brutal, particularly the last 20 minutes of the play.

People get garrotted, sent to the tower… There's a big revelation that happens in the set in the last 20 minutes, which I think is going to be thrilling.

There are bits of it that feel like Succession, where the political machinations – who's on which side – how are they managing to hold on to their secrets and at the same time toe the line... it's a political thriller in that sense.

When did you first encounter the play and have you seen it?

I saw Simon Russell Beale play In the Swan in 1990. I saw it twice. I was a teenager.

I remember it was directed by Gerard Murphy, who is also an actor, who the previous season I'd seen play Faustus.

And he was an amazing Faustus, dead now unfortunately. But I remember it so clearly.

I remember that it was a very, very overtly gay production. Lots of people in leather. And the two courtiers, Baldock and Spencer, were underneath a sheet at one point.

I remember as a teenager just being blown away – and I'm still blown away, that this play was written in 1593.

It's probably the first major play that depicts a complicated gay relationship. As you say, Marlowe had already touched on other homosexual affectionate relationships.

I saw Ian McKellen's Edward II, because that was also televised. And again, interesting, because that was the first gay kiss on British television – in 1970.

They did it in 1969, they toured it in 1970, not long after homosexuality was made legal. Isn't that incredible?

And in all those hundreds of years, Marlowe's still a trailblazer.

Radical, he’s still a radical.

Edward II is on at the Swan Theatre until 5th April. Buy tickets here.

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