Coutts Woman

Perfectionism and plays

Ed Hall has a young daughter of nearly five years old who’s trying to understand what her daddy does for a living. But she can’t quite grasp what directing is, and Ed says laughing, “I don’t either. Having done it for 20 years I’m not sure.” But to talk with this son of theatre legend Sir Peter Hall, who is clearly passionate about directing plays, it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t know a thing or two by now. And of course he does, and glowing theatre reviews bear testament to his skills. But perhaps what he’s thinking of are the challenges of directing. As he says, “There’s always more to get, another discovery to make, and it never stops.”

It wasn’t a given that Ed would follow his father into the theatre. As a young man with many interests, one passion was playing cricket for the Hampshire and Surrey under 19’s team. As he started his working life he ran a music hire company and a small recording studio in north-west London. It was only when he started training to become an actor at the Mountview Theatre school in London, and directed fellow students, that he realised he quite enjoyed directing.

“One of the most important things to me about what I do, and try to do, is attempting to be individual. Not in any kind of rebellious way, but attempting not to have to conform to what everyone thinks you should be doing.”

Now in his forties, Ed has received critical acclaim with a long list of theatre credits but the one thing that has captured his imagination has been his company, Propeller, which he has been actively involved with for ten years.

Propeller is unusual in many ways. The company is run as a co-operative and that it generates great loyalty amongst the actors. Ed says, “I have a gentlemen’s agreement with all the actors to give them an offer on the next production I do. Now I can choose what I offer, but they can choose whether to take it. So underneath that they know if the company is successful, and we have an opportunity to develop it, they’ll benefit because I won’t suddenly say I’m bored with you five or six. I think that’s unique in my profession.” He also says, “It gives the actors a real sense of company ownership. I suppose it’s an incentive scheme in business terms.”

The other unique element is that Propeller is an all-male company playing Shakespeare as it was written. That’s to say, men playing women. Ed says, “If the writer’s intention was for a single sex cast then I thought that would be interesting to explore.” He’s not adverse to introducing women into the company at some later date but says, “So far we’re still finding things out, so we’ll carry on.”

Propeller is currently touring two Shakespeare plays, Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night. The choice of the Shrew excited a lot of diverse opinion. Ed agrees

that, “It’s normally seen as a bit misogynous, slightly sexist, dusty play. It belongs to a time when women played second fiddle.” However, he’d never seen the play performed and had only read it. He says, “What people described to me and what I read seemed to be quite different things.” Bringing no baggage to the production made things easier for Ed. His take on it is, “It’s a very interesting study of cruelty, written by a young man at the beginning of his career, who’s so energetic and excited at the possibility of what he can put on the stage, that it flips from dark tragedy to high farce in half a page. It’s terribly zippy, and fun and shifts tone dramatically. I think Kate at the end of the play represents the kind of courage you might expect from a battered wife, who despite being battered at home is still desperately keeping the family together.”

Ed says, “One of the most important things to me about what I do, and try to do, is attempting to be individual. Not in any kind of rebellious way, but attempting not to have to conform to what everyone thinks you should be doing.”  And he does bring a freshness to the stage.

The current Propeller productions have cleverly designed sets that use a collection of magic wardrobes. On wheels, with mirrors that can become two-way and cleverly hinged doors, they compliment the physicality of the actors who disappear and re-appear at will. Tibetan bowls, trumpets and squeaking balloons that become the sound of mosquitoes, all add to the original approach. Ed says, “Assumption is the mother of all disasters.” He cites an example of a classic play that always has a ‘kitchen scene’ except he says, “Nowhere in the play does it say they’re in the kitchen. You can come to the play with answers when you haven’t asked the questions.”

Without a doubt Ed’s driving passion for what he does, and his excitement for the theatre, are what give him that edge and push him to take risks. He says, “In a way you have to lose control and be prepared to step off the cliff. And in order to do that you need to have great preparation, you really need to know your material.” But this approach can open up the opportunity for criticism. However, Ed says, “The risks I’ve taken that haven’t been received as well as I’d like them to be makes you focus more clearly on how far you got with achieving a certain idea.”

Ed ‘hates mediocrity’ and ‘loves adrenaline’. He says, “If I’m not nervous that’s not a good sign.” He admires the concentration of a hundred metre runner saying, “When you see their eyes as they look down the track, just as the gun goes off, it’s bewitching. That’s the kind of concentration you need to put on a play.” And he takes that intensity into his off-stage life. He’s motorcycled for 20 years and says, “One of the things I do to unwind is to take my bike on a race track. The focus and concentration is so pure that it allows me to empty my head.”

When asked what he’d like as an epitaph he says, “He did what he wanted.” And he goes on to say, “I hope in doing that, that shows compassion and contributes in some way to the communities in which I live.”

Coutts is currently sponsoring Propeller’s touring productions of The Taming of The Shrew and Twelfth Night. For further information on the sponsorship please click here