Interview: 'It's Theatre in Miniature': Greg Doran on His Revival of Shakespeare's VENUS AND ADONIS

Greg Doran, former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and celebrated Shakespearean, revives his acclaimed production of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare's greatest narrative poem, for a limited UK tour starting in June.

Inspired by Doran's love of Japanese Bunraku puppetry, this story of unrequited love is told using marionettes, shadow, rod and table-top puppets designed and created by Little Angel Theatre's Lyndie Wright.

Narrated live by Simon Russell Beale and with music by Nick Lee, this comic-tragedy about Venus's passion for the handsome Adonis visits the Arts Theatre Cambridge, Oxford Playhouse, The Pit at the Barbican and York Theatre Royal. BroadwayWorld spoke to Doran about why he's so proud of the show and the beauty of puppetry.

You've said that this particular production has to be one of the shows of which you're most proud in your entire directing career. Why?

It's so innovative. While on an RSC tour of Othello to Japan in 2004, I went to see a Bunraku puppet show in Osaka and it wasn't what I was expecting ­­– it was packed with adults and it lasted for nine hours. I was amazed by how the ancient craft of puppetry was treated with such reverence. I went backstage to meet a 'national human treasure': a puppeteer who operated the princess's head in the production.

And why did you choose this particular poem?

I loved the poem when I first read it and felt it ought to be better known. It goes from being wonderfully funny to tragic within minutes.

As it has horses, a wild boar, little hare and pack of hunting dogs I took the idea to the Little Angel Theatre's Lyndie Wright, as using puppets could be a good way to incorporate everything on stage. I told Lyndie, "I have a mad idea. What do you think?"

We decided the wild boar would be a shadow puppet, and Venus and Adonis would be table-top puppets. It's interesting that the size of pupils in their eyes are as big as in humans, so they work in a big space.

Music and narration were then added to the mix. Michael Pennington and Harriet Walter were both narrators previous to Russell Beale.

What does Simon Russell Beale bring to the show? Is it exciting to have such a great interpreter of Shakespeare on board?

Simon's really thrilled to be involved. The narrator plays both Venus, a prototype for Cleopatra, and Adonis, who's a capricious and stroppy teenager. As well as getting to perform both these roles, he also gets to speak some of Shakespeare's most beautiful language. We worked together on The Tempest and I know Simon likes to be out of his comfort zone.

When was the earliest version of the production performed?

An early version was under Adrian Noble at the RSC. He asked what could be worked out for the entertainment at a big development event at the Prince of Wales's (now King Charles's) home at Highgrove.

I said what about a reading of Venus and Adonis? In the middle there's a fantastic verse where Shakespeare's in a lather of excitement of how beautiful this horse is, so I thought that would go quite down well with this audience.

Adrian ripped up the speech he was going to give after the reading, and instead said the poem was "Shakespeare in miniature". It turns on a sixpence from comedy to tragedy, which sums up what Shakespeare's all about.

How did this new version of the show come about?

The RSC contacted me to say that the puppets were still in storage and they were taking up valuable space. What did I want to do with them?

I said I would love to do something with them, so I set up a little company and it's great being able to respond to those people who keep saying they want to see the show again. We'll be kicking off at the Craiova International Shakespeare Festival in Romania at the end of May and then we'll go to Cambridge, Oxford, London and York. It's only a short tour, but it's a big event in the puppet world.

Will the show work as well today as it did 21 years ago?

It will be interesting to know what audiences will make of Venus, in particular, who becomes a bit of a stalker because of her obsession with Adonis. Will the flirtations have to be renegotiated today? Will the production be regarded as acceptable in such different times?

Our relationship with puppetry in British theatre has changed, with more instances of it in mainstream productions like War Horse and Life of Pi. Is there more creative freedom using puppets?

I've always liked puppets. I had a marionette of a little clown when I was a child and I thought 'The Lonely Goatherd' in The Sound of Music was magical.

Originally, people confessed they had an allergic reaction to puppets and that they found them freaky. But I think we won them over.

One woman came up to me at the end of a show and said she'd seen it three times and still hadn't spotted the moment when we changed from a comic to a tragic puppet. I told her we hadn't changed puppets. It's the same puppet and the puppeteer imbued it with a life where it moved from laughter to tears. It's an act of theatre complicity when the audience believes this wooden thing (Adonis) and soft foam thing (Venus) are real.

In one scene after Venus pleads with Adonis for a kiss, he finally agrees to give her a kiss and then he'll go off hunting. After he kisses her, she floats in the air like a figure in a Chagall painting, and despite himself Adonis floats with her. Shakespeare has a beautiful phrase, describing it as "face grows to face".

Is there a parallel to be drawn between when the poem was written during a plague in 1593 and today just after we've come through Covid?

Plague infected the country and theatres were closed then, just like when Covid struck us in 2019. Shakespeare had to make money, so he applied his genius to poetry. He was writing in lockdown essentially. I think that's why it's so easy to translate this poem to stage, as he put the language into character, making the words easy and immediate.

Venus and Adonis became his most successful piece of publishing (it was reprinted 15 times before 1640) and was very well-known in his lifetime. Most of the copies are at the Bodleian Library in Oxford today.

What do you think of the craftmanship behind the production?

The sheer craftmanship is what makes the story so accessible to the audience. Lyndie got together the best puppeteers and puppet makers from all over Europe and the world. It's a real international effort.

And Lyndie's daughter and other new talents have come together today to reinvent the show with the next generation of puppet makers.

The show's only an hour long, but it packs a lot in. It's a very joyful thing to go back to.

Venus and Adonis runs at Arts Theatre Cambridge 9-10 June, Oxford Playhouse 17-20 June, The Pit at the Barbican 23-27 June 23, and York Theatre Royal 30 June and 1 July.

Greg Doran's latest book Walking Shadow: Love, Loss and Shakespeare is published by Bloomsbury.