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Ralph Fiennes: ‘I can’t understand the vitriol directed at JK Rowling’
As he 発表するs his 小旅行する of Four Quartets, the actor 会談 TS Eliot, the 現在の 脅し to artistic freedom and James 社債
As a 意気込み／士気-上げるing 指示，表示する物 that better days 嘘（をつく） ahead for British theatre, there can be few more heartening 告示s than this. The Telegraph can 排他的に 明らかにする／漏らす today that Ralph Fiennes will be 長，率いるing out on the road and treading the boards in the Spring, bringing a new one-man rendition of TS Eliot’s late poetic masterwork Four Quartets to four 地域の theatres. It’s an 奮起させるing gesture of reaching out to the wider British public, helping to 反動的な 発生地s that have been dark for too long.
?Last week Fiennes, 58, gave me a こそこそ動く preview of what’s in 蓄える／店 for audiences, at a rehearsal studio in Bethnal Green where he is dressed in 海軍 blue shirt, baggy blue linen trousers and 黒人／ボイコット leather shoes. In contrast to TS Eliot’s remote, school-熟達した reading of the four poems, he takes a conversational approach, and even starts doing dainty steps, evoking a quaint rustic dance to the lines from East Coker: “On a summer midnight, you can hear the music/ of the weak 麻薬を吸う and the little 派手に宣伝する…”
He has known the piece for １０年間s. His mother had it on an LP, and Fiennes tells me he can connect to its moral and spiritual 追求（する），探索（する）. He 記録，記録的な／記録するd the poem in 2009, but a year ago he decided to get more intimately 熟知させるd. “During the first lockdown, I went straight to the cottage I rent in Suffolk, and I thought I’d learn them. I would walk about the paths and bridleways where I live, becoming familiar with them.” With its famous 開始 line, at the start of East Coker, “In my beginning is my end,”?Eliot’s poem spoke to him, as it perhaps does to all in 中央の-life, who can begin to see the end of the road. “I think it speaks to people who are in “the middle way”, he says. “You have a sense of what the poem really means as you get older.” To 増強する the point, he 引用するs lines from Little Gidding: “The shame of 動機s late 明らかにする／漏らすd, and the 認識／意識性 of things ill done and done to others’ 害（を与える）.”
The pandemic, with its 中断 of normal activity, life and seemingly time itself, chimed with the work’s melancholy yet 安心させるing contemplation of the 広大な patterns of 存在. “I felt it very 堅固に, that sense of 存在 stopped and 軍隊d to look 支援する,” he says. Having 反映するd on the past year, Fiennes, who lives alone (he was 以前 married to Alex Kingston and lived for many years with Francesca Annis) tells me: “It has been peculiar. It has been weird not to be able to see your relations, not to be の近くに to the people you’d like to be の近くに to.” Of course, Fiennes has been seen on 行う／開催する／段階 since the pandemic (in David Hare’s （警官の）巡回区域，受持ち区域 the Devil at the 橋（渡しをする）, making him the first major 指名する to be 大（公）使館員d to indoor, socially distanced 業績／成果s), but he can’t wait for things to return to normal. He tells me that he has several 事業／計画（する）s on the go and 明らかにする／漏らすs: “The Scottish play is in my sights.” He says: “Theatre is the 必須の 円形競技場 for an actor and we’re all hoping that it will come 支援する, not just with social distancing but so we can sit together in proximity. I think that will be hugely emotional.”
The fact is that while Fiennes has had a stellar film career (Schindler’s 名簿（に載せる）／表（にあげる）, The English 患者, Voldemort in Harry Potter and M in James 社債), he is one of the few A-listers to 終始一貫して return to the theatre. ?He has grown in stature and subtlety since he 現れるd at the RSC in the 80s, winning plaudits as Henry VI, 原因（となる）ing a 動かす in London and New York in the 中央の-Nineties as Hamlet and becoming a 正規の／正選手 at the 国家の, where he was last seen as Antony. He 栄えるs at 拷問d 部外者 人物／姿／数字s ? Richard II, Coriolanus, Ibsen’s loners, even Oedipus and Shaw’s 革命の bachelor John Tanner in Man and Superman. He 連合させるs unflagging physical presence with quicksilver and introspective alertness. ?
Of course, Fiennes’s position at the 前線-line of the arts could be 危険な, as the culture wars with their 急速な／放蕩な judgments and 試みる／企てるd 取り消しs 強める. He 申し込む／申し出s up particular despair at the 治療 meted out to JK Rowling in the wake of her 約束／交戦 with trans 問題／発行するs. “I can’t understand the vitriol directed at her. I can understand the heat of an argument, but I find this age of 告訴，告発 and the need to 非難する irrational. I find the level of 憎悪 that people 表明する about 見解（をとる）s that 異なる from theirs, and the 暴力／激しさ of language に向かって others, 乱すing.”
He also 申し込む／申し出s me a 熱心に felt defence of artistic freedom, in the theatre and どこかよそで. “I get worried if it’s decided that 確かな classical plays are irrelevant. I think often there’s a superficial reading ? 復古／返還 演劇 is ‘colonialist, hierarchical, quasi 人種差別主義者’. But they’re just plays. You can turn them on their 長，率いる. The danger is of labelling stuff. These texts are there ? so pull the humanity out of them, pull out the stuff that’s 関連した. If you’re going ‘it doesn’t tick these boxes’, you’re lowering the portcullis of 裁判／判断 before you’ve even got into the room with it. I think that’s troubling.”
He 賞賛するs artistic 解放する／自由な-spirits from other disciplines ? 特記する／引用するing Picasso and Henry Miller. “We need to have those 発言する／表明するs that 危険 存在 不快な／攻撃. How sad if we sat on any expressive 発言する／表明する that could shake the scenery, that could get inside us and make us angry and turn us on. I would hate a world where the freedom of that 肉親，親類d of 発言する／表明する is stifled.” ?
Fiennes 攻撃するs between charismatic smiles with pensive frowns, 連合させるs gracefulness of movement with something restless, as he hunches 今後 to think aloud or leaps up gleefully to show me the 生産／産物’s model-box. いつかs I see an element of bohemianism that 茎・取り除くs from his childhood. His mother was the author Jennifer 攻撃する, and four of his five younger siblings ??Martha, Sophie, Magnus and Joseph ??have worked 首尾よく in the arts too (the explorer Ranulph Fiennes is a distant cousin). His 早期に years were peripatetic, although rooted to a degree in Suffolk, the setting for his 最近の film 攻撃する，衝突する The Dig about the Sutton Hoo treasures, in which he played the archaeologist Basil Brown.
In fact, there are eerie points of 関係 between Four Quartets and The Dig; both rooted in a time when England was 直面するing an existential 脅し from Nazi Germany, both 吸収するd ? in a meditative way ??in looking to the distant past. “Yes, as I was learning Four Quartets, I kept thinking “F***, this is The Dig!”. We’ve all been delighted by the 返答 to it and it’s not just one demographic, it has had a really wide 控訴，上告. Though it 反映するs on mortality, there’s a compassion in it people are 答える／応じるing to.” In another time, The Dig might have had its 遠出 in an art-house cinema, not 経由で a streaming service. Fiennes 重さを計るs the プロの／賛成のs and 反対／詐欺s: “I’m longing to go and see a film in the cinema but like everyone I’ve enjoyed the accessibility of streaming services.”
One obvious film not coming first to a streaming 壇・綱領・公約 is the long-deferred 社債 movie No Time To Die, its 解放（する） 押し進めるd 支援する (a third time) to the autumn. The last 延期, in October, drew some stinging 批評 from the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin. The film’s M thinks we should be sparing in our denunciations. “I’m sure lots of people have scratched their 長，率いるs and thought: what do we do? I’m sure there was a 抱擁する 審議 and that it wasn’t a 決定／判定勝ち（する） taken lightly.” As for the content, time will be 肉親，親類d he thinks. “From what I know, the film will have a 抱擁する pertinence and resonance, which was not 心配するd. It will have more traction ーに関して／ーの点でs of its contemporaneity. It’ll be exciting.”?
Four Quartets runs at the Theatre 王室の Bath (01225 448844), from May 25 to June 5; then at the 王室の & Derngate, Northampton (01604 624811), from?June 8-12.?It then 小旅行するs to Oxford Playhouse and Cambridge Arts Centre