The look of Love

Two actors meet and fall in love during a stage production. Then, two years later they are cast as star-crossed lovers – not Romeo and Juliet, but Abelard and Heloise – in another play from the same team.

David Sturzaker and Jo Herbert aren’t married, but are a couple in real life after first meeting in the historical play Anne Boleyn, which toured to Darlington Civic Theatre. Next month they’ll be treading the boards there again in another English Touring Theatre/Shakespeare’s Globe presentation.

Eternal Love reunites them with writer Howard Brenton, director John Dove and many of the Anne Boleyn team. “It means that on day one of rehearsals, you come in and there’s already a frisson.

You don’t need to spend all that energy getting to know each other – so it’s straight back in, which is lovely,” says Herbert.

Sturzaker adds, “We met on Anne Boleyn and this came about directly as a result of that. I suppose from their point of view, it was quite natural to ask us to do this together.

“As Jo says, you don’t have to expend energy getting to know each other. It means there’s a slight shorthand of working with each other from being together before.”

Eternal Love is the first time they’ve worked together since Anne Boleyn. The play, based on one of history’s most famous love stories, was first seen at Shakespeare’s Globe in London under the title In Extremis. French philosopher Abelard begins an affair with his brilliant student Heloise, providing ammunition for his enemies to destroy him. He’s already in trouble with the church over his views and when Heloise has his child out of wedlock, their affair becomes a scandal.

Neither actor was familiar with the story. Sturzaker saw the Globe production, but that was all he knew of the tale before being cast as Abelard. “I hadn’t looked at the story independently of this play,” he explains. “Getting to know it, I find it’s a fantastic, extraordinary journey. Reading about it and reading Abelard’s autobiography, some of it is almost farcical. It comes across as quite a modern story in that respect.”

Recent publicity about men in authority having relationships with young women are noted, but don’t inform what the production is about. “Any parallels there might be with other moments in history or current affairs are great, providing the audience draw that parallel themselves,” he says.

“The way Howard has written it and John directs, they’re not the kind of people who’d try to layer any other current issues on top of the story. They’re interested in telling the story of Abelard and Heloise and if it turns out to have other parallels then the audience can come down on those for themselves.

“It doesn’t really affect the way we play the story.

Our responsibility is obviously to tell the story as it’s written on the page. If there’s some kind of likeness to other occurrences then it’s something we’d notice, but not particularly dwell on.”

HERBERT sees Heloise as demure, very intelligent and knowing her place. “She’s a good girl. I don’t think she intends to hurt anyone.

It’s love. And love can drive people to do all sorts,”

says Herbert. “She’s very aware of the hurt she’s caused, but you can’t put a stopper on that kind of love. In a way, she’s brave and optimistic. She’s not stupid or anything like that. She didn’t decide to do this, it’s just happening to them both. They’ve got to deal with what gets thrown at them.”

Brenton has made changes to the historical story for dramatic purposes. “The historical reason she doesn’t get married is purely for Abelard because of his career and denying the world his philosophy.

She wants him to be Pope and he wants to be Pope, and the world wants him to be the next Plato or Aristotle. He can’t do that if he’s married. So she’s kind of doing it for the world, saying I can’t keep you for myself when the whole world needs your philosophy,” says Herbert.

“Her saying no is very selfless, but it’s also the fact that she’s never thought of herself as that.

She’s not a wife. She is, as she says in Howard’s play, a philosophical warrior.

“They’ve met to fight together, to have all this talk and philosophise and they can’t do that if they’re only a married couple. She doesn’t want to be that.”

Now in case all this sounds terribly serious, the actors are keen to point out that the play is also funny. That’s one of Brenton’s brilliances as a writer, says Sturzaker. In other hands or with other choices, the story could seem very high-minded or highbrow. Brenton throws in elements of humour ,whether it’s a line, a character or a scene.

“That is very deliberate because people do use humour in all situations, be it life, death, every spectrum of human emotion,” the actor continues. Humans use humour within that for many different reasons but equally from an audience point of view, the really important parts of the play, serious or otherwise, are highlighted when there is some contrast.

“If an audience is bombarded with philosophy and pain and suffering for two hours, you wouldn’t get it and it wouldn’t compute. So you need moments of relief.”

Sturzaker found the Anne Boleyn tour was one of those times when all the ingredients came together – play, director, writer and cast. “One of the company members halfway through the tour described the play as bulletproof. It was enjoyed so much,” he says.

“People enjoy the fact that they’re getting it. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. But if you go and see a play which, on the face of it is about Tudor kings and queens, the dissolution of the monasteries, the reworking of religion and the writing of the King James Bible, it sounds very dry and dour. But the way Howard writes it, the audience follow it implicitly and can really enjoy the play.

“You’re aware of that while you’re playing it.

Then the feeling is reciprocal and makes it lovely for us to play. I hope very much it will be the same with this.”

• Eternal Love: Darlington Civic Theatre, March 4-8. Box office 01325-486555 and online darlingtoncivic.co.uk