Tree top tempest

AUDIENCES returning to Ripley Castle for Sprite Productions’ annual open air show are in for a surprise with the fifth production, The Tempest.

Usually, the promenade production requires spectators to move around the grounds of the castle, near Harrogate, with scenes staged in half a dozen locations. This time the audience is staying put – on an island in a lake.

They’ll reach the “stage” along a specially-constructed footbridge, and rather that standing or sitting in deckchairs, there’s fixed seating.

The actors will still be moving around. The performance area will be in the round, with additional playing areas on platforms in the trees.

Producer Liam Evans-Ford says the change is part of his plan to keep the show fresh. “I didn’t want to become one of those open-air Shakespeare companies where it’s the same every year,” he says.

“If we were just putting on promenade productions forever, people would come because the sites are lovely. But I know they’ll be grabbed and gripped by the island in the middle of the lake.

“Because we’re not spread over so many locations, we’re technically more capable rather than wondering if we can get a light in a tree or whatever.

And Geoff, who’s done music for us before, is playing more with recorded sounds this time.”

Lucy Kerbel returns to direct for the fourth time. Joanna Croll, who has previously appeared in Sprite productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night, returns as movement director. She’ll be helping to create the tempest – providing the English weather doesn’t do it for real – that opens Shakespeare’s last play.

Playing Prospero, the magician castaway who uses his powers to gain revenge on those who’ve offended him in the past, is Harrogateborn actor Roger Ringrose in his Ripley debut.

“What’s great about The Tempest is it’s perfect for the space and the variety of audience you’re aiming for.

It’s absolutely for every age, even within the casting. There’s magic going on and human emotions,” he says. “And, of course, it’s Shakespeare’s last play and every single version of his writing over the years is featured in the text.”

He was appearing at London’s National Theatre when his agent asked if he wanted to go for the part of Prospero up in Yorkshire. “I said I know Ripley quite well, it’s home. My mother is still there, and my brother and sisters. One sister used to live on the Ingleby estate and my niece works in the shop at the castle,” he says.

His only other appearance in his home town came when he brought his one-man show about artist Vincent Van Gogh to Harrogate Theatre in 1994.

He left his home town in 1989, after completing his studies in Russian and German at university. “I’d done some acting, but the idea of turning professional came as I decided to leave home and move to London,” he recalls. “The reason I became an actor was because I did German and Russian plays in their original language.

As a result, a lecturer suggested I should take up acting professionally, so I went to drama school.”

Spending the third year of his university course abroad was the deciding factor “that knocked me over the edge” and made him determined to become an actor. His father was a lawyer in Harrogate and young Roger was initially, at least, inclined towards that as a profession.

“So it was the language that got me into acting and, leading on from that, is doing Shakespeare. I’ve been quite a fan of language per se, not from studying English but from taking a foreign language into English.

That makes it all the more poignant and enjoyable.”

That love of language influences which projects he most enjoys.

“What I find most exciting as an actor is what the writer is trying to say. I’ve always thought the job of an actor is to put across in the best way possible the hard-fought words of the writer, which you do in conjunction with the director, the cast and production team.

“That’s what has always excited and why I’ve always done a lot of new plays.”

He’s worked at the Globe Theatre, the reconstruction of a Shakespearean playhouse on the banks of the Thames, realising he’s fortunate to have had the chance to do so much of the Bard’s works.

“Not a lot is done, mainly because the casts are so large. Some production companies are scared of the audience connecting, which is why they’ve worked well in the open air because that adds the whole idea of an event.

“They also lend themselves to the open air because that’s what they were meant for in the first place.

“I love the open air. It’s the variety really and equally, I love the intimacy of a very small space. With an open- air audience, there’s no better feeling because they know they’re having to work harder and it’s more of an occasion.”

AS for the 2010 Ripley Castle production, Evans-Ford is giving the audience a say in what play is chosen. He’s asking them to vote for the play they’d like staged next year. It doesn’t even have to be by Shakespeare.

This year’s Ripley season includes performances on July 7 and 8, by Shakespeare’s Globe On Tour in The Comedy Of Errors.

Sprite is also running a week-long summer acting school for 16 to 22- year-olds next monyh at the castle.

Workshops and sessions looking towards a performance at the end of the week are part of the scheme. So too is a discussion with Lyndon Ogbourne, Emmerdale’s new bad boy Nathan Wylde, on the differences between acting for stage and screen.

The Tempest: Ripley Castle, June 16 to July 5 (tickets 01423-770632 or spriteproductions.co.uk) and York’s Library Garden, July 8 to 11 (tickets 01904-623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk)