Theatre

Of course, at the same time that Northampton’s name was being emblazoned on the theatrical map, so was Goold’s. Last autumn he made his RSC directing debut with Frank McGuinness’s Gunpowder Plot-inspired ‘Speaking Like Magpies’. No high conceptual spin was needed this time – the London bombings inevitably brought a terrifying relevance to the tale of religious dissidents plotting an underground explosion: ‘Theatre lives like some awful vulture off distress,’ he reflects. Yet the corollary to this is that ‘When society’s in turmoil, theatre becomes more necessary.’ Feature continues

Goold is particularly exercised about such issues because he’s just taken over as artistic director of the Oxford Stage Company. Since his arrival, it’s been rechristened as Headlong Theatre. ‘We were doing “Paradise Lost” at the time, and it’s a word that’s littered through the Milton,’ he asserts. Was the change in name another example of Goold bar-rattling? ‘No,’ he replies.‘The company had moved from Oxford about three years before I took the position. From that move it had always been intended to change its name.’

The next couple of months will see two Headlong productions in London, concurrent with Goold’s controversial RSC production of ‘The Tempest’. The first is a new version of Edward Bond’s 1981 play ‘Restoration’, which has already made headlines because Bond has written two new songs for the work, one about suicide bombers, and one about anti-war protesters. Though the main text parodies Restoration comedy, Goold explains that the musical numbers work in counterpoint to the stylised humour ‘as strange poetic evocations of perpetual class war’. I ask if it’s been difficult to work with the famously exacting Bond. He concedes ‘Occasionally he’s true to type – he is fierce. But then so was Beckett. His plays can sometimes be uncompromising and difficult, yet I think he’s far more of a major writer than John Osborne, and is really up there with Beckett and Pinter.’

‘Restoration’ plays at the end of this month at the Hackney Empire, and in October a ‘substantially recast and rewritten’ production of the Brit Art ‘Faustus’ appears at Hampstead Theatre. After that? ‘Daniel Kramer is directing “Angels in America” for us. Following that I’m directing – again it’s quite an ambitious piece – an annotation of Simon Schama’s book “Rough Crossings” ’. No sign, then, that Goold is planning to take even half an hour’s nap on his laurels, or indeed anywhere else in the near future. Does he find time to sleep? ‘I’ve got a one-year-old baby,’ he laughs, ‘so not very often.’

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