Directing Problem Plays: John Barton Talks to Gareth Lloyd Evans

Summary

g.l.e. John Barton, you are, I think, one of the few directors who have produced all of the so-called Problem Plays. Do you find this a useful label?

j.b. No, I don't really. I hate categorising plays, and find it difficult to say what is a tragedy, what is a comedy, what is a romance, etc. But if I did, I think I would link All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure with Twelfth Night. I believe that they carried through something that was coming to the boil in As You Like It and Twelfth Night, i.e. Shakespeare's very conscious split between the 'happy-ever-after' world of romantic comedy and his sense of what life and people are really like. I see it in As You Like It to some extent, and even more so in Twelfth Night where what happens at the end to Malvolio and Belch and Maria is set against the conventional romantic ending given to Olivia, Orsino, Viola and Sebastian. That sense of reality breaking in on convention goes further in All's Well and Measure for Measure, where a wry sense of what life's really like and what people are really like is at odds with what the story-line dictates. I think that Troilus is a much profounder, more complex, and richer play.