National Theatre

Tamburlaine the Great (Parts I and II)

Christopher Marlowe

The inaugural National Theatre production in the Olivier Theatre
Opened 4 Oct 1976
Closed 11 Jan 1977
Total 16 Performances

(Rehearsals began 20 Apr 1976. Openings in July and August postponed due to delays with completing the building.)

Transcript of an interview with John Heilpern, assistant to Peter Hall for an educational pack

Q: Why was Tamburlaine chosen for the opening production in the Olivier Theatre?

Firstly, Tamburlaine the Great has always interested Peter Hall and is a play which is very rarely done in contemporary theatre - the last major performance of it was 25 years ago at the Old Vic with Sir Donald Wolfit in the main part.

Perhaps it has been so rarely performed for obvious reasons. The play requires huge resources, a large cast, and a leading actor who can carry the massive role of Tamburlaine. It would be true to say that Tamburlaine the Great is a widely known play which has been rarely performed.

Yet, historically, the play is of enormous importance to the dramatic literature. It was Swinburne who called Marlowe "the father of the English tragedy and the creator of English blank verse". Swinburne also claimed that Marlowe was the teacher and the guide of Shakespeare. Whether this is true or not, Shakespeare's early plays were undoubtedly influenced by Marlowe, and there are several points in Tamburlaine the Great when one can see how this happened. The madness scene of Zabina, for example - was this the seed of the madness scene of Ophelia? At any rate, the public's interest and fascination in this massive play encouraged Peter Hall to produce it at the new National Theatre.

There were other reasons, however, for choosing it to open the Olivier theatre. Tamburlaine the Great is, more than anything, a very public play. It demands the kind of exuberant public display and performance which must have been the strong element in the production when it was first performed more than three hundred years ago in the open air. The Olivier Theatre - contrary to the normal proscenium arch theatres - is based on the Greek theatre of Epidaurus. Its design encourages the actor to invite a response from the audience and share his performance with it. It is a very public theatre in the way that the conventional proscenium arch is not.

In proscenium arch theatres, the audience is often referred to as "the fourth wall", that is, the audience is looking in on a room and as such represents its fourth wall. But in the production of Tamburlaine, the audience was referred to as "the fourth spectator". It was as if the audience were another character in the production - a character who was involved in the sense of being part of the action. It is this quality which is one of Marlowe's greatest strengths in Tamburlaine, and therefore the Olivier Theatre was ideal for a production of the play.

Q: What was the first concept of the text when research began - for example was music always going to play an important role?

Any first concept of the production is likely to change and develop during its rehearsal. In many ways, it's what rehearsals are for; to discover what the play is about and how best to perform and stage it. For example, it was decided at an early stage in the production that since Marlowe does not show one battle scene actually taking place on the stage, that the battles would be portrayed musically. That is, musicians on either side of the stage would play a musical battle for each of the ten battles in the text. But of course this simple concept developed and transformed itself many many times during the weeks of rehearsal. For example, a problem with this concept was simply how to perform ten musical battles differently. Without the most intense exploration, there is clearly a danger that each battle would simply sound the same, whereas it was a real test of the composer [Harrison Birtwistle] and his musicians to find a way of mirroring Marlowe's text.

In the same way, whatever concept of the play had been decided in the initial stage was to change and develop as the rehearsals tried to bring that concept to life. However, what was clear from the production's first stages was that Tamburlaine the Great is a play rich in its episodic structure and bursting with many contrasts and ironies which can be seen upon a reading of the complete text. There is a great temptation with both Parts I and II to cut them drastically - as was the case in the 1950s production at the Old Vic, where the decision was made to merge Parts I and II into one performance. The full text on the other hand reveals a play not just about the concept of power and corruption, but many other things - concepts of myth and mortality, of idealised love and self-delusion. There is also in the opening scenes of both Parts I and II a strong sense of comedy and satire - and it was decided that these scenes must be investigated and performed too, for only when these scenes are played with the ones that follow, do we see Marlowe's strong sense of irony and real intention in writing the play.

Therefore, the first concept of Tamburlaine the Great for the production was at least on the surface of things very straightforward. It was simply to investigate the full text scene by scene, and episode by episode, to discover the real richness of the play. When this was clear, the rehearsals could begin on a more sure footing.

Q: What methods of textual research were used and how did these affect the production?

In any production of the classical play, there are bound to be a lot of scholarly essays and perhaps books that are read by the director and even his actors. However, scholars often disagree with each other, and Tamburlaine the Great has, down the years, become a source of interpretive controversy. For example one school of though believes that Tamburlaine is a supreme symbol of the Renaissance age of aspiration and discovery. On the other hand the orthodox christian view sees him purely as a symbol of evil. This view believes that Tamburlaine, the scourge of God, declines and dies, punished by God for his sins. Yet a close analysis of the text must bring one to the conclusion that at no time does Marlowe acknowledge any christian concepts of sin and repentance. On the contrary, Marlowe questions the existence of any kind of god - and the implication of the play is that none exists. Many modern scholars agree with this interpretation, and indeed it was the one the production adopted.

NB: For further insights into the rehearsal process see Peter Hall's Diaries: The Story of a Dramatic Battle edited by John Goodwin, London, 1983

Olivier Theatre

• Talkback