Four Quartets by TS Eliot - Directed by Ralph Fiennes

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Posted 2021-06-02 by David Keyworth ⇒ follow

Thu 18 Nov 2021 - Sat 18 Dec 2021

Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot - Directed by Ralph Fiennes

BAFTA-winning and Oscar-nominated actor Ralph Fiennes is taking one of the twentieth century's greatest poetic works on tour with him. He is directing and starring in a new stage adaptation of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. It will be at London's Harold Pinter Theatre from 18 November to 18 December 2021.

Ironically, it was an interruption to Eliot's work for the stage, because of World War II, which prompted him to re-focus on poetry.

Four Quartets is divided into four poems: Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages and Little Gidding. They were published together in 1943. A meditation on time and how we experience it threads through the quartets. Some of the most evocative lines ruminate on moments of intense experience: %%"But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered"%%
(Burnt Norton)

London features heavily in Eliot's ground-breaking poem The Waste Land (1922) and some lines in Four Quartets cut back to the 'unreal city' where Eliot worked as both a bank clerk and a publisher, for Faber & Faber: %%"Or as when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence."%%
(East Coker)

Four Quartets most famous line is perhaps "Humankind cannot bear very much reality" (Burnt Norton).

East Coker is explicitly autobiographical – in that it refers to the Somerset village from which Eliot's ancestors emigrated to America. Eliot made the reverse journey in his own life, back to England. His ashes are interred at St Michael and All Angels' Church, East Coker, A wall plaque in the church commemorates him with lines from the poem: "In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning."

In tune with its musical title, Four Quartets can be enjoyed as much for its rhythm as for its meaning and imagery - especially when read by a first-rate actor.

Fiennes is indeed in good company in terms of actors who have previously given voice to the poems. Alec Guinness (1914–2000) recorded the Four Quartets for a Decca vinyl LP, released in 1975. Veteran film, TV and stage actor, and father of Emilia, Edward Fox, toured the country with his own rendition of the poems, in 2011.

Elsewhere, Eliot's work gained exposure to a whole new audience when Andrew Lloyd Webber used Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) for Cats. The forty-year-old musical has gone on to countless performances on Broadway, London's West End and beyond.

Fiennes was recently seen, opposite Sophie Okonedo, in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. The production reached a global cinema audience via the National Theatre Live series.

His portrayal of a Nazi war criminal in Stephen Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993), won Fiennes a BAFTA and also an Academy Award nomination. He was also Oscar-nominated for his performance in Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (1996), as well as receiving BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations.

He played Voldemort in Harry Potter and will be seen again as M in No Time To Die – the James Bond film originally due to be released in 2020.

TOUR DATES

8 – 12 June: Northampton Theatre Royal
www.royalandderngate.co.uk or 01604 624811

14 – 26 June: Oxford Playhouse
www.oxfordplayhouse.com or 01865 305305

28 June – 10 July: Cambridge Arts Theatre
www.cambridgeartstheatre.com or 01223 503 333

12 – 17 July: MAST Mayflower Studios, Southampton
www.mayflowerstudios.org.uk or 02380 711833

19 – 24 July: Malvern Theatres
www.malvern-theatres.co.uk or 01684 892277

26 – 31 July: York Theatre Royal
www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or 01904 623568

18 November - 18 December 2021: Harold Pinter Theatre, London
www.haroldpintertheatre.co.uk or 020 7492 5395