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'I get upset when I don't hear people gasping during the killings': King Lear's stellar cast gets ready to face the biggest audience of their careersBy KIRSTY LANGPUBLISHED:22:00, 26 April 2014| UPDATED:22:16, 26 April 2014Up to 150,000 people will be glued to Simon Russell Beale's mesmerising performance as the king in Shakespeare’s King LearKing Lear with his daughters (from left): Kate Fleetwood (Goneril), Anna Maxwell Martin (Regan), Olivia Vinall (Cordelia) and Simon Russell Beale (Lear)'I’m worried about where they’re going to put the microphone when I take my clothes off,’ says Simon Russell Beale. He rubs his shaven scalp and adds: ‘They can’t even hide it in my hair, because that’s gone, too.’ Russell Beale may be one of Britain’s greatest actors, with glowing reviews and a sell-out run at the National Theatre, but he still gets nervous before a performance. And on May 1 he won’t only be performing to the 1,120 people packed into the London venue.On May 1 the cast of King Lear will be performing to 1,120 people packed into the National TheatreUp to 150,000 people will be glued to his mesmerising performance as the king in Shakespeare’s King Lear, as the play is relayed live to hundreds of cinemas across Britain.For an actor, Lear is a Mount Everest role. Every night he must rip his family apart by pitting his three daughters against each other, then destroy his kingdom and himself as his mind descends into a hell of dementia. It’s exhausting physically and mentally.Sam Mendes directed King Lear before going off to make the next Bond film, and there is a cinematic quality to his production. It opens with a shaven, bullet-headed Russell Beale stomping out like a small angry dictator, a petulant Stalin demanding absolute loyalty from subjects and daughters.Lear’s plan to divide his kingdom among his three daughters is scuppered by his youngest, Cordelia, who refuses to compete with her sisters in the game of Who Loves Daddy Best. She is played by 26-year-old Olivia Vinall, who impressed critics last year with her portrayal of Desdemona in Nick Hytner’s Othello. With huge blue eyes, pale skin and long blonde hair, there’s a youthful purity and sweetness about Vinall’s face that makes her a perfect fit for Lear’s youngest and favourite daughter. How does she feel about the performance being screened live? ‘I did one for Othello and the atmosphere was electric,’ says Vinall. ‘It’s like a gala performance or the first night – everyone is at the top of their game, including the audience. You get a countdown in your ear, 5,4,3,2,1... then you know there are people all over the world watching. It’s exciting.’Lear's middle daughter is played by Anna Maxwell Martin, recently the daughter in the film Philomena but best known to TV viewers for her Bafta-winning role in Bleak HouseSimon Russell Beale stars in King LearRussell Beale agrees there’s a real sense of occasion when the cameras are in the theatre.‘The first time I did it, for Timon Of Athens, I got a text in the interval from Deborah Warner [the theatre director] saying it’s going down very well in Oxford, and then another from a friend watching in Finland!’Vinall tells me about the first time she met Russell Beale, at the National’s 50th birthday celebration last year.‘We hadn’t been introduced but I had just got the part of Cordelia. He came over and lifted me off the ground. He has to do that in the play and wanted to see how heavy I was. A bit embarrassing.’ Lear’s middle daughter is played by Anna Maxwell Martin, recently the daughter in the film Philomena but best known to TV viewers for her Bafta-winning role in Bleak House. 'I get upset when I don't hear people gasping during the killings and the waterboarding scene,' says Maxwell Martin, who vamps up Regan in tight-fitting outfits and fishnet stockingsShe plays Regan as a psychopath who appears to get sexual pleasure watching men being tortured, while oldest sister Goneril is played with icy control by chisel-featured brunette, Kate Fleetwood, a regular on the National Theatre stage, who has appeared in Love’s Labour’s Lost and the musical London Road directed by the National’s incoming artistic director Rufus Norris. The actors are shooting interviews too, to be played in cinemas during the interval.‘It’s like a film version of a theatre programme, with explanations about the plot and each character. 'We are rivals in the sense that we come from the same dynasty,’ says Maxwell Martin. ‘Everyone is fighting for their position, desperately clawing for power.’ The two actresses joke about how Mendes ‘sexed-up’ their roles. ‘We had hoped that after this he would cast us as Bond girls,’ says Fleetwood, ‘but I’m still waiting for the call.’On the performance being screened live: 'It's like a gala performance or the first night - everyone is at the top of their game, including the audience. You get a countdown in your ear... It's exciting,' said VinallMaxwell Martin vamps up Regan in tight-fitting outfits and fishnet stockings – ‘Regan uses sex to manipulate men’ – but says she would happily settle for playing Miss Moneypenny. They are joking, but you sense for these actresses that working with a director of Mendes’ stature is a big deal.King Lear will be their first NT Live performance. They have two rehearsals to learn the camera positions, but otherwise were told to play their roles as they would on any other night. ‘I thought we would have to tone down our voices and not shout,’ says Maxwell Martin, ‘but we’ve been told not to change our performance at all.’They agree it’s best not to think about how many people are watching, and just concentrate on the audience in the theatre. ‘I get upset when I don’t hear people gasping during the killings and the waterboarding scene,’ says Maxwell Martin. And if they’re gasping in the front row then hopefully they’ll be gasping in the cinemas, too. ................
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