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March 25, 2008 (from Playbill)

January 9, 2007 (from The Daily Telegraph)

Fiennes is very, very focused

Ralph Fiennes will speak thousands of words over 55 minutes tonight but yesterday the Oscar-nominated actor could manage just 17 because he was "in the zone".

The 44-year-old British star has been immersing himself in Samuel Beckett's First Love for the past six weeks.

Tonight he takes to NIDA's Parade Theatre for a world premiere of the 55-minute one-man monologue.

Yesterday, Fiennes broke from last-minute rehearsals to recite a few lines from the adapted Beckett novella – and said very little else.

"I think we have enough now," Fiennes said after 10 minutes.

"There's no dancing, there's no one else, there's just me."

And with that, he was gone. Michael Colgan from Dublin's Gate Theatre, directing Fiennes, said the ferociously focused actor is not being rude.

"He is a very meticulous actor, a very very serious professional practitioner," Colgan said.

Dr Ashley Wain, a lecturer in acting at Charles Sturt University, said memorising lines was the least of Fiennes' worries.

"Fiennes is probably doing some form of becoming the character where he shuts out all distractions until opening night. Actors often hide away until they open. And it's Beckett, so he's probably taking it very seriously," he said.

January 9, 2007 (from The Australian)

Fiennes's cred adds to festival's box office success

By Matthew Westwood

Actor Ralph Fiennes and singer Lou Reed have brought celebrity and cultural cred to the Sydney Festival and, as a bonus for organisers, ticket sales normally reserved for pop stars.

Fiennes's appearance in a Samuel Beckett play in Sydney this week promises to be that true "festival event": a tantalising combination of glamour, stagecraft and intellectual lustre. Then there's Lou Reed's artfully staged performance of his album Berlin.

The programming strategy is paying rewards for the festival.

Just three days in, box-office takings had topped $4.3 million and tickets to Reed's concert were being offered on Ebay for $400 a pair, almost double their original value.

They're not the sort of prices you'd expect for a subsidised, not-for-profit, arts festival.

But festival director Fergus Linehan, beaming at the early success of his second festival, said the program was "not wilfully commercial".

Although headline names, Reed and Fiennes are not presenting light entertainment. The festival also includes shows with less obvious pulling power: Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, performed in Russian, for example, and such avant-garde performances as Seemannslieder (Sailor Songs).

Linehan could not explain the high box-office takings, but mentioned the program's "urban eclecticism" and a "shift in the ether" of audience expectations.

It contrasts with last October's Melbourne Festival, which sold a disappointing $1.2 million in tickets. Its director, Kristy Edmunds, was accused in local newspaper the Herald Sun of presenting "box-office poison", with a community-oriented program that lacked high-profile names.

However, Edmunds's term has been extended to a fourth year.

The Sydney Festival has thought up innovative ticketing: a mini-season of shows where all tickets are $25 and a booth where a limited number of tickets to every event are available for $25.

Linehan said the booth had unintentionally become a last-chance outlet for tickets to sold-out shows.

The sale of tickets on Ebay was not yet a serious issue for the festival, but was a worrying trend. "If it's overt scalping ... it does not do anyone any favours," Linehan said.

Fiennes was at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts's Parade Theatre yesterday to rehearse the one-man show First Love, which was adapted from a Beckett story.

Part of a season of Beckett plays presented by Dublin's Gate Theatre, this production of First Love is being seen for the first time in Sydney.

It is a caustic tale of an impulsive coupling, and Fiennes, when he had finished his run-through, warned that there was "no dancing".

January 9, 2007 (from The Sydney Morning Herald)

Frantic, forlorn Fiennes can wait for no one

By Clara Iaccarino

It was a moment that would have made Samuel Beckett proud. In the first glimpse of the Sydney Festival production of Beckett's novella turned one-person play, First Love, Ralph Fiennes rattled through a handful of scenes, grinned at the onslaught of clicking cameras, then declared: "I think we have enough now. There's no dancing."

Fiennes, 44, stood centre stage in the National Institute of Dramatic Art's Parade Theatre looking truly Beckettian and as forlorn as the play's vagrant narrator. The set is simple, with a bench to one side and a beige scrim that, when lit, reveals a bay window and door.

First Love is a bleak piece, described as a "masterpiece of Beckettian perversity". Fiennes and Michael Colgan, the artistic director at Dublin's Gate Theatre, searched for a Beckett piece to work on after the actor's sell-out run of Brian Friel's Faith Healer at the Gate last year. The Broadway production earned Fiennes a Tony Award nomination.

Best known for his Academy Award-nominated performances in Schindler's List and The English Patient, Fiennes plays Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter films and is the only actor to win a Tony for his portrayal of Hamlet.

Colgan, who adapted the novella for the stage, describes the play's conclusion as "utterly devastating". Fiennes' character meets a prostitute on a bench following the death of his father and they move in together. He is a turbulent soul who admits he doesn't understand women, nor men, nor animals for that matter, and leaves his new love while she is in the throes of labour.

Frantically laying the finishing touches to the production, which previews tomorrow, Fiennes was noticeably distracted. The media call was restricted to 15 minutes - with no interviews and only still photography - and Fiennes was due to complete another full dress rehearsal yesterday afternoon.

He walked on stage with Colgan, mumbled through the lines of various two-minute scenes (barely audible over the clicking cameras), struck a few poses for the photographers, winked and called it quits.

'That's it, nothing else happens," Colgan said. "There are no other characters." And then they were gone.

January 5, 2006 (from Irish Times)

Fiennes to showcase Beckett in Oz

British actor Ralph Fiennes has joined forces with Dublin's Gate Theatre to bring playwright Samuel Beckett's work to Australia.

Fiennes, who took to the stage of the city centre theatre in Brian Friel's Faith Healer last May, has once again teamed up with theatre director Michael Colgan in bringing the works to the Sydney Festival.

Marie Rooney, deputy director of the Gate Theatre, said: "This was decided in the aftermath of Faith Healer because of the association from then, he enjoyed working with us.

We brought that play to Broadway where it received four Tony nominations. It was sold out for the run and in Dublin broke all box office records.

"He is easy to work with very professional." As part of the Gate Theatre's Beckett Season at the Sydney Festival, Fiennes will perform the play, First Love, one of the playwright's earliest post-war novellas, while two other works will include Barry McGovern in his one-man show I'll Go On and Eh Joe featuring Charles Dance.

Fiennes has flown out to Australia today as the play opens on January 11th. The theatre's deputy director said McGovern has already left for Sydney where he is carrying out readings on Beckett in Delhi, India on the way to the festival. The deputy director confirmed a number of poetry and prose readings would also be held in Sydney.

"Michael Colgan has gone out already — he is directing First Love, it is the first time he has directed for The Gate since he joined," Rooney said.

Over the past year a number of celebrations have been held throughout the world marking the centenary of Beckett's birth.

November 25, 2006 (from Irish Independent)

Fiennes and Pacino for Dublin stage shows

'THE ENGLISH PATIENT' star Ralph Fiennes has been secretly refining his performance for a new play in Dublin's Gate Theatre.

Fiennes has been holed up in an intimate rehearsal room at the city centre venue for the last few days and even received a visit from Al Pacino.

The Hollywood icon dropped into the theatre to see Fiennes on Thursday.

Fiennes, who appeared in Brian Friel's 'Faith Healer' at the venue this year, was giving his first reading of Beckett's 'First Love'.

The play will have its world premiere at the Sydney Festival in January.

There were just five people at the reading, including Pacino and leading actor Barry McGovern.

Pacino's visit to the theatre has fuelled speculation that he will, like Fiennes, also return to Dublin to perform at the Gate. The famous onscreen mafioso has been filming his documentary about Oscar Wilde's 'Salome' in the writer's alma mater at Trinity College and insiders believe he may stage 'Salome' in Dublin in the future.

Fiennes has developed strong links with the theatre after a sell-out run there last year. He will have further direction from Irish quarters as Rosaleen Linehan's son Fergus is the artistic director of the Sydney Festival.

'First Love', based on a novella by Sam Beckett, will be performed as a Beckett triple bill at the festival next year. The other two are 'I'll Go On', starring Barry McGovern, and 'Eh Joe', starring Michael Gambon, which he performed during the Beckett Festival.

November 20, 2006 (from The Sydney Morning Herald)

Fiennes attraction

By Christine Sams

He was the smouldering, intelligent (and tragically injured) lover in The English Patient, so the impending arrival of Ralph Fiennes for the Sydney Festival has many female hearts a-flutter.

The Oscar-nominated actor, who will star in Beckett's First Love, has created a flurry of interest among theatre fans wanting to see him perform live.

Fiennes is just one of the extraordinary actors taking part in the Beckett season at NIDA's Parade Theatre in January - veteran British star Michael Gambon will also appear in Eh Joe.

At least one of Fiennes's performances is already sold out, with tickets in high demand across the season. But his involvement in the Sydney Festival is not the only event causing major interest among arts fans.

Director Fergus Linehan scored a major coup in signing up Lou Reed for the festival, with his production Berlin.

Reed will perform from January 18 to 20. And, with tickets ranging from $85 to $110, the prices are comparable to any of the other major concerts that have been held in Sydney this year.

Seeing Reed inside the intimate confines of the State Theatre in Sydney will undoubtedly be remarkable.

The event is already shaping up to be the most successful yet in terms of advance sales.

November 2, 2006 (from The Age)

Fiennes, Gambon headline Sydney Festival

By Robin Usher

Some of the world's leading artists will perform at the Sydney Festival in January - the second under Irish director Fergus Linehan.

Exciting personalities include two of Britain's greatest actors, Michael Gambon and Ralph Fiennes, in collaboration with Ireland's Gate Theatre.

The program, from January 6-27, also has New York rocker Lou Reed performing his bleak concept album, Berlin, over three nights in the State Theatre. The 1973 album has never been performed live before this tour, and Linehan says Reed is stripping the music down to its essentials, before adding a choir and string and brass sections.

Gambon and Fiennes will join long-time member of Dublin's Gate Theatre, Barry McGovern, in performing three monologues by Samuel Beckett to celebrate the author's centenary.

Fiennes will appear in a dramatisation of the post-war novella, First Love, and McGovern, regarded as one of the finest Beckett interpreters, will present I'll Go On, a dramatisation of Beckett's great trilogy, Malloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable. (McGovern performed I'll Go On in Melbourne during Gate company's visit to the city's 1997 festival.)

Gambon will appear in Beckett's television drama, Eh Joe, adapted for the stage and directed by Canadian film-maker, Atom Egoyan.

The festival opens with Israel's Batsheva Dance Company, which will perform three different shows, all Australian premieres, during its residency.

The theatre program also includes the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg performing Checkhov's Uncle Vanya. There will also be the premiere of The Adventures of Snugglepot & Cuddlepie & Little Ragged Blossom written by John Clarke and directed by Neil Armfield.

The Famous Spiegeltent will be in Hyde Park, where the program will include La Clique.

The festival will celebrate the 25th anniversary of free Domain concerts with music arranged by Oscar Castro-Neves to celebrate Brazil's musical legacy, from the bossa nova to the samba. It will be followed by a concert by the Sydney Symphony performing From Barber to Bernstein.

Linehan says the free concerts attracts audiences of about 80,000 and cost about $700,000 each to put on, funded mostly by sponsorship. Turnover this year was more than $12.5 million, made up of $3.3 million in state government funding, $4.2 million in box office and more than $4 million in sponsorship.

Linehan says the festival has a history of strong sponsorship. "I think the nature of events suits sponsors," he says. Unlike Melbourne, it has retained Channel Nine as principal sponsor.

"There is a lot more to it than just putting the champagne on ice and lighting the fireworks," he says of Sydney. "But I think it is an experiential city, rather than a contemplative one, so I look for performers with a sense of physicality about them."

The festival includes a big program at Parramatta in the west - a concession to the urban sprawl, for those who can't get to the city - and includes a free concert and movies at Olympic Park.