MARK RYLANCE TRAINED: RADA Chrysalis Theatre School, Balham (with Barbara Bridgmont), AWARDS:Nominated for 2002 Olivier Award for Twelfth Night ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Phoebus Cart, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre OTHER: Associate Artist of the RSC, Friend of the Francis Bacon Research Trust FILMS AND TELEVISION: see Internet Movie Dababase THEATRE Year Theatre Company Name of Play Character 1994 Donmar Warehouse True West Lee/Austin. 1980 Glasgow Citizens Company The Battlefield Soldier II 1980 Glasgow Citizens Company Caucasian Chalk Circle Michael 1981 Glasgow Citizens Company Desperado Corner Bazza 1980 Glasgow Citizens Company Don Juan Archivist 1995 Greenwich Theatre Macbeth Macbeth 1993 Queens Theatre Much Ado About Nothing Benedick 2000 Royal National Theatre Live x 3 Henry 1989 Royal ShakespeareCompany Hamlet Hamlet 1989 Royal ShakespeareCompany Romeo and Juliet Romeo 1982 Royal ShakespeareCompany The Tempest Ariel 1997 Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Chaste Maid of Cheapside Mr Allwit 1999 Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Antony and Cleopatra Cleopatra 2000 Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Hamlet Hamlet 1997 Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Henry V Henry V 1998 Shakespeare's Globe Theatre The Honest Whore Hippolito 1998 Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Merchant of Venice Bassanio 2003 Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Richard II Olivia 1991 Shakespeare's Globe Theatre The Tempest Prospero 2002 Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Twelfth Night Richard II 1996 Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Two Gentlemen of Verona Proteus 1994 Theatre For a New Audience (NYC) As You Like It Touchstone 1993 Theatre For a New Audience (NYC) Henry V Henry V 1992 Tricycle Gamblers Our Lady

CRITICAL QUOTABLES

RICHARD II, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London

". . . glorious Richard II . . . a dazzling central performance. With his naturally melancholic visage, Rylance always carries about him the solitary air of a Pierrot, and it's a quality - reflected in the frail, almost childish quaver of his voice - that beautifully brings out Richard's vulnerability, self-doubt and playfulness.

This king can be cruel, no more so than when, clutching a handkerchief over his nose in the sickly presence of the dying John of Gaunt (John McEnery, excellent), he casually smashes well-wishers' flowers across the old man's chest, kicking the remnants after him. He can affect gaiety, too, toying with his crown in an impromptu tug-of-war with Liam Brennan's Bolingbroke during the deposition scene.

But there's a forlornness that forever keeps tolling him back to his divided self, a man who cannot quite be king, but cannot say who else he is. Rylance's phrasing is exemplary, each line tracing a spontaneous turn of thought. Were it not for the crass intrusions of the modern age - a groundling's mobile phone and a passing helicopter - I'd have said that I'd never heard two of the play's greatest passages ("Within the hollow crown" and "Oh that I were a mockery king of snow") so movingly spoken.

Still, that's two more reasons, I guess, why I'll be heading back to see this right royal and unflashily loyal revival again at the first opportunity.

A SENSITIVE soul with a weakness for a verbal flourish, Richard II is one of Shakespeare’s great drama queens, and it allows Mark Rylance to deliver a bravura performance in the opening production of the new season at Shakespeare’s Globe. . .

As the incompetent, self-centred, increasingly unpopular tax-and-spend king who is usurped by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, Rylance delivers a masterclass in mercurial manners. He can be petulant and cruel, covering his face with a silk handkerchief as he visits the dying John of Gaunt. He can also be tender as he says farewell to his exiled wife.

This dandyish Richard in puffed-out doublet, as if aware that he’s not cut out to be a ruler, childishly tries to upstage his ritual-bound nobles with a defiantly unregal air. He wipes a seat before sitting down, smirks at his sycophantic followers, thrusts his hands in his pockets and walks with an almost Chaplinesque gait.

This Richard also has a sense of the absurd, turning the deposition scene into a momentarily farcical tug-of-war as he uses his crown to toy with Bolingbroke. Richard’s mocking wit even seems to extend to the text at times as Rylance’s quavery voice pauses unexpectedly to turn such speeches as “my large kingdom for a little grave” into nervously humorous reflections. It’s always more a sign of vulnerability and self-doubt than chutzpah.

It’s only towards the end that Richard, as he matures through some soulful prison soliloquies with which Rylance builds a touching intimacy with the audience, really asserts his authority by killing two warders with a pike before being murdered himself. By then, of course, it’s too late. All of the actorly flourishes that have gone before have merely been hollow point-scoring.

Rylance takes an ineffectual character and dominates the stage with it. Unfortunately he eclipses the rest of the play. . .

. . .Mark Rylance dominates the production in a way we have scarcely seen since the heyday of Donald Wolfit. . .

At the Globe, Richard is the star; and, admittedly, Rylance is fascinating to watch. He presents us with a winsome dandy who has zero sense of realpolitik.

Hearing of the banished Bolingbroke's triumphal procession through the streets, his instant reaction is to collapse into giggles. And so heedless is he of Gaunt's prophesies that he belabours his dying uncle while warding off killer germs with a lace kerchief.

But Rylance also conveys Richard's painful acquisition of spiritual maturity. His best moment comes when he itemises the death of kings and then, after a Pinteresque pause, he suddenly grasps the point. "All murdered," he cries. Rylance has such vocal virtuosity that at times he seems to be toying with the text. He gets extraneous laughs when he talks of Richard's "little, little grave". And in Pomfret prison, hearing music in an adjoining room, he launches into a little jig before finally, in a fit of heroics, killing no less than two of his assailants. . .

What one is left with is a sense of Rylance's technical bravura. But Bill Stewart's Duke of York gets it right when he says that after a well-grac'd actor leaves the stage, the eyes of men "are idly bent on him that enters next, thinking his prattle to be tedious". That's pretty much how I felt at the Globe.

TWELFTH NIGHT Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London

Turning the clock back 400 years also means that all women are played by men. That there are only three female characters in the work is a mark of how few roles there are for women generally in theatre; for men to filch even these is hardly fair. Irritation is assuaged, however, by the actual performances. Mark Rylance's stammering, fluttery Olivia is exquisite: gliding across the stage, head in the clouds, she flinches at real, sullied life - uncle Toby drunk, Malvolio capering - and is left utterly breathless by her encounter with Viola/Cesario. Rylance's minute attention to detail renders Olivia's struggles to woo this mysterious boy, and her abashed amazement when Viola's identity is revealed, superbly comic and almost unbearably poignant.

Too many treasurable performances pile up to do justice to here. I'd single out Mark Rylance's hilariously humourless Olivia, plastered in white make-up, sweeping across the stage in a black dress like Queen Victoria on casters, frantically improvising reasons to detain Michael Brown's androgynous Viola/Cesario Maxwell Cooter, WHAT'S ON STAGE, May 24, 2002 But the real strength of the casting is having Mark Rylance as Olivia; there is no doubt that it is his show. Rylance essayed a female role three years ago when his Cleopatra met with a mixed critical reception. This time, he succeeds gloriously from his very first appearance as a tetchy spinster to the final scenes where he/she lasciviously pounces on the hapless Sebastian. Rylances' very movement adorns the play: he glides round the stage like a farthingale-clad Dalek. There are two particularly hilarious scenes - the initial wooing of Viola/Caesario and some incredibly funny business with a halberd.