PAUL: Hello, and welcome
to Regrets I've Had a Few.

I'm Paul Hunter, Artistic Director of
Told by an Idiot, and this is a podcast

where I talk to friends and colleagues
delving into what made them

the person they are today.

Hello and welcome.

My guest this month is a director,
theatre maker, and performer who has been

at the forefront of alternative
British theatre for over three decades.

A founder member of Complicité
and a dynamic and respected figure

in the world of opera.

Her playful sense of mischief
shines as bright as ever.

Welcome, Annabel Arden.

ANNABEL: Hello, Paul.

It's wonderful to be here.

ANNABEL: Well, it's so lovely to have you
as a guest on the podcast.

I have to say, you and I spent a week
in a room together a few weeks ago,

and I was sharing it with our dear friend
and colleague, Hayley Carmichael.

Hayley, yesterday.

I said, I can't believe
I've never played with Annabel.

I've seen her so brilliantly
over the years, connected and friends,

but I found it such a joy
both improvising, messing about with it

and seeing you improvise and mess about.

I had to get that out of the way first.

We're going to touch on performing,
I'm sure, in lots of ways.

But I always start in the same way
by taking my guests back to the beginning

of their experience or performance.

I just wanted to know if
you can recall what maybe

the very early thing you saw was.

Was that at school or with parents?

ANNABEL: Well, I was very lucky because
there wasn't so much school,

although I think there was probably
quite a lot of stuff at school.

My father was an unusual man.

He was a scientist.

His field was eyes, vision.

I remember very strongly, he took me
to see A Flea in Her Ear at the Old Vic,

which had Géraldine McEwen in it.

PAUL: Wow.

ANNABEL: It was directed by a very famous
French director called Jacques Chéron.

I had the great pleasure
of working with Géraldine years later.

I did a wonderful radio play with her.

But when I was a kid, I mean,
I can't have been very old.

I suppose I must have been about seven.

I just completely fell in love with her.

I couldn't believe the elegance
and the comedy and the vivacity.

I was so taken with it,
and it was hilarious.

You know, A Flea in Her Ear is
there's a very important character

the centre of it called Chandebise,
who doubles as the porter in the brothel.

Chandebise is a bourgeois,
and the actor has to double as

the porter in the brothel.

This is the whole joke.

I couldn't believe it.
I just couldn't believe it.

My father took me to the stage door
and said "We have to see Robert Lange",

who played those two characters.

The stage door very kindly rang him
up and he let us into his dressing room.

I said "I don't believe you
played those two characters".

And he showed me his costumes,
which had his name, of course,

sewn into the neck on both costumes.

One said "Poche", and
the other said "Chandebise".

I think that was the moment
where I went "This is it.

This is the stuff.
This is what we've got to do."

PAUL: What an amazing thing to go and say.

Also, how brilliant that your dad went,
"Come on, we're going to the stage door"

ANNABEL: Yeah, I know.

PAUL: Was that the kind of thing your dad did?

Would he just say "Okay, we're going to-"

ANNABEL: He was a very unusual man.

I think he really did
kind of want to be an actor.

He was a very brilliant scientist.

He actually discovered things about how
we see vision, but he was a very odd man.

I think we'd say he was
on the spectrum in some way.

There was a very funny incident
where later, much later, I was playing

in The Street of Crocodiles
at the National Theatre.

We had the wonderful César Sarachu
taking the leading role of Joseph.

César was in some ways delicate.
He was a delicate person.

And we had no understudies.

So he had a pain in his heel.

"It's terrible, Simon.
It's terrible.

I cannot, I cannot." He got through the
matinée, but then there was the evening

performance, and I said, "I know what,
I'll call my dad." I said, "Dad, you've

got to come to the National Theatre.
You've got to be the doctor".

He said, "Right!" He came zooming
in a Sherlock Holmes tweed coat and a

little Tyrolean hat with a feather in it.

This was the costume he
decided to use, with a little bag.

The State Manager brought him
into César's dressing room

and he said, "Nurse, thank you.

Now, could you help me to remove
the patient's trousers?"

He did this show,
which was completely insane.

He insisted that the Props Department
make a little prop for the heel

of César's shoe that he wore in the show.

And César was completely cured by this.

PAUL: Absolutely priceless and so brilliantly
conjured up, because in many ways

that feels like Feydeau anyway.

The idea of [...].

That is amazing.

Oh, that's so funny.

Was there any show business or theatre
in your family background anywhere?

Are you aware of them?

ANNABEL: Absolutely not.
No.

My mum was a wonderful homemaker, and she
did all sorts of small jobs and things,

secretaries and this and that.

My dad was scientist.

No theatre anywhere.

PAUL: Wow. This is interesting.

Now, obviously, you're at school
and you've seen the Feydeau

and you've been persuaded
by the man who played both parts.

Was there drama to do at school?

How did it start to develop as something
you became passionate about?

Yeah, there was drama at school.

I was, again, pretty lucky.

We were allowed to do a lot on our own.

We were encouraged to
make stuff up, really, I think.

I think the earliest thing
I can recall doing was...

I did a dramatisation of Lewis Carroll's
poem, The Walrus and the Carpenter,

and I made oyster costumes for everybody.

That was fun.
I was little.

I was at primary school.

Then in my secondary
school, we had something

called the Shakespeare Competition.

You could, with your classmates,
take a scene, any scene,

and you could devise it how you liked it.
I used to love doing that.

I did quite a lot of them.

PAUL: Both of those memories make me sense
of an early directorial voice

seems to be emerging, with the costumes
on the Lewis Carroll, and the...

You enjoyed both the playing
and the creation at the same time?

ANNABEL: I think I must have done.

I think I must have done.

I think I...

Never really had enough confidence
to think of myself as an actress.

I mean, I loved it.

I loved performing, but I somehow
felt that I was wrong.

I looked wrong.

I wasn't pretty in the right way.

I don't know.

I suppose I was a bit
of a bossy boots, really, and I

like telling people what to do.

PAUL: You go through school,
you go to university, that's right?

And you're continuing to do drama
at university, I assume?

ANNABEL: Very much so.

Again, I did do quite a lot of acting.

I acted with a group called
the Cambridge Mummets.

Actually, I had the great privilege
of playing, I think probably for the first

time in about 400 years,
the character of Mal Cutpurse

in a Jacobian comedy called
The Roaring Girl by Middleton and Decker,

which was directed by my friend
Brigid Larmour, and we took

it to the Edinburgh Fringe.

I played Mal Cutpurse, which was great
because she was a female highwaywoman.

PAUL: What?

She really existed.

She was a real person.

So that was good.

Gosh, as I talk about this, I think,
bloody hell, I'd better get back on that

stage because it was such a lot of fun.

I played all sorts of things.

And directed, too.

I co-directed again with Brigid.

We did Travesties with Emma Thompson.

Oh my God.

Because we were early mates.

I gave Tilda Swinton her first [show].

PAUL: Wow, what was that?

It was in a very odd Polish play called
Princess Ivona by Witold Gombrowicz.

We did loads of stuff.

Then, of course, the important meeting,
or one of the very important meetings

at Cambridge, was I met Simon McBurney.

PAUL: I was curious.

I wasn't sure actually,
historically, where you met.

I didn't know whether you met in Paris,
but you met at university.

Tell me about that first
meeting I'm intrigued.

ANNABEL: Well, we were in a play together
by Ben Johnson.

It's frankly posh, Cambridge.

You see, we do these obscure plays.

Ben Johnson.

It was called Sejanus His Fall.

PAUL: Yes, I'm familiar with it.

ANNABEL: Oh, are you? Oh, my God.

PAUL: Well, I rather stupidly chose a speech
from it at a drama school audition.

Two things.

I didn't understand what I was saying
and I found the play impenetrable.

And surprise, surprise, I didn't get
a place in that particular drama school.

Anyway, carry on with...

Your production, I'm sure, was much...

ANNABEL: I really don't think so.

Simon and I bonded because we couldn't
understand what was going on.

They'd hired a whole set of costumes,
I think, from somewhere like the RSC.

We had these fantastic period
costumes, and it was total nonsense.

He and I used to have a laugh.

He was really a punk at that stage,
and he rode a motorbike.

He used to take me roaring around
Cambridge at the most fantastic speed.

It was always a thrill being with Simon
because he was a big risk taker.

I mean, even then.

But we became very interested
in talking about theatre and thinking

about what we would do because
we saw everybody lining up careers.

We were a particular generation.

I mean, there was Emma Thompson,
there was Hugh Laurie, there was Stephen

Fry, there was Tilda Swinton.

They got agents and did foot lights and
did the thing you were supposed to do.

Kate Duchêne.

So people were going into proper theatre.

Simon and I looked at each other and went,
"Eugh, we don't want to do that."

And then, luckily, there was a very
interesting woman called Pip Brauton.

Yes.
And Pip told us about Le Coq.

Simon went to Le Coq in Paris,
and I went to visit him

because he was a year older than me.

And I had great fun with him in Paris
in his tiny little chambre de bonne,

up eight flights of spiral staircase.

You couldn't really visit the school.

It wasn't allowed.

But of course, the risk-taker McBurney
devised a scheme, and he smuggled me

in to the big hall
where they did all the work.

He hid me behind a...

I mean, either I'm misremembering
this or it really happened.

I just don't know anymore.

I I think I was hidden
behind a great stack of gym mats.

He said, "Now look, you can't come out.

You can't pee.

You can't do anything because if Jacques
sees you, I'm out." I hid and I watched.

Then from that whole...

It was fascinating.

I decided not to do the whole
three years of Le Coq.

I went instead to work with
Monica Panier and Philippe Gaulier,

who had been major teachers at Le
Coq, and then started their own studio.

I worked with them, and I did something
at Le Coq, which was called the LEM,

the Laboratoires Études de Mouvement,
which was fascinating, run by Le Coq

and also his architect associate.

It was about space, really.

PAUL: Wow.

You're with Philippe and Monica
at the same time that Simon is at Le Coq?

No, I went later.
I think he'd finished.

We had maybe a tiny overlap.

Golly, it's terrible, isn't it?

Can't remember what
year anything happened.

But yeah, no, we had
a a little bit of an overlap.

But by that time, he was
doing all sorts of things.

He was in the Comedy Store
and he was doing this and that

and goodness knows what.

Then I went later.

I went later because what happened
immediately after Cambridge was that I,

teamed up with another group of friends,
which included Neil Bartlett and

various friends from Oxford
and friends from all over the world,

actually, international group of people.

We called ourselves the 1982 Theatre
Company, a Socialist Feminist Collective.

Takes you back, doesn't it?

We were eight and we decided
to work very hard for a year

and save as much money as possible
and then to work on theatre for 1982.

We organised, all of us did
all the administration and everything.

We organised a small-scale tour
and we went to Latvia

because one of us was Latvian.

We went to Canada because there's
a big Latvian community in Canada.

This was Banyu Zorubes,
very fine director now.

We made some pretty extraordinary
work, I have to say.

Then Simon rang me in 1983
and said, "You know how to

put together a tour, don't you?

Do you want to...

We should make something."
I said, "Yeah, all right."

We went to and lived in his mother's
house, and we worked in a scout hall.

He brought us some people over from Le Coq
and we put together a small-scale tour.

PAUL: And this was Put It On Your Head?

ANNABEL: It was Put It On Your Head.

PAUL: With Fiona and Marcello?

ANNABEL: Fiona and Marcello and me and Simon.

PAUL: What's your memory
of that very first show?

ANNABEL: Well, it was kind of extraordinary.

I played a minor role.

I couldn't play at the speed
and the physical finesse of those three.

But I suppose I was partly an outside eye.

I was always the person
looking and saying, "Yeah,

that's good." Partly, I was playing,
and I found it very difficult.

The improvisational quality
of it was right close to the edge.

Simon had a marvellous way
of saying, "You know what?

I think tonight, when we get to
the bit where you fold the deckchair,

I don't think you should.

I think what you should do is pass it
to me, and then I'm going to give it to

Fiona," and you kind of go, "Oh, okay.."

PAUL: Wow.

ANNABEL: It was great fun.

It was an extraordinary time.

But I also found it hard.

PAUL: It's funny at the beginning
of something, isn't it?

A first show, you know,
obviously, Told by an Idiot,

we're 10 years younger than you guys,
and I've talked about this many times.

Also, obviously on this podcast
with previous Complicité alumni

like Jos and Kathryn and whatever.

But that very first show, when we
turned 30, we were reflecting on stuff.

We went into a room just to mess about
with some things from way back.

But it's such a mix of things
that first time when you…

Because for us, we didn't
want to make a company.

We just wanted to make
a show that was ours.

People say, "How did you
make a company?" We didn't.

We got some people together.

We got a bit of money.

Brilliantly, we had John Wright
in our case who knew what he was doing.

Then we got to Edinburgh, and I remember
saying to Hayley, "Whatever happens,

if this is absolutely terrible,
nobody's ever done this show before".

It's not Shakespeare, it's not Molière.

Wonderful as those things are,
we've made this up.

There's something about making it
up, isn't there, at the beginning

when you go "we did this".

ANNABEL: Yes, it's wonderful.

I mean, that's how Marcello begins.

One of the great beginning lines of
A Minute Too Late, which was our second

show, he said, "It's something we made up
ourselves." I must say, there was nothing

quite like it in those early shows.

It was a huge thrill.

PAUL: Also, I think I have to say, for someone
who came slightly after you, the impact,

which I tried to communicate sometimes
to younger performers who maybe

have come to Complicité later on,
I talk about the very early days.

I've said this before.

I remember John Wright saying to a group
of us, in which Hayley and I...

We were at College [in] 1986,
so three years late, he said, "We're all

going to the Shaw theatre tonight.

Come on, we're all going to see an evening
with Theatre de Complicité."

I didn't even know what Complicité was.

Luckily, Hayley spoke
French, so she translated.

Then we all sat in that theatre
and watched

this extraordinary anarchy unfold.

I think for us as young...

Being influenced by John,
who studied with Philippe and blah,

blah, blah, and doing Commedia,
I think it wasn't just the work.

It was you guys.

It was the bunch of you lot
that we hadn't seen before.

It felt like some mad circus.

It wasn't like theatre.

I think people sometimes
forget where you were landing

in the bigger culture of theatre.

There wasn't anything like that.

ANNABEL: I think it's extremely…

There was a thing which I saw, I don't
know if you ever saw earlier, actually,

which was called Le Grand Magic Circus
by Jérôme Savary,

which came to the Roundhouse,
brought the great Thelma Holt.

We were influenced by that.

Now, Celia Gore-Booth was in that.

There were other European things which
came which were highly influential on us.

There was Cantor.

There was Comediance, that
all came to the Riverside studios.

There was something about those people
on stage where they weren't

like actors in a play.

Something else was going on.

You didn't know whether it was
their real relationships in real life,

or it wasn't quite clear what kind
of human bonding you were seeing.

We were really influenced by that.

Also, Philippe used to say that,
well, that's why we called ourselves

Complicité,
because Philippe said if there's no

complicity between the actors on stage
and there's no complicity between

the actors and the audience,
there is no theatre.

In other words, it's happening for real.

I think that's why people do love
stand-up, and there's been more

and more and more and more
and more stand-up as we've got older.

I think people crave that sense of 'I'm
really having a relationship with you.'

PAUL: Yeah, I agree.

I totally agree.

Audiences are hungry for that.

We have different ways of describing it in
terms, whether something feels authentic

or whatever these things are.

Audiences absolutely crave it.

It's interesting you mentioned Cantor,
and of course, it inevitably

takes me to Street of Crocodiles.

You mentioned that that's our story.

Also, I suppose it was the first time
when, I suppose, properly

Told by an Idiot and Complicté
felt they connected, of course,

because Hayley was in that show.

I remember it was very Hayley
because, as you know,

she's so particular to who she is.

But I remember at the time, she'd done
a David Glass show called Gormenghast,

and she was wonderful in it.

Simon saw that, and then
I think, or you or Simon, whenever,

invited her to join some workshops.

We were amazed because
it was a big deal that one of us

was going to be with you lot.

Then Hailey kept saying,
"Oh, it's not an audition.

I'm just joining for a couple
of weeks to mess about." As the two weeks

went on, I said, "Are you sure
they're not looking for a show?" "No,

it's nothing to do with the show.

I'm just joining in for a bit."
Then eventually she said, "Simon's

asked me to be in the show."
We all laughed and we told you that.

She absolutely had just
gone in very innocently going,

"Oh, okay, I'll play around.

I'll be part of this." There's a moment
knowing her very well...

Do you remember the documentary
that was made about that show?

ANNABEL: Yes.

PAUL: I remember watching it,
BBC Documentary, whatever it was.

There's a moment, and of
course, the camera stayed

on this because they saw it.

It's a moment where Simon
is talking to Hayley.

Because I know Hayley since I was 17,
I thought, "She's going to cry.

Any minute now, she's going to cry." I
wasn't sure that Simon was aware of that.

Why would he be?
But as a watcher who knew her I thought...

Of course, she did.

Of course, the camera stayed with
this dynamic for a moment because it was

so typically Hayley, it was right there.

ANNABEL: Well, she's such a wonderful performer
because she is just all there.

It's so available all the time.

PAUL: But also I feel, having devoured
all of your early shows and loved

so much about them, particularly
the physical comedy and all of that.

It was kind of extraordinary.

I remember being, I think, the very first
preview at the Cottesloe when Simon

came out, and of course, you were
all delayed and all this sort of stuff.

But it was such an extraordinary moment
in theatre for me to see something

like that where you thought "Wow!".

But I'm assuming things like Cantor
were a big reference for you all when

you were working on something like that.

ANNABEL: Well, I think it was
there in our hinterland.

I don't think we actually
brought it to the fore ever.

Although, of course, we had to
acknowledge that the scene with the desks

and the children was influenced
by the dead class very much.

But then we had to do the children
because Bruno Schulz was a teacher

and it was an important part of his life.

So it wasn't like we thought,
"Oh, let's do that Cantor bit." Yeah,

and of course, Cantor was Polish and
Bruno Schulz is a great Polish artist.

No, Crocodiles was incredible.

I mean, it was a very high point
of my life, really, I think.

PAUL: Sure.
You toured it everywhere.

It was an extraordinary...

I think, a very influential piece
for a lots of audiences

and theatre makers, of course.

ANNABEL: It was.

PAUL: We touched on, obviously, your meeting
with Simon and what that was.

I'd like to talk a little bit about
your late husband, Stephen Jeffreys,

and I think an astonishing playwright.

I had the pleasure, the privilege of being
in one of his plays, playing a very small

part, which I might touch on, called
The Clink, 1990, which was amazing.

But can you talk a little
bit about when you first…

Because in some ways,
from the outside, you wouldn't see…

I'm talking more to that theatre
now, but you seemed from

very different disciplines in a sense.
How did you meet?

Where was the meeting?

ANNABEL: Well, it's a funny story.

We actually met first 15 years
before we got together.

We got together in 1997.

We met in the early '80s.

We were set up by Celia Gore-Booth,
the great late Celia Gore-Booth,

who said, I know just the man for you.

This is the man.

She made us meet in the bar at the ICA.

At the time, he was going out with
somebody else, and I just didn't get it.

That was funny.

Then we almost met again
at an awards ceremony.

Then we met at a party in 1997
by accident, because by that time,

I decided that I'd probably better have a
relationship and possibly some children.

I was quite deliberately hunting.

He didn't stand a chance, poor man.

I'd gone to this party, which was
in Harlesden, a place I never would go.

He was there and we ended up talking.

Then suddenly that thing
happened where nobody was in the room.

Everybody had gone except us,
and we hadn't noticed at all.

I suddenly realised I'd
fallen in love with him.

I drove him home, which was very weird and
embarrassing because I wasn't a very good

driver, and he couldn't drive either.

I dropped him in Crouchend
where he was staying with his sister.

Then I couldn't find my way home to Stoke
Newington because I was so befuddled.

I ended up driving halfway
to Cambridge on the M11.

Then I somehow got home and thought,
"Oh, my God, this is it."

Luckily, he felt the same way.

PAUL: That's a brilliant story that
the captivation or intoxication

of it means you were almost halfway
to Cambridge, rather Stoke Newington.

That's quite a good to title
for a book, halfway to Cambridge.

I was reading more about him
in preparation for this, really.

I think the fact that he managed
to combine, as I've said to you,

it's probably something that's very close
to me, the sense of his comedy

I love, particularly his ability
to write fantastically funny lines.

But then also to be able to really
delve in a really interesting way

into the human condition, but also
be political, also be able to find

metaphor and political metaphors
that reach out across a bigger landscape.

What's it like to live
with a writer like that?

Did he have a way of working?

Did he have an office?

How did he work?

ANNABEL: He did have a studio
which was out of the house.

He had to leave the house to work, really.

But he actually did say to me, he said,
"You are lucky because I am sane,"

PAUL: [laughs]

ANNABEL: Implying that many writers were not.

He did work, and he was very
disciplined about working.

He often worked very early in the morning.

He was a wonderful father, and I never
felt ever that our family life was

anything other than quite simply sublime.
Fantastic.

He wasn't absent.

He was an exceptionally
generous person, I think.

He was a very generous teacher,
but he was a generous person in

the family, and he had lots of friends,
and he was a wonderful guitarist.

He used to play and sing
every night after dinner.

The kids grew up with such a lot of music.

PAUL: What was the blues play he wrote?

ANNABEL: I Just Stopped By to See the Man.
Oh, yeah.

He could play all that stuff.

He had lots of friends, music
friends, and they would come to the house

and we'd have a lot of jamming.

There was always music, always music.

He didn't have one rhythm.

Things changed.

There'd be long, long periods of
writing a play where he wouldn't actually

write any dialogue at all.

He would just be
mapping it and preparing it.

Then the last phase was very intense.

We wouldn't see him, when
he was actually writing the dialogue.

He worked incredibly hard,
and yet he was always there, present.

He wasn't really lost in his head.

I mean, there were times when I thought,
"Oh, well, you're not really here.

You're in the 18th century or
wherever you are." I was never allowed...

The one rule was you
could never ask how it was going.

That was not allowed.
You couldn't say "Had a good day?

How's it going?" That
was completely foreboden.

PAUL: Would he...

Would he be okay with questions
that were more specific about the play,

or was it just nothing about it at all?

ANNABEL: He preferred not to be questioned.

And bit by bit, as we grew together,
he would talk a bit about it, but he

was very private about the writing.

I was allowed to be the first
reader, but when he was actually working,

he really didn't want to talk about it.

PAUL: It's interesting, isn't it?

Because we've touched a lot on this,
and the thing that we share a lot

is a collaborative form of writing that
we grew up with, and you and Simon and me

and Hayley were all that kind of...

People sometimes say to me,
"Ooh, would you like to write a play?"

I say "Well, I have written plays.

They just happen to be collaborative."
But the act of going to a place

like Stephen did and creating that thing
where you sit in front of ...

almost like we're sitting at now,
that feels such a personal thing to do.

So I can kind of I understand
why sometimes he might go, "Actually,

I don't want to discuss this.

This is something that is still
emerging between me and

my imagination," or whatever.

ANNABEL: Absolutely.

Now, he used to I remember him
saying to somebody, it might even

be in the book, we published posthumously
this wonderful book called Playwriting.

People would ask him "What is it like
to write a play?" He

was quite fond of quoting the composer,
Harrison Birtwistle,

who when asked, "what's it like to compose
music?", he said, "It's like knitting."

So Stephen would sometimes say that,
or he'd say, "You sit in front

of a screen until your forehead bleeds."

PAUL: Oh my gosh.

ANNABEL: In other words, don't ask.

PAUL: No, exactly.

You do not.
Just because of Harriet..

Harriet?
Erm, Mr. Birtwistle, just came on,

I wanted to
talk a bit about opera because obviously

you do a lot of opera and you've done
some extraordinary operas.

How did that movement
into opera come about?

Or was that something that's always
been in your background?

ANNABEL: Well, I was lucky enough to be taken
to the opera a lot by my parents

who are great opera fans,
but I never thought I'd do it.

They just took us along
and we enjoyed it very much.

It was a very relaxed affair.

In those days at ENO, you could buy
the box, which is over the timpani

at a reduced price because
your stage view is obstructed as well.

You don't get the whole stage.

My parents used to get this box,
and if we got bored, we were allowed

to lie under a blanket at the back
with a torch and a book and a sandwich.

But of course, it was huge fun.

So that was there.

But then it happened because Christine
Chibnall, who ran and still runs Opera

North, came to see my production
of The Winter's Tale, at the Lyric

Hammersmith, the Complicité production
of The Winter's Tale.

She said, "Would you like to direct
the Magic Flute?" I thought, Golly, okay.

I mean, you can't really say no.

That was how it happened.
It just happened.

I had a very wonderful
home in Opera North.

In fact, I've been working
there for 30 years.

I'm just going to go back this I'm going
back to direct Wagner's Flying Dutchman.

PAUL: Thirty years?
Wow, that's amazing.

ANNABEL: Yeah.

PAUL: It's interesting, isn't it?
I suppose when I'm not in any…

I've never directed or been…

I've been in one opera, but not singing.

It feels when I see it, and
my father-in-law was a huge opera fan,

so he took us to see operas,
and I really enjoyed them.

Particularly, I enjoyed Rigoletto.

I really like Rigoletto.
I thought this is…

I think the story really
appeals to me as well.

I really love the story.
It's brilliant.

But also, I suppose I'm saying
something that obviously you know,

but the sense that it feels
innately theatrical somehow.

There's something about the theatre of it
that in its very essence it is.

ANNABEL: Absolutely.

Well, because it's so heightened, because
singing is a heightened form of speech

and you only sing, you can't...

I mean, I have a particular hatred of some
modern libretto, which try to explore

the banal, which is something I really
think is difficult to explore in music.

So when you have people saying,
[sings operatically] "Pass me

the carrot!", you go, "No, I don't think
that's so great." And it's not banal.

It's heightened.

It's very heightened in
all sorts of different ways.

You do have conversation
in the form of recitativo

in all of the 19th century [pieces]...

Or sometimes you have spoken word as well.

Carmen is full of spoken word,
as is The Magic Flute.

But it's a heightened world, and
it's deliberately heightened because the

function, I think, of opera is to try and
take you to extremes of human experience.

You have to really laugh or cry or be very
taken out of yourself and moved.

Yeah, it's an extreme form.

PAUL: Well, long may you continue exploring it.

Annabel, thank you so much as we reach
the end of this wonderful chat.

I always finish in the same way
where I ask my guests some

rapid fire questions and you just
respond with the first answer.

Here we go.
Margaret Rutherfoot or Joyce Grenfell?

ANNABEL: Margaret Rutherford.

PAUL: A Match of Life and Death
or Black Narcissus?

ANNABEL: Oh, both?

PAUL: Yes, both.

Jeanette Winterson or Angela Carter?

ANNABEL: Angela Carter.

PAUL: Paris or New York?

ANNABEL: Paris.

PAUL: Improvisation or text?

ANNABEL: Ah, no, no, you've got to have both.

PAUL: Either a walk in the woods
or a walk on the cliffs.

ANNABEL: I think the words actually.

PAUL: Don Giovanni or Cosi Fan Tutte.

ANNABEL: Oh my God.

Neither of those would I ever really
want to direct, but I'll go with the Don.

PAUL: I won't...

It'll open up a whole another half hour
if I go into why you don't

want to direct either of those.

Annabel, thank you so much for joining us.

ANNABEL: Thank you, Paul.

It's been fun.

PAUL: Dear listeners, if you've enjoyed this
Idiot podcast, please spread the word.