Manuel Harlan photos Mark Rylance in the play "Boeing Boeing," a smash hit in London's West End. Click photo for larger image. Related articles Stage Review: London 'Boeing Boeing' is launchpad for laughs Catching up with Rylance and 'Measure for Measure,' Dec., 2005 Mark Rylance and 'Twelfth Night,' Nov., 2003

LONDON -- When Pittsburgh last saw Mark Rylance, the actor was playing the Duke in "Measure for Measure" with Shakespeare's Globe Theatre of London, of which he was founding artistic director. That was in December 2005, and the end of that American tour saw the end of Rylance's 10 years with the Globe.

Now, 15 months later, Rylance is co-starring in a hit West End revival of the 1961 French farce "Boeing Boeing," which has occasioned such critical and audience elation that there's talk of a Broadway transfer. But he still hopes to return to Pittsburgh in 2008, not just with the new play about Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick that he described for the Post-Gazette in 2005, but with more "original practices" Shakespeare as well.

Over a post-"Boeing Boeing" meal, accompanied by his wife and colleague, Claire van Kampen, a composer and musical director, the American-bred (until 17) Rylance described a period of what he called "composting," and he talked freely about past, present and future.

Catching up

Rylance resigned from the Globe out of a combination of exhaustion, irritation at not getting full board support and an inkling that it was time to move on from what had been a popular and critical success beyond expectation. But the Globe was never accepted by the theatrical establishment: Rylance could rarely attract name actors to risk the vulnerability that its open-air, daylight stage imposes.

In early 2006, he spent several months archiving the materials that had piled up through 10 creative years. His arrangement with the Globe was to be available to help in transition, but although relations with his successor, Dominic Dromgoole, have been good, he was surprised that "nobody asked me a question."

Mark Rylance with Tamzin Outhwaite in the London hit "Boeing Boeing." Click photo for larger image.

Even odder, the Globe decided that "original practices," observed in the "Twelfth Night" and "Measure for Measure" that the company brought to Pittsburgh, was Rylance's property, instead of being the natural outgrowth of the original materials and crafts with which the Globe was built. That was disorienting, given all that Rylance and his company had discovered about the unique nature of the Globe in "the unusual condition of being there for the building of the theater."

"Actors have lost the ability to take and give focus," Rylance says, to treat a play "like a living thing, like playing tennis or [soccer]." But he's confident the Globe can take care of itself: "It's such a strong piece of architecture I think it sorts out its problems," so original practices may come back on their own.

Rylance next spent some time "composting myself" -- letting what he called the branches and twigs of management decay into mulch for his artistic life. He also wrote poetry and privately printed a collection called "The Compost of the Stars."

As a new home of original practices, he and van Kampen revived Phoebus Cart (named for a line in "Hamlet"), the traveling theater company they had formed in 1990. With it, last spring they created a masque about John Smith, King James, Pocahontas and the Jamestown colony. It was staged before the members of the Supreme Court of Virginia in London's Middle Temple Hall, where in 2002 the Globe had staged "Twelfth Night" exactly 400 years after it was first performed there.

	With wife Claire van Kampen, a composer and musical director, Mark Rylance has revived the traveling theater company Phoebus Cart. Click photo for larger image.

And the couple even did some traveling. "It was like playing truant," said van Kampen of what was their first real vacation in a decade.

Rylance also had time in this "composting" year to act in the movie "The Other Boleyn Girl," about Anne Boleyn and her sister, played by Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson -- Rylance plays their father. (Presumably he'll now have more time for the film career that saw him star in "Angels & Insects" in 1995, before the Globe took over his life. He's also known for the 2001 "Intimacy" and for playing David Kelly in "The Government Inspector" on TV in 2005.)

So much for composting. "Now I'm back full steam in creative work," Rylance says.

What's ahead

Phoebus Cart is planning a 2008 American tour of original practices Shakespeare, reuniting the old Globe team of Rylance, van Kampen, costumer Jenny Tiramani and director Tim Carroll. They're considering doing "Othello" and adding original pronunciation, both of which are sure to prove controversial. Rylance has been talking to Pittsburgh Public Theater's Ted Pappas about returning there.

Rylance waxed enthusiastic about his newest project, a play he is writing with the improbable name of "The Big Secret Live 'I Am Shakespeare' Webcam Daytime Chatroom Show." It will debut at England's Chichester Festival in August, with Rylance starring and co-directing with Matthew Warchus.

Mark Rylance with Michelle Gomez in "Boeing Boeing." Click photo for larger image.

Rylance is among those who doubt Shakespeare's plays were written by the actor from Stratford and has long been active in the Shakespeare Authorship Trust. In the play, he will be Frank Charlton, historically one of the leading doubters, who runs a chat show out of his garage. Through the collective unconscious of the Internet, he is visited by Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, Shakespeare, Mary Sidney (Sir Philips' sister) and a contemporary cop who does character mapping. The body of Christopher Marlowe also gets involved, and the audience participates in a mystery and (according to the Chichester Web site) a "comedy of Shakespearean identity crisis, based on every celebrity chat show ever made."

Meanwhile, work continues on "Frick and Carnegie." As of late 2005, Rylance had already done five drafts with Peter Oswald, who wrote two original verse plays staged by the Globe. But the new play "just wasn't happening." Oswald and Rylance had different ideas, he says.

Oswald, who researched extensively in Pittsburgh, was mostly interested in the 1892 Homestead Strike, whereas Rylance sees the play as a study in contrasting characters within an epic setting. Oswald was also moving toward poetry, whereas Rylance thinks "the great language of the robber barons [already] has rhetoric and song."

So they decided to go their own ways. At some length, Rylance described the play as he envisions it, with a five-act structure. He was full of enthusiasm, going off on tangents that show his fascination with the history of Pittsburgh. Act 1 will deal with the two men's youth and struggles with poverty and illness; Act 2 with Carnegie's Braddock Library speech, Joe Magerac and "Out of This Furnace"; Acts 3 and 4 with Homestead as a Greek tragedy, with the press as the chorus and Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman making their appearance; and Act 5 with philanthropy and death.

But Rylance also wants to go back further into Pittsburgh history to early biological warfare -- giving the Indians smallpox-infected blankets. He recognizes the danger of veering toward historical pageant, and he is inspired by metaphor and insights such as this, that "that dry man's [Frick] last words were to ask for a drink of water."

He's hoping to arrange a three- or four-week workshop of the play with Carnegie Mellon University students in Pittsburgh's birthday year of 2008, ending, if possible, with one or two performances at the Braddock Library. He was delighted to hear that Karla Boos' Quantum Theatre had performed there last fall: "Karla is paving my way."

If that goes well, he can imagine the play getting a full 2009 production in London and/or Pittsburgh.

One way or another, we're sure to see him here again.