Toby on Bertram in ‘All’s Well that ends Well’
“Everyone said ‘Oh Bertram, why bother doing it? He’s an out and out shit’. You can make him into this wet fart if you try to get sympathy from an audience, or you can go for the sexy option. I wanted to tread down the middle and get people to understand him.”
Source: Exposure, Sunday Times, October 1993
“Sophie Thompson (Helena) and I joined the company late, and bonds of acting and friendship had already been formed. I felt very fresh from drama school and was aware that there were those who doubted whether I could do it or deserved it. That was a tough start but I ended up in a great company and benefited from being dropped in at the deep end. And I’m sorry if that sounds like waxing lyrical, but it’s actually genuine.”
“To pull that off was going to be pretty good, I knew, and I have to admit it took me the full two years to get to grips with it! A terribly difficult play to do, I started off trying to play Bertram for sympathy, but when the show moved to the Barbican I’d decided to just play him for what he was : he then became more sympathetic. Very strange - people just love a cad”
Source: Inheriting Theatre, Plays International, November 1994
“However hard you try, an audience will always dislike him. It was tough at first - but now I just do the job and take the flak”.
Source: Rising Star - Toby Stephens, London Evening Standard Magazine,1994
“Surely the most difficult part Shakespeare ever wrote because he has no redeeming features whatsoever and audiences come out despising him, so I just went for the sexy option and played him as an out and out shit.”
Source : All in the Cut of his Genes, The Herald (Glasgow) 1994
Toby on Peter Hall:
“He gets lost of stick, but it’s a precise method of working that makes Shakespeare very clear.”
Source: Inheriting Theatre, Plays International Nov 1994