Actor Easton Takes His Cues From the Human Soul

There was a time when the finest of actors led a gypsy life.

They traveled from job to job, not in search of fortune--which had little commerce with the acting profession before television and film and Broadway mega-hits--but in pursuit of a dream for greater and greater parts.

At 57, Richard Easton, “floating and on my lonesome,” still leads just such a life.

Easton will play the clown Touchstone in “As You Like It” at the Old Globe Theatre from Friday through June 29, and then follow as Claudius and the ghost of Hamlet’s father in “Hamlet,” also at the Globe.

Taxing? Demanding? Nope, he said, it’s just as he likes it.

“I don’t really know where I live,” confessed the lanky actor, sitting in a seat at the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Stage, where “As You Like It” will be performed.

“I suppose I live in London because I still have an apartment there. But I live in the theater really, in flats or with friends. . . . I’m hopeless about money or objective success.” He said it never occurred to him to care about such things, “as long as I was having a good time and doing good work.”

Certainly, Easton’s ability to do “good work,” as he modestly calls it, has never been called into question, not from his stints in all three Stratford Festivals--the Stratford-upon-Avon; Stratford, Ontario; and Stratford, Conn.

And not from Jack O’Brien, the Globe’s artistic director, who was inspired to direct “Uncle Vanya” earlier this year just because Easton was available to play the part.

Anyone seeing his performance in “Henry V” (the film by Kenneth Branagh) or “An Enemy of the People” (the American Playhouse production, directed by O’Brien, that airs today in San Diego) will realize that “this is a presence you haven’t seen,” O’Brien said.

“I always had the feeling that Richard hadn’t come into his own the way he was destined to. . . . It’s a haunting presence he has whether he is broken or melancholy in ‘Vanya’ or steely and malevolent in ‘Henry V’ or a life-giddy helium balloon as Touchstone.

“He has an unlimited technical facility. In addition, he has such an implicit power that, even when he’s not doing anything, he’s explosive. I think the next 10 years may be the years of his life where he starts playing parts that only he can play.”

Easton and O’Brien go back more than 20 years, to the days when they both worked at Ellis Rabb’s now-defunct APA Repertory, Easton as the star and O’Brien as Rabb’s protege.

With “Uncle Vanya” in January, followed by “Waiting for Godot” and “Measure for Measure,” this year marks Easton’s first at the Globe since he and O’Brien traveled here in 1969 to do “Macbeth,” with Easton and Sada Thompson co-starring, and O’Brien taking over the direction from Rabb in time to ready the show for Ann Arbor, Mich.

But, after 43 years in the theater, with a six-year sojourn into a popular British series called “The Brothers” (which Easton dismisses as a soap opera and O’Brien says made Easton a household name in England), Easton also goes back with nearly everyone who is or was anyone on the stage.

He debuted at 14 in Montreal as Wally in “Our Town,” (he’ll see the show for the first time in 43 years this summer at the Old Globe), did a radio show called “My Uncle Louis,” and eventually left Canada to study and find work with the leading sirs and dames in the business: Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, as well as John Houseman, Peter Brooks, Irene Worth and, most recently, Branagh.

“I’m the generation that learned to act by acting with other actors,” he said.

He learned punctuality from Gielgud; Easton played Edgar to his King Lear:

“He was always 10 minutes early to rehearsal, so everyone came 10 minutes early, and rehearsal started 10 minutes early. If you came on time, you were late and he would glare at you.”

Richardson, he said, “taught me you have to act everything for the stage. He would act turning a doorknob. Everything that happens must have a purpose.”

Branagh inspired by his inventiveness.

Easton played Jaques Amiens to Branagh’s Touchstone, in Branagh’s production of “As You Like It.”

“He played him like a terrible, seedy old musical comedian like Olivier played in ‘The Entertainer’ in checkered suits and false smiles who screamed out with laughter these terrible jokes. He was marvelous.”

But marvelous as Branagh was, Easton has his own, different interpretation. He intends to draw on the first success he had at Stratford, Conn., where he played Puck, the impish sprite in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” under Houseman’s direction.

“Touchstone is Puck 40 years later,” he said.

One of the salutary effects of a life in the theater is the depth of knowledge he can bring to his parts by virtue of having lived with them for so long.

Having played the sardonic Jaques will help him with the life-affirming Touchstone, because “Jaques wants to be Touchstone,” he said. Doing the part gives the Jaques in him a chance to get his wish.

Similarly, having played his first “Hamlet” 40 years ago gives him perspective on the tragedy of the Danish prince, he said. The Globe’s Hamlet will be Easton’s 10th; four times he played the starring role, once Osric, once Fortinbras, once the ghost and twice Claudius, the last time for Branagh in a castle in Elsinore, Denmark (the actual setting of the play.

The Globe show will be the first in which he plays the dual role of Claudius and the brother he murdered. It’s a challenge Easton relishes.

“Playing both brothers has always intrigued me. Hamlet always compared one to the other very unfavorably. I love the idea.”

And, as different as the two brothers are, Easton sees them as two parts of a whole, just as he sees all the parts he plays as part of a whole.

“We are all part of one human soul. The artist’s job is to show how we are all bits of the same entity.”