�"DRAG QUEEN BARGES ON"

Mark Rylance, artistic director of the Globe, will soon take on one of the most difficult roles facing any actress ‚ Cleopatra. He talks exclusively to Anthony Holden about being a working woman.

CLEOPATRA SITS ALONE, gazing pensively at the Thames, awaiting me at a window table in the Globe theatreís snazzy restaurant. On this blazing summer day he ‚ yes, he ‚ is wearing a baseball cap, shorts, sneakers and a green silk shirt with the top few buttons open. Above those bright brown eyes are neatly plucked brows. As we talk, and the hands sway in languid gestures, I notice fingernails grown to a length of considerable elegance. The silky voice lilts; the cheeky lips pout; the sudden smiles are dazzling, distinctly feline. There are moments when Mark Rylance ‚ for it is he ‚ almost seems to be flirting with me.

"Well, it would be in character," we laugh, as he talks passionately about his latest part, for all the world as if he were taking on Antony, Macbeth or any other milestone role of a male actorís mid-Shakespearean career. After five weeks of rehearsal, embarking on the sixth and last, Rylance is past the point of wondering why he is playing one of the most powerful, tempestuous, nay sexy female roles ever written. He is too intent on understanding her, on getting it right.

In his third season as Artistic Director of the Globe, which he has steered past predictions of Disneyesque disaster towards a force to be reckoned with on Londonís theatrical scene, Rylanceís boldest decision yet is to cast himself as Shakespeareís temptress of the Nile. It was, he says, the actor Keith Baxter, a founder member of the Globeís directorate, who came up with the idea.

"It was Keith, to my great surprise, who first suggested me for artistic director. When I got the job, to my even greater surprise, he promptly suggested that I actually open the place by playing Cleopatra. "Get on out there," he said "and blow the buggersí minds."

"Well, even I thought that opening the Globe as Cleopatra might be a bit over-the-top. But the idea stuck in my mind. Weíve got way past the initial worries about casting young men in womenís roles ‚ long since accepted by our audience far readily than we dared hope. Itís wonderful how easily people make the leap of the imagination this place demands in so many ways."

During his months of preparation, one highlight was invitation to the recent state banquet at Windsor Castle for the visiting President of Hungary ‚ a big Shakespeare fan. "It offered some useful insights. As super-smooth courtiers organised us into after-dinner circles, for the Queen and Prince Charles to drop in on, I kept thinking of Diana. The courtiers were efficient, civilised, but all old men. How her young spirit ‚ her sensuality ‚ must have been cramped in that elderly courtÖ"

Like Cleopatraís? "Well, yes. She has many of the same characteristics as Diana: a force of nature, beautiful, flirtatious, playful, unpredictable. I never met her, butÖ" I did, so I add a few more: "Capricious, manipulative, quixotic, acutely aware of the power of her own charms?" "Yes," he says thoughtfully, "youíre quite right." I begin to worry that I might have helped to create a Frankensteinís monster: the Princess Di version of Cleopatra. But Rylance is far too smart for that.

AT 39, HE HAPPENS to be the same age as Cleopatra at the end of Shakespeareís play (which covers a period of ten years). But even he is not pretending that the male actor who played her in the Bardís day would have been much beyond his mid-20s. "Contrary to popular belief, these big female roles were played by strong young actors, not boys with unbroken voices. In Shakespeareís day, the boy actors ‚ the good ones, anyway ‚ played women long after their voices had broken. But not pushing 40!"

So the obsession for authenticity for which Rylance is celebrated, and occasionally mocked, is in truth reassuringly relative. He gets angry letters, he says, from Professor Andrew Gurr, the Globeís authenticity guru, when his experiments - particularly in audience involvement ‚ go beyond the known historical facts. But Rylanceís Globe is not a museum ‚ it is a living, thriving theatre. Thriving enough for the queue for this afternoonís matinée of Julius Caesar, which he directed, to wind round the theatre as we talk. Its chances of getting in are slim. The ëHouse Fullí signs were up before it formed. This season was 80 per cent sold out before it started ‚ a remarkable achievement for a youngish actor given little chance of success by theatrical wiseacres when he was pitchforked in a role without precedent in 400 years.

Wandering around the Globe with its boss, you can tell that he commands universally affectionate respect among his staff, both artistic and administrative ‚ that, in other words, he is a born actor-manager. Thrillingly, we lurk backstage as Caesar is assassinated, peering through little grilles at the rapt audience, the players within touching distance. He is just as excited as me when we stand aside to let by the exiting conspirators, then join in the backstage mobís chants of ëCaesar!í and ëTraitors!í which greets the progress of Mark Antonyís famous funeral oration.

Then he sweeps me off to the costume department, a veritable hotbed of authenticity, where half-a-dozen ornate period gowns are being painstakingly stitched, hemmed, embroidered and tricked out for him by a team of devoted experts. "Complete with cleavage?" I inquire. "Oh yes," he grins. "You bet".

This will be a Jacobean English Cleopatra, though her courtiers will have a ëvaguely Easterní look. Rylance will have at least six changes of costume, he says excitedly. Has all this put any strains on his marriage? Right on cue, we bump into his wife ‚ the musician Claire van Kampen, who has written and directed the score for this and other Globe productions.

When their car broke down the other day, she laughs, she noticed her husband leaning fetchingly on its raised bonnet, admiring the length of his finger-nails, as a mechanic came to their rescue. "I could see him wondering what sort of whacky relationship Iíd got myself into!"

But in helping him with the part, says Rylance ‚ in noticing, for instance, how lonely Cleopatra is ‚ Claire has been almost as helpful as his director (or ëMaster of Playí, in Globe-speak), Giles Block. "In a way," says Block echoing Rylance, "itís easier for Mark to play this part than some great theatrical dame - a Rigg, a Redgrave, a Dench ‚ squaring up to the biggest challenge of her career. Thereís less pressure on him."

Rylanceís Antony, too, has long since forgotten that his Cleo is not just his boss, but a man. "Paul (Shelley) accepted me as a woman from the very first day of rehearsals," says Rylance. "Itís not as if the play requires them to be seen in bed together," adds Block, "or even kissing passionately in private. They are rarely alone. If they kiss, they do so formally, in front of other people. Antony says goodbye to her with what he calls a soldierís kiss ‚ a public one, in front of the staff."

WHILE TACKLING ONE of the toughest of all Shakespearean roles, even for a member of the relevant gender, Rylance is juggling lottery money to finance a permanent Shakespeare exhibition in the Globeís basement with the need for more to finish the studio-style Inigo Jones Theatre to complement the main stage.

On the roof, overlooking the emergent millennial footbridge, which will soon bring yet more Bard-hungry punters, he proudly shows off where, one day, there will also be a Globe library.

An innovator, both off-stage and on, Rylance once took his famously pyjama-clad RSC Hamlet to Broadmoor, where patients came up to him afterwards with the ultimate compliment. "You got madness just right," they said, "I should knowÖIím mad."

Will women come up to him, after seeing his Cleopatra, with some such compliments of their own? "all i can hope," he laughs, "is that they, too, donít tell me Iím mad."

The Observer Review, 25 July 1999