By Paul Majendie - YAHOO! Entertainment News, 18 January 2000.
LONDON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Vanessa Redgrave is to redress the balance for actresses at Britain's Globe Theatre by playing Prospero, the Duke of Milan, in Shakespeare's "The Tempest".
"Bless her. She has more courage than most to come and do it. This is a pretty challenging space," Globe artistic director Mark Rylance told reporters.
Last season, Rylance dressed up as a woman to play Cleopatra at the exquisite copy of the original wooden playhouse in London and close to the the site that first rang with the Bard's plays 400 years ago.
"I had promised to rebalance after the nicking (stealing) of Cleopatra from the women," he quipped at a press conference giving details of the millennium season at the theatre on the banks of the River Thames opposite St Paul's Cathedral.
The Globe, the brainchild of late U.S. actor-director Sam Wanamaker, has proved a roaring success with theatregoers. Rylance said the box office topped three million pounds ($4.9 million) last year with 89 percent capacity.
Redgrave, who first saw her famous father playing Prospero at Stratford back in the Fifties, was unable to attend Tuesday's press launch because doctors have banned her from speaking to give her damaged vocal chords a chance to heal.
But the classical actress, famed as much for her left-wing views as she is for her extraordinary presence on stage, did send a message.
"My dream is coming true. The Globe is Prospero's island and thank you for inviting me to it," she said. "I have a damaged vocal chord which means I am forced to rest during the day."
Rylance felt that casting cross-gender worked particularly well at The Globe, an intimate space where the "groundling" audience standing in the open air theatre interacted powerfully with the players.
He revealed that he had to put up with some barracking for his Cleopatra.
"What is wrong with real women?" one man shouted. "Why do we have to watch fairies?"
The artistic director, who will play Hamlet in the Globe's other big summer production, is clearly fascinated by the idea of cross-dressing, an echo of Shakespeare's days when young boys would play women.
And he even revealed that he had asked Dame Judi Dench, one of Britain's most famous actresses, to play Brutus in an all-female version of "Julius Caesar".
"She told me she didn't like Roman gear," Rylance said.