Samuel West is one of our most highly regarded actors. Born in 1966, he is the son of the actors Prunella Scales and Timothy West and so it was perhaps inevitable that he would follow them on to the stage. Acting is in his genes. He made his stage debut in February 1989 in Jean Cocteau’s Les Parents Terrible when the ‘warmth and validity’ of his acting style were immediately noted. His subsequent career has shown range and variety and has produced several memorable performances in stage, film, television, and radio.
At the Shakespeare Institute Library, we are fortunate to have West’s scripts in our archive along with various notebooks and other documents. The material covers his work both as actor and director in the plays of Shakespeare amongst other theatrical projects.
He spent two seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 2000/01 where he played the title roles in Richard II and Hamlet. As he prepared to play Richard II, West wrote of his feelings about the play:
Richard may be a total s*** at the top of the play but he’s… running the country in the face of fierce opposition from out-of-touch Tory squires who think of nothing but their dogs and wouldn’t know a sonnet if it bit them. It is as if after twenty years of uneventful rule, Shakepeare pops in for the last two just as Richard thinks he’s getting the hang of it and shows him how wrong he is.
West has always perceived the political and social connections of his own day with the plays of Shakespeare. ‘We wanted the play set now’ he wrote. ‘The monarchy had never been more talked about. I said I was doing a play about the Poll Tax riots, the Irish Question and who should succeed to the throne – set in 1398.’
His rehearsal notes comprise a full typewritten script which is frequently scribbled upon, annotated, and highlighted. There are hasty notes, doodles, arrows, and a number of random pieces of paper on which West has hastily recorded a sudden idea, or insight into the play. Under directior Steven Pimlott, the production was played in modern dress, on a bare stage with a grave-shaped mound and white upright chairs which doubled either as a throne, or as the humblest of seats. Sam West as Richard drags a coffin about with him as he meditates upon the nature of kingship and the ever-pervasive theme of mortality. The reviews called the performance ‘impressive’ and spoke of its ‘revelatory dash.’
Richard II rehearsal notes, archive reference: DSH27/1
The success of Richard II was a prelude to West’s landmark performance as Hamlet which followed for the RSC in 2001. Our archive at the Shakespeare Institute Library again includes a full script with handwritten annotations and highlighting. There are also three production notebooks, small enough to be held in the hand. We imagine West referring to the first of these as he checks the typescript of his fight moves. In all the notebooks there are photocopies, glued-in pictures from action comics, diagrams which try to make sense of theme and character and sometimes the record of a purely emotional reaction, evidently scribbled down in the heat of rehearsal. Questions arise continually, such as ‘What is the play about? Fate or Conscience?’ West’s comments are often in the first person, as if proceeding from Hamlet himself and as he moves into a greater understanding of the play, he displays an angry identification with Hamlet’s problems which often appeas in frantic, scrawled capital letters. There are frequent references to the current political climate An article from the Observer newspaper ‘Bloodbath in Kathmandu’ is significant: an indication of West’s conviction that present day politics inform the work of Shakespeare and vice-versa.
"The Pendulum of the part", archive reference: DSH27/3/2
West spoke a great deal about the challenge of playing Hamlet, commenting that it was a role he seemed to be preparing for all his life. ‘It’s a part in which you can’t fail and you can’t succeed.’ West remarked in a 2001 interview. He goes on to explain his idea of the character:
Hamlet’s a young man. He’s been away at university and he’s an anarchist, and he’s anti-everything. It’s very important that he’s young and set against the ruling generation …. Hamlet’s sensitivity … and the fact that he is doubtful, princely, thoughtful. These are the things that screw him up.
A diagram from 'Hamlet', archive reference: DSH27/3/4
The Collection also includes scripts and notebooks used by Samuel West performing roles at the Public Theatre, New York, the Donmar, the Chichester Festival Theatre and on BBC Radio 3. His work in directing has been considerable and he has been in charge of productions at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, the Minerva Theatre, Chichester and the Lyceum and Crucible Theatres, Sheffield.
West’s career is wide-ranging. He has worked as an actor in theatre, film, television and radio as well as recording numerous audiobooks covering a wide range of English literature. His political views, which have always informed his acting and directing, are clearly tolerant and humanitarian in nature. As a choral singer – yet another talent – he participated in the 2006 tour to Jerusalem and the West Bank and also gave poetry readings as part of the concert programme. In April 2022 , he added his name to the line-up for the fundraising concert for Ukraine at the RST.