How do you get Sean Bean to give an award-winning performance in a radio play? Ask Pauline Harris
The longtime radio drama director on working with stars of stage and screen
Pauline Harris has an impressive track record of making stars of stage and screen feel at home in radio dramas. Back in 2006 she directed John Hurt in a Radio 4 production of Madame Bovary. It was thanks to Pauline that Glenda Jackson returned to acting after an absence of 25 years — in a Radio 4 dramatisation that Pauline directed of a series of novels by Emile Zola.
Bob Peck is also among those on Pauline’s CV, and the latest such figure to fall under her spell is Sean Bean, who Pauline persuaded to appear in only his second ever radio play when casting him in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone — the French playwright’s 1944 version of an ancient tragedy by Sophocles.
Antigone, adapted and directed by Pauline, aired on Radio 3 last year in the now defunct Drama on 3 slot. Bean’s performance as Creon — the king of Thebes, who is locked in a battle of wills with the young princess of the title — won him the Best Actor accolade at this year’s BBC Audio Drama Awards, and tomorrow (Saturday 31 May), Antigone gets a repeat on Radio 4 in the monthly slot it has reserved, post-Drama on 3, for 90-minute productions.
As one of the judges in the Best Actor category, I can vouch for the brilliance of Bean’s performance, and it was fascinating to hear from Pauline about how it came together.
“I’d been struggling to find the right Creon,” she told me. “Then I remembered that I’d read somewhere that Sean loved Greek tragedy. I wanted Sean’s kind of muscularity, that electric energy he brings. But I knew from his TV work like Time that he could do delicacy and nuance as well.”
The invitation went out, and to Pauline’s delight, Bean accepted.
“I didn’t actually realise he hadn’t done radio drama for such a long time,” Pauline said. “He was very reserved in the read-through. He held back, and in the studio it was very similar. It was like he didn’t quite realise that radio acting was acting in the same way as anything else.
“I talked to him about the emotion of the piece. There was no defensiveness to him. He took it all in and nodded, and was asking questions, and the next take I said to the engineer, I think he might do it differently this time, so careful with the faders. Then it was — wow! Sean was so enthusiastic, he really loved it. We had a great time.”
“Wow” sums it up. In the citation us judges put together, we said we were “struck by the intelligence, the vocal richness, and the total commitment he brought to his performance. We felt we were listening to ALL of him.”
Bean was filming abroad at the time of the awards ceremony and was unable to attend it. Pauline shared with me the text message he sent her on hearing the news, in which he said said how delighted and proud he was, thanking her for giving him “this wonderful opportunity to take on such a classic piece of work”, and for her “terrific direction”. She had ”made it such a joy to be a part of and put us all in a great place in which to explore and enjoy the days we had together”.
Pauline thinks she “just tapped into Sean in a way that appealed to him”, and given the previous professional relationships she’d formed, especially with Glenda Jackson — “We just really clicked” — that doesn’t sound like a surprise.
“The thing is, there are no divas in radio drama,” Pauline told me. I’m not sure that can really be true, but if it is, then methods like Pauline’s surely have a lot to do with it.
‘Drama on 4: Antigone’ is on Radio 4 at 3pm Saturday 31 May.