Angela Mitchell: That’s actually what I love about staged readings for this reason. You can get tremendous people because the level of preparation is not as intensive, schedules are easier to work out, that kind of thing, yet it’s still a huge event.
David Ogden Stiers: It's a ‘grab and run,’ in effect. So what you do – the people you try to attract to those are others who have ‘grabbed and run’ before, and who can bring to the reading, in the case of Twelfth Night, for instance, some experience and substance in Shakespeare.
Of all the things I remember most about that one, I remember feeling like a kid again, watching Ed Asner and Rue McClanahan in wonderment, as they played Toby Belch and Maria. The delight and deep camaraderie of those two actors -- the sharing of the experience -- was just effortless.
Angela Mitchell: You're more well-known for playing more cerebral characters, like Charles Winchester in "M*A*S*H." Was Dogberry a departure for you?
David Ogden Stiers: Actually, no, because everyone's got a brain, it's just a question of how the character’s brain works and what they care about. When their needs are simple and direct and wholehearted, it tends not to be a terribly complicated person. When the needs are broader and more sophisticated, you’ll be playing someone of taste or refinement. But no, I have no trouble. I've played a wide variety of kings and simpletons. And as I get older, I have less and less trouble getting in touch with my inner simpleton.
Angela Mitchell: You're famous as a classical music conductor and advocate. What does Lyle Lovett's music for Much Ado bring to the production?
David Ogden Stiers: He’s a wonderful, wonderful musician. The music is gorgeous, and he has written comparably stylistic music that works with other song arrangements, using Shakespeare's lyrics. For instance, the song that accompanies the ‘grape stomp’ in Act I is a very sly arrangement of a 1930's song called “Peel Me a Grape.”
Angela Mitchell: Do you ever use your music experience or musicality in your acting?
David Ogden Stiers: Oh, yes. I’m looked at with suspicion on occasion because I’m not much of a fan of opera. But Shakespeare for me offers the very meaning of music and language. You can’t not bring musical ability or sensibility into Shakespeare, to bear on the text like that. And if you don’t bring it, well, he will summon it from you, that music. It’s unavoidable. Just in structure, in the way he builds spoken musical phrases. Yeah, it’s the real meaning for me, of Shakespeare.
But the real reason I turn to music is because it deals with huge subjects – subtle, iridescent and deeply powerful feelings, without words. We get to explore feelings and ideas without talking about it, where they can’t be misunderstood. We all hear an oboe sound a concert A, and you don’t interpret that, you simply hear the A. You don't interpret that, you simply hear it and achieve it.
