Henrietta Bredin talks to Simon McBurney about his latest challenge: doing Beckett for the first time
I am standing in Simon McBurney’s kitchen, discussing pigs (he’s not only kept them but also slaughtered them, butchered them and made over 20 different sorts of salami), memory and language (both capacious and exact in his case), watching him brew coffee (freshly ground, delectably strong), grill toast and spread marmalade (home-made, dark and delicious) and realising that his insatiably curious intellect, his grace and economy of movement are as compelling in a domestic setting as they are on stage.
With Complicité, the company he founded in the early 1980s, he has devised, directed and performed in works that have exploded people’s preconceived ideas of what theatre should be, expanding imagination and perception with performances that have been visually startling, mentally stimulating and, frequently, wildly, deliriously funny.
Now he is submitting himself to the minutely detailed instructions provided by Samuel Beckett in Endgame.
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