'We have to tell HARD STORIES'

Theatre director and playwright Yaël Farber is spending time in South Africa after her critically acclaimed run of King Lear at the Almeida Theatre in London. We chatted to her about the importance of the pursuit of truth.

- CHARIS TORRANCE

‘Theatre has to be transformative. It has to in some way have rearranged you with some small, infinitesimal or more sweeping experience,’ Yaël Farber says. Her recent production of King Lear at the Almeida Theatre in London was praised by critics across the board: a reviewer for The Times called it ‘one of the best Shakespeare plays I’ve ever seen’; The Guardian described it as ‘shockingly vicious and supremely moving’; and Time Out hailed it as ‘a gripping piece of entertainment’.

Yaël has earned a reputation for hard-hitting, visceral psychodramas that hold a mirror up to society – something we clearly want or need because her productions have toured extensively around the world. Before King Lear, she directed Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend for the National Theatre of Iceland in Reykjavik (2022). The Tragedy of Macbeth at the Almeida Theatre in 2021 saw her direct four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan and James McArdle as the scheming couple.

And in her revisioning of Hamlet in 2020, Oscar nominee Ruth Negga played the vengeful prince.

Yaël was born and raised in South Africa during a period of profound social and political upheaval; her formative years were shaped by an awareness of the stark inequalities of apartheid. From a young age, she was keenly aware of the events unfolding in the country. ‘I have this vivid memory of coming out of a musical in downtown Joburg when I was very young and feeling the discrepancy between what I’d seen in the theatre and the atmosphere in the country.’