Breaking Baz: Ruth Wilson on the ‘huge stamina’ it takes to perform on a London stage with 100 men for 24 hours; Mud, delicious mud for “All Quiet On The Western Front”

Ruth Wilson, star of The matter, Luther And Is dark materialhas played with many leading actors, usually one after the other, but in May her stamina will be tested when she leaves for a marathon performance in London and performs the same scene with a hundred different men almost continuously for 24 hours – one after the other.

“Yes, a hundred is enough,” she laughs.

“It’s a tremendous act of perseverance,” she tells me the second wife a title inspired by a play central to John Cassavetes’ 1977 film opening night with Gena Rowlands. “I don’t know how to get through it and that’s part of the appeal for me,” she adds.

For a split second her face looks dejected as she tells me, “I’ll lose all sense of accomplishment if the show goes on,” she sighs, though she’s clearly enjoying the view.

The show runs 19-20 May 24 hours from 16:00 to 16:00 at the Young Vic Theatre.

It’s a mammoth undertaking for Wilson, but not one she can fully prepare for, as her legion of co-stars will be strangers to her. “I don’t have rehearsals with the men, I don’t meet them beforehand,” she explains.

You are given a scene to learn and Wilson teaches the same scene. “Then they come and it’s the first time I meet them.”

I ask if they can be washed. She nodded in agreement. The Young Vic will carry out a security check “to ensure they have the best intentions”.

Part of the thrill of this is not knowing how they interact and how they interact. “I find it exciting. I don’t know how any of these men will react.

“At first I always thought I was trying to play a role or create or entertain the audience or take care of these men when they come in,” she says. “When my fatigue, my emotions and my energy and everything else overwhelms me. Those things will erode.”

Her face lit up, “so I guess I’m pretty intrigued.” She is interested in “the erosion of the artistry of the performance … and I think most actors all live for the moment, which feels spontaneous.”

There will be moments of frustration on stage and she wonders if she will become upset with any of her co-stars as the hours pass. “You’ll be able to see those differences in me as an audience, even though it’s great chemistry, suddenly you’ll see that we really connect and have a good time,” she laughs. “It will also be a study about interaction, human interaction and intimacy,” she says.

The scene that plays over and over, kinda kinda Groundhog day, is a parting scene between a man and a woman. It will be an exploration of power dynamics between the sexes. “It seems like the power is in the man, but as it unfolds, you realize that the space and the environment are my domain, so there’s already a conflict, and the shifting of that power will extend through the scene,” says she me during a live Zoom video call.

The Cassavetes film is about Myrtle Gordon, a brilliant actress who “plays Virginia, a character in a play within a play, and the character written for her is a woman in her forties who is a little is over the hill, so it’s going to be a woman’s declining agency I think, and the actress who plays Gena Rowlands struggles with the idea of ​​playing that role.

The show focuses on just one scene with Virginia. Wilson hopes to explore the idea of ​​”you become the character and vice versa.”

I ask what breaks there will be. “I have a fifteen-minute break every two hours,” she replied. “It would all revolve around those 15 minutes. What am I doing at this time? do i meditate Do I go outside and get some fresh air? I eat? “Am I going to the toilet,” she wondered.

The second wife is a co-production between Young Vic and LIFT, a biennial independent London theater festival, and was created by Nat Randall and Anna Breckon. It was produced in collaboration with Wilson’s production company, Lady Lazarus.

The world premiere of the show took place in Australia before the pandemic. Wilson would have played the role three years ago, but she passed because “you can’t beat a hundred men” with Covid.

Wilson is looking forward to returning to the stage and has won two Olivier Awards for his roles Anna Christie And End station required.

The actress is currently filming the BBC One and Paramount Global thriller in the west of Ireland woman in the wall, about the horrors of the Irish Magdalene Laundries. She plays with Daryl McCormack, who enjoys it Congratulations Leo Grande, And bad sisters; He was also nominated for this year’s BAFTA EE Rising Star Award. The six-parter was written by Joe Murtagh (American animals) and is directed by Harry Wootliff, who directed Wilson in the film true things and Rachna Suri (The bastard son and the devil himself).

McCormack plays a cop, and Wilson says her story is “one of the women who live in town and there’s a murder that basically reveals the whole past.”

She describes it as a “wild, weird, tonally unusual piece with a great cast – and we’re almost done.” As we know, content is in high demand “and it’s exhausting,” she says.

However, she has set herself the task of taking on a variety of different projects for stage and screen that will take her to challenging environments and landscapes. “Next year things will be chosen that may not be really popular, but they will be things that are much more interesting and challenging to me.”

Wilson also challenged me: that I should audition to play one of the hundred guys who performed with her The second wife. “Honestly, you should,” she insists.

I might enter stage left as old number 62, just kidding. This guy’s name is Marty, “but come on like Dude 62,” she says, more than amused at the thought of such a lark.

Mud, delicious mud!

Heike Merker, nominated by both BAFTA and Oscars for her hair and makeup designs for No news from the western fronthas a confused look on her face as she struggles with the fact that I want to talk about the art of mud.

“I often get carried away,” I say by way of explanation. “With my dogs, Keeshond and Shiba Inu,” I quickly add.

Last summer, Netflix invited me to an early theatrical screening of director Edward Berger’s reimagining of Erich Maria Remarque’s story of German conscripts thrown into the hell of bloody warfare in World War I.

It was in one of those little basement rooms in Soho that was beamed onto a nice big screen so that every wounded, wounded face was clearly visible.

Recently, a Netflix executive joked that Merker made so many different types of mud to put on the faces of soldiers fighting in the trenches that they should have t-shirts that say “I Love Mud.”

Dirt, such as my dogs can easily find in Hackney Marshes and on the coastal cliffs of Hastings, East Sussex, has long been a factor in my life.

Yes, Merker agrees. “I also have a dog and I know exactly what you’re talking about.” Her dog is a Cockapoo.

The difference, however, is that the film “cannot use the mud that is real. It’s got to be make-up goo so you can put it on your skin,” hinting at the danger of using the real stuff if you don’t know what’s inside. I think of rats and bugs and, well, you know .

“You have mud, you have blood, you have different textures on a battlefield,” explains Merker as we discuss the many variants involved.

“I was on a mission to make all kinds of mud,” Merker notes as he lists the mud rainbow. “Light brown, beige, yellowish, and then it became greenish, and then light gray, medium gray, dark gray and then dark brown. A black one, of course.”

Is it thick or thin mud to plaster the faces of the tired soldiers? “Sometimes it can be a thinner version if you can imagine your dog getting confused,” adds Merker.

There was a touch of real stuff with grayish Dead Sea mud particles. “It’s like a powder. It’s clean and we’ve mixed it with other elements.”

Then there are packs of macadamia powder, mocha powder… “We started experimenting and it was like a painting. We had our palette.

Kryolan, the professional makeup company, supplied pigments and other necessary substances, and they traded vats of oppressive dirt.

“I think the makeup helped our actors understand what a nightmare the fights were,” she says.

Her favorite on set was Felix Kammerer, who plays Paul, the young man we follow. “I had to make him look tired, all kinds of hurt expressions, all kinds of mud. The mud in the elephant’s skin when his whole face is covered,” says Merker.

Particular care was needed as the scenes on the battlefield were shot first. “We weren’t at the beginning of the film where they’re at school and they don’t have to look fresh until later, so you have to take care of their skin.”

She and her team made sure the cast had hot showers and hot towels after long days in the trenches.

It was definitely easier to design hair and makeup for a previous film, Crazy rich Asians? “We shot in Singapore and Malaysia. The humidity there, wow,” she exclaims.

mud is good.