When David speaks his mind

De Schotse regisseur David McVicar is "an angry young man." Heerlijk, zoals hij in The Independent te keer gaat tegen de aberraties van het Duitse Regietheater: "There'll be combat physiques and balaclava helmets, and machine guns, and there'll be neon strip-lighting, and everything will be antiseptic and everyone will over-react madly and the audience will sit there, taking it all incredibly seriously, and I'll be sitting there stuffing my fist in my mouth, because I'm trying so hard not to laugh."

What he hates most of all is a "concept" ("das Konzept" he says in a forbidding German accent), anything that sticks a work of art in a straitjacket and tries to "tie up the ends". "Art comes from a much more instinctive, intuitive place, a place you can't quite understand, that place you go when you're asleep". In The South Bank Show, he talked of productions that come to him "in visions". "I'll wake up, and have dreamt about how I want it to be. "I'm a great believer in the process of dreaming."

But he's the leading opera director of his generation! "Not in Germany, I'm not." It's horrible. And institutionalised. You have to fight against ineptitude, and arrogance, and stupidity. I have a knack of sniffing out bullshitters and making it absolutely obvious that I think they're not doing their job well."

Love you, man!

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