Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps

that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream

van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC sounds.

This is a download from the BBC. For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three.

Peter Brook directed his first play 70 years ago, seven decades of stripping the ornament out of theatre, of pairing it back to its essentials, of liberating plays from the burden of their own performance history.

He's directed works by Christopher Marlowe, by Carol Churchill, by Beckett and Ted Hughes,

but Shakespeare has provided him with the richest materials,

most famously in his 1970 Royal Shakespeare Company production of a Midsummer Night's Dream,

untroubled by period costumes

or cardboard trees, and restaged in a white box.

How now, spirit?

Whether wonder are you?

Over hell?

A bit of bush.

A brown.

A lot of blood.

Fire.

I do wonder everywhere.

You might see it as a

You might see it as a quintessentially modernist project, except that Brooke has a streak of mysticism in his nature.

He filmed the life of the Russian visionary G.I. Gerdicef.

His last major stage work dealt with the Sufi mystic Chienobokar. He talks about

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