Friday January 26 2001 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2001/jan/26/theatre.artsfeatures1 "Cultivate simplicity," was Lamb's advice to Coleridge. It's also a good precept for a director. Over the years Peter Brook has taken it so to heart that his focus now is on the tale rather than the tell

o. The true poets in my pantheon begin with Keats and Masefield. I haven’t found a clear choice for third. There are awesome things in Milton, Blake, Coleridge, Tennyson, Emily, Houseman, Robinson, Dowson, Yeats and others. Shakespeare, like Mozart, doesn’t figure in the center of the picture. I take him a