Harriet Devine's Blog

Great Shakespearean Actors by Stanley Wells

You may not know this -- why should you? -- but as a teenager I had huge ambitions to become a great Shakespearean actor. I learned famous soliloquies and practiced them in my room. But when I went to drama school I found out that I wasn't actually all that good at it. No regrets, as I've had a great life doing other things. But I was really delighted to get a chance to read and review Great Shakespearean Actors: Burbage to Branagh, by the distinguished Shakespearean scholar Professor Stanley Wells. 

Ranging from the Elizabethan period to the present day, this is a fascinating account of the performances of thirty-nine celebrated actors, with lots of lovely illustrations. Pop over to Extra Shiny and have a look!

To Bodies Gone by Barney Norris

Throughout my entire childhood, all I wanted was to be an actress. My parents were in the theatre, so I suppose that was not surprising. I imagined myself as Juliet, as Cordelia, as Titania, and could recite whole speeches in the privacy of my room. When I was just turned seventeen, I auditoned for one of the big London drama schools. To my great disappointment they said I was too young, and asked me to come back next year. So there I was with a year to fill. Luckily, a director who worked with my father offered me the chance of a job in a very lowly capacity on a production he was doing at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith. You've heard of ASMs -- Assistant Stage Managers -- well, I was the assistant to the ASM, or general dogsbody/runner. The real ASM was a dark, skinny boy from Cardiff who was a few years older than me. His name was Peter Gill, and he had come to London to break into the theatre, probably as an actor. We became instant friends and were soon inseparable. No hanky panky, as Peter was not into girls, just endless conversations and much laughter. My mother adored him, and soon he was living in a room in our house.

Over the years our lives have gone in different directions. Acting turned out to be not for me after all, and we see each other rarely, but I still think of Peter as one of my dearest friends. Of course he went on to have a brilliant career, though acting fell quite quickly by the wayside (you will have seen him in Zulu, if you were paying attention) and he went on to become a celebrated director and playwright -- you can see the details on Wikipedia if you're interested. His plays -- just fifteen of them, spanning a period of nearly fifty years -- have finally been given the attention they deserve in this new study by the young director and playwright Barney Norris. In an early chapter, Norris sets out his intentions in writing the book:

This book is about the use of art as a response to life, as a mechanism for clarifying and paying attention to the life that is going on around us by isolating what we love through staging it or writing it down, in order to pay it the attention that is so difficult to give to anything amid the noise of the everyday; it is about how that allows us to confront and make sense of our lives, and it is about re-living as being central to the business of living. It is a book about how things become clearer when we look at them through artifice and re-enactment...

I suppose if you wanted to put this more simply, Norris is saying that Gill's plays draw closely on his own experiences and take place in a world he inhabits himself. That's not to say that they are all autobiographical, but rather that they are based on his close and sensitive observation of what goes on around him. Thus many of his early plays, written between the 1960s and the 1980s, take place in the working-class Cardiff of his childhood. There are strong, unhappy matriarchs, young men who don't know what to do with their lives. Above all, and this seems to be an over-riding theme in Gill's plays, there is a lack of communication, a terrible sense of isolation, a frustration with an unsatisfactory life which the characters feel powerless to change. 

With Into the Blue (1985) and Mean Tears (1987), both produced at the National Theatre where Gill was an associate director, the action moves to London, though the characters are still trapped in a unhappy world from which there seems no escape. In Into the Blue it is a world of rent boys and down and outs, while Mean Tears, argues Norris, is a major play about the psychological revolution engendered by Thatcherism. In the plays that followed, Cardiff East and Certain Young Men, Gill continued with the humanism of his early work, but expanded to a larger scale, addressing complex social questions. In 2002 appeared his award-winning The York Realist, an ultimately tragic story of two men -- a theatre director and farm worker -- whose love for each other is sabotaged by the complete discontinuity of their lives, while his most recent play, Versailles (2014) is an explicit political statement of the events surrounding the First World War and their repercussions in the present day.

Interesting and varied though the subject matter of the plays may be, they are obviously linked not only by their humanism but also by their increasingly experimental style. Gill has said that his plays begin as fragments, snatches of dialogue that he notes down as they come to him and that only after time coalesce into a perfomable play. So, though he has been described as a social realist, he is also a writer whose postmodernist approach seems to be strongly influenced by the work of Samuel Beckett, who he much admires. When you put Chekhov into the mix, and DH Lawrence, whose plays Gill was the first ever to direct, you end up with a rich and unique body of work, one which I felt that Norris explored with great sensitivity and perceptiveness. Here's his last word on Gill's achievement:

What he has always done in his theatre is try to reveal to us the currents of extraordinary and powerful feeling that are always running beneath the surface of everyone. Through loving attention, to reveal the love within every person in his work that motivates and explains them.

I was delighted to be sent a review copy of this book by the publishers, Seren Books, so thanks to them. And thanks to Barney Norris for bringing me closer to someone I knew well, but had never seen from quite this perspective before. 

 

Woman Putting on a Hat

 

Actually 'Preparing for the Matinee' (1907), by the American painter  Edmund Charles Tarbell (1862–1938). Funny to think of putting on such a large hat to go to the theatre -- it's a wonder anyone could see the stage if every lady in the audience was wearing one. Lovely painting, though.

I'm on KIndle! (Being George Devine's Daughter)

A few years ago, my childhood memoir was published. It came out in 2006, a significant year which accounted for what may seem a rather mystifying title, at least to those with little or no knowledge of British theatre history.

My father, George Devine, was the founder of a ground-breaking company at the Royal Court Theatre in London. The English Stage Company, as it was called, came into being in 1956, so the book was published to coincide with the company's 50th anniversary. 

Now, seven years after it first appeared, the book is available on Kindle, at a special introductory price of £2.05. 

I'm not all that keen on blowing my own trumpet, so I'll let a couple of other people blow it for me. The book was reviewed in 2006 by dovegreyreader, and Simon of Stuck in a Book wrote about it in 2010 and kindly included it in his list of 50 Books You Must Read. Thanks to both of them! 

The Kindle edition has been updated a bit, mostly because I've found out a bit more about my ancestors and relations. Sadly, it lacks the photos that are in the paperback, but there's a link to a website where they can all be seen. Of course the paperback is there too, and I'm amused to see that, while that costs £8.99 new, a couple of American sellers are cheekily trying to get over £100 for used copies. Good luck, guys!

Gielgoodies

Anyone who knows about the history of the British theatre will know about John Gielgud, perhaps the greatest actor of the last century. And anyone who knows about Gielgud will probably be aware that he was celebrated -- if that's the right word -- for his gaffes. I mentioned this in passing last year, when I reviewed Jonathan Croall's impressive biography of Gielgud, and this year a slim volume has appeared which is partly dedicated to some of these terrible, hilarious faux-pas, and also includes some of his witty perceptive comments on the people and events of his day. 

This is not in any way an academic book, but it's very entertaining. My parents knew Gielgud so I was more or less brought up on the famous Eddie Knoblock story "He's the most frightful bore, just like old Eddie Knoblock -- oh, Eddie, I'm most terribly sorry". Evidently this was not the only occasion as he seems to have done much the same to Edith Evans, Athene Seyler, Clive Morton and several others. Most people seem to have dealt with this sort of thing very well, like Elizabeth Taylor, whose ex-husband Michael Wilding Gielgud had recently met:

'Such a charming man', he said. 'I can't imagine how he got mixed up with all those dreadful tarts'. Elizabeth said, 'John, I was one of them'. 

He was evidently completely unable to see how insulting some of his comments could be: 'We have two very beautiful men playing Bushy and Bagot. You might make a good contrast' (to Peter Sallis); 'Get someone to teach you to act. Try Martita Hunt -- she'll be glad of the money' (to Alec Guiness); 'You girl, move to the right. No, no, not you. The ugly one with the big nose' (to Jill Bennett); 'Have you ever known an American who could play Shakespeare? Oh, sorry, Orson. I thought you were Irish. Or something'. But most people took this kind of thing extremely well, perhaps because, as Alec Guiness remarked, his gaffes were 'entirely forgiveable, because they sprang spontaneously from the heart without a glimmer of malice'. His private observations about his friends and acquaintances were equally perceptive, iconoclastic,  and funny, and often summed people up remarkably well: 'Dear Ingrid [Bergman], she speaks five languages and can't act in any of them'; Lindsay Anderson was 'quite a pleasant little man. Rather short, wore a funny cap. I think gay, but not quite up to it'; Edward Albee 'looked like a surly pirate with his drooping moustache'; 'Isabel Jeans' walk splays outwards with a strange totter that suggests the cab horse about to slip on an icy paving stone saving itself by a valiant effort'. Laurence Olivier played Malvolio 'like a Jewish hairdresser, with a great lisp. He would fall off a bench in the garden scene, which I begged him not to do'; John Barrymore's acting was 'like a monstrous old make impersonator jumping through a hoop'. 

I suppose what I liked the most about this slim volume -- it's less than 150 pages -- is the way it shows Gielgud's absolutely genuine innocence, sweetness and honesty. It must have been particularly hard for him to have to disguise his homosexuality in public, but he clearly made up for it in his private letters and comments to his closest friends. He loved silly puns, and often brought rehearsals to a halt by causing his fellow actors to collapse in giggles. He lived, of course, to be 96, rather regretting, as he said on his 90th birthday, that 'most of my friends seem either to be dead, or deaf, or living in the wrong part of Kent'. But he never lost his sense of humour, or his ability to keep dropping bricks -- as he said to Giles Brandreth when invited lunch at the House of Commons: 'I'm delighted to have been asked. You see, all my real friends are dead'.

This little book would make a great Christmas present -- highly recommended for anyone who enjoys a giggle, particularly when laced with a good swig of theatre history.

John Gielgud: Matinee Idol to Movie Star

"You, girl, move to the right. No, no, not you. The ugly one with the big nose."  

Just one example of John Gielgud's famous faux-pas, this one was addressed to the actress Jill Bennett. There are plenty more scattered through this new biography, and very entertaining they are. Gielgud never intended to hurt -- he had a sort of innocence which seems to have made him blind to the effect he sometimes had on people. And as he was much loved, he was generally forgiven -- Bennett, apparently, "dined out" on the story for the rest of her life.

Jonathan Croall's tremendous biography (688pp) is actually a much revised version of his earlier Gielgud: A Theatrical Life, which appeared in 2000, the year of Gielgud's death at the age of 96. The revisions are the result of a great deal more material which had become available to the biographer -- mostly letters, but also people more willing to speak openly.

Unsurprisingly, much of it relates to Gielgud's homosexuality. Born in an era when it was not only illegal but also widely misunderstood and the cause of much anger and revulsion in society, Gielgud was forced to conceal his sexual orientation from the public for much of his long life. So, when he was arrested in 1953 for soliciting a homosexual act in a public lavatory, there was a huge outcry. He had recently been knighted -- later than his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, probably because of his gayness -- and there were many violent reactions, such as that of  Earl Winterton, who said that Gielgud should be stripped of his new knighthood and horsewhipped in the street. He was terrified that his career would suffer, but he was persuaded to continue with a play that was in rehearsal, and received a standing ovation when the play opened in Liverpool. 

All this is fascinating, and not just for prurient reasons. These events, and the many extracts from Gielgud's letters to his lovers and close friends, illuminate not only the man himself but also the great changes that have taken place in social and legal attitudes in the past half-century. Much of Gielgud's character -- his self-consciousness about his appearance, his shyness, his lack of self-confidence in public situations -- certainly owed a great deal to the constant need for concealment of his true nature. But this is not to suggest that he was an unhappy man or that he lacked friends of both genders and orientations. On the contrary, he seems to have inspired huge affection as well as admiration from most of the people he met and worked with during his remarkably long life. 

Naturally much of this full and impressively reasearched volume is devoted to Gielgud's work as an actor and a director. Descended from an illustrious theatrical family -- the great actress Ellen Terry was his great aunt -- he became almost instantly successful in the London theatre, first as a matinee idol and soon as the country's leading classical actor. His work at the Old Vic in the late 1920s and his two London seasons at the Queen's and the New Theatres in the 1930s saw him at the absolute peak of his profession both on stage and as a director. By the 1950s, though, he seems to have become a little uncertain of what path to follow. His beautiful voice ("like a silver trumpet muffled in silk" according to Alec Guiness) and his expressive verse speaking had come to seem old fashioned and he appeared mostly in forgettable West End dramas. Unlike his greatest rival Olivier, he resisted film parts and turned down offers of new work at emerging new theatres such as the Royal Court.

All this changed in the early 1970s, however, when he agreed to appear there in David Storey's Home alongside one of his oldest and closest friends and colleagues Ralph Richardson. The production was a huge success, and led to performances in plays by Pinter, Bond, Alan Bennett and other new and challenging writers.  He also took to the movies and TV, and appeared in numerous films, including Arthur, in which he played Dudley Moore's foul-mouthed manservant and delighted audiences with lines such as "Now I suppose you want me to wash your dick, you horrible little shit". In 1981 he played Prospero in Peter Greenaway's experimental film Prospero's Books, a radical reworking of The Tempest in which Gielgud spoke every line and spent much of the time delightedly surrounded by naked boys.

Gielgud continued to act on stage until well into his 80s and on radio, TV and film into his 90s. He became a little physically frail, but he remained mentally alert and interested in the world and its goings on right up to his death, though he suffered badly from the death, in 1998, of his longtime partner Martin Hensler. 

This book made me long to be able to see some of those great performances -- his Hamlet, his Lear, and many others. But it also brought him to life as a man -- his great appreciation for fine art, music and literature, his love of filthy jokes, his ability to reduce fellow actors to helpless giggles, his tendency to burst into tears at the slightest provocation, both onstage and off. I actually did meet him a few times when I was a child, and in fact I could say that he was the cause of my very existence, since my parents first met when they were working on one of his productions. He had agreed to speak at the funeral of my aunt, Margaret (Percy) Harris, his exact contemporary and a theatre designer with whom he had been closely associated and who had remained his friend. But the day before, after a good lunch, he stood up and collapsed instantly, his heart simply giving out. 

This is a splendid book, impressively researched and extremely readable. 

Uncle Vanya

I don't often write about plays on here -- in fact I don't think I ever have before. But I went to see a new production of Chekhov's tragi-comic masterpiece a couple of nights ago and I liked it so much I thought I'd tell you about it.

Written in 1899, the play is set in an old estate in the depths of the Russian countryside. There live Uncle Vanya, an intelligent but disillusioned man in his 50s, his gentle, sweet-natured niece Sonya, his old mother, and various hangers on. A frequent visitor is the local doctor, Astrov, with whom Sonya is secretly in love. When the play begins, Sonya's father, a retired academic, has arrived for a visit with his beautiful young second wife Elena. The play explores the impact of their visit on the household, and its no exaggeration to say that this is pretty devastating. Both Vanya and Astrov fall in love with Elena, Sonya sees her hopes go up in smoke, the professor announces that he wants to sell the estate and buy a summer cabin in Finland. It all sounds rather depressing put like that, but in fact there is comedy there too, and the ending, though sad, is rather wonderful, as Sonya comforts her uncle with a vision of a glorious afterlife when all their hard work will be rewarded with rest.

This new production of the play is by the celebrated director Helena Kaut-Howsen, who also did the translation. The acting is superb -- it seems unfair really to single anybody out, but I particularly liked Simon Gregor as Astrov, Hara Yannas as Sonya, Marianne Oldham as Elena and Geoffrey Whitehead as the professor. The sets and costumes, by Sophie Jump, are wonderfully authentic, the music is haunting, the lighting is atmospheric -- what's not to like?

It's on at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry till Easter, and then moves to the Arcola Theatre in London. If you want to read more about it and see more photos, have a look on here. Or go and see it!