Maggie Smith, Laurence Olivier, Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi: National Theatre's 50th: the best shows from 1963-1973

THE TELEGRAPH

MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2013

By Dominic Cavendish

11:30AM BST 14 Oct 2013

The hope for a National Theatre stretches right back to the Victorian age but it wasn't until 1962 that the theatre's story officially began. After protracted discussions over funding, and a dismally slow construction pace, the decision was made to establish a National Theatre company without waiting for the theatre to be opened. In the interim, the company would perform at the Old Vic and in August 1962, the National's first artistic director was named as Laurence Olivier. The company's first performance (Hamlet) followed on 22 October 1963, and the National Theatre was born.



The Old Vic episode, though protracted, was in many ways glorious. Directors included William Gaskill, Franco Zeffirelli, Jonathan Miller and Olivier himself. The list of actors collected for Zeffirelli’s production of Much Ado about Nothing alone spelt magnificence – among them Maggie Smith, Robert Stephens, Albert Finney, Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen. Having an actor-manager of Olivier’s stature at the helm made the National a base for the best of British theatre, as it was intended to be.To select 10 productions from that first decade is an invidious task – the choices are open to challenge. But to try and measure the scale of the National Theatre's achievement one must identify those shows it’s still worth talking about and summon them up from the dusty vaults of national memory. Away we go…

Although the National Theatre Company launched in its temporary home at the Old Vic in 1963 with a Hamlet starring Peter O’Toole and directed by Laurence Olivier, its first hour was not its finest. Far more significant was when Olivier, the company’s artistic director, stepped into the title role of Othello (in black-face) to electrifying effect the following year. “Nowhere else in the world could a more completely realised performance than his have been seen,” Simon Callow observed in his history of the NT, published in 2007. The production, which also starred Maggie Smith as Desdemona, was rendered into a film the following year.

As You Like It, directed by Clifford Williams, starring Ronald Pickup, Anthony Hopkins and Derek Jacobi; 1967

This all-male production was a box-office hit and a sign of more liberated times, although the revival had a troubled history. John Dexter initially proposed a more sexually provocative approach but his vision was so diluted at Olivier’s insistence that he resigned. Ronald Pickup starred as Rosalind, other cast members included Anthony Hopkins, Robert Stephens, Derek Jacobi and Jeremy Brett. The New York Times was effusive: "As You Like It is fantastic, one of the most dazzling, sheerly enjoyable Shakespearean productions I have ever seen." He praised Pickup: "Within a minute or two you forget that this lanky, touching figure is a man (although he makes no effort to disguise his voice) and you see him as a soul in love.”

The National Health, directed by Michael Blakemore, starring Tom Baker and Jim Dale; 1969
Peter Nichols’s play collided the grim experience of those reaching the end of life in an NHS ward with a pastiche TV soap opera (Nurse Norton’s Affair); the result, shaped and directed by Blakemore, was a sensation that won the Evening Standard Best Play award. As Blakemore records in his memoir Stage Blood: “On one side of the stage… challenges were bravely met and tragedy averted; on the other death made its random and monotonous progress through the ward… Both Peter and I began to realise that we were on to something that maybe hadn’t been done on stage before.” The show marked a return to the NT’s popular health, after a slight dip in fortunes.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night, directed by Michael Blakemore, starring Laurence Olivier, 1971
Michael Billington in the Guardian was spellbound by this account of Eugene O’Neill's posthumously published autobiographical masterpiece, dominated as it was by the fading grandeur of Laurence Olivier in his last major role for the company: “Olivier’s James Tyrone is a massive performance moving from an initial nervy jocularity to a throttled, brick-red despair at his wife’s relapse to a thrilling, soul-baring intensity in his cups… For a genuinely great actor to play a nearly-great actor is the hardest technical feat of all: Olivier does it to perfection.” Of this highly popular production he added: “Such is the quality of acting and direction we seem to be not merely watching great drama but to be eavesdropping on life itself.”



READ MORE HERE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/10361968/National-Theatres-50th-the-best-shows-from-1963-1973.html

Kenneth Branagh: lost Shakespearean? Kenneth Branagh seemed to give up on Shakespeare. But now he's come back to the playwright who made his name, says Dominic Cavendish. (TELEGRAPH)

By Dominic Cavendish, Theatre Critic 7:10AM BST  04 Jul 2013



The other day I found myself spending a fruitless hour pacing the backstreets of Manchester in the hope of stumbling across the as-yet-undisclosed deconsecrated church where Kenneth Branagh (Sir Kenneth since last November) will present his Macbeth as part of the city’s biennial International Festival, which is almost upon us.

The reason wasn't so much journalistic as nostalgic. I hadn't managed to bag a ticket in advance – all availability went in nine minutes – and the fancy possessed me that perhaps if I laid eyes on the building I’d get closer to the spirit of the project.

Closer, if I’m honest, to Ken. Almost unwittingly I found myself succumbing to something I hadn’t experienced for 25 years: what was once known as Branagh-mania. The reflex action whirled me back to my teenage self, queuing outside the Phoenix Theatre, fresh out of school – an age when to be young was pretty groovy but to see the talk of the town giving his Hamlet was very heaven.

In 1988, when you thought of Branagh, you thought of the Bard – and marveled at how sexy, exciting and fresh-minted he had made the “sweet swan of Avon” seem. The Belfast-born boy-wonder, who blazed a self-radicalized trail out of Reading, where his family moved after the start of the Troubles, made those of us half in love with theatre fully smitten, and rather doting on him, too.

Aged 23 and barely out of the swaddling clothes of drama school, he had seized the crowning role of Henry V at the RSC, bestriding its stages like the proverbial colossus – even daring to consult Prince Charles about the role – only to decide afterwards that it would be better if he could run his own company, and lead from the front.

Such certainty, such vigour, such chutzpah! He was the model of the new can-do age while harking back to the mythical world of Olivier (with whom he was ceaselessly compared) and all the great knights fighting the good fight for immortal nights out with every syllable of perfectly enunciated, rapier-sharp Shakespearean utterance.

He hung out with the right crowd – Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi, Richard Briers, Geraldine McEwen. In fact he did more than just hang out with them, he incorporated them into his gang, the Renaissance Theatre Company. The company started its 1988 campaign in Birmingham before sweeping into the West End. Critics and audiences alike adored the company’s Much Ado – in which he twinkled mischievously as Benedick opposite Samantha Bond’s foxy Beatrice.

They delighted at As You Like It, in which he dazzled as the fool Touchstone – the Guardian’s Michael Billington declaring “Mr Branagh actually makes you wait impatiently for every appearance of Shakespeare’s unfunniest clown”. And they kissed the hem of his Hamlet, in which his dazzling Great Dane, as the Financial Times’ reviewer wryly noted, “went to his death with a sardonic dash worthy of Douglas Fairbanks, blond hair kept at bay by the sword-free hand”.




READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/william-shakespeare/10120995/Kenneth-Branagh-lost-Shakespearean.html

Dan Stevens: Heir Meets Heiress By Laura JacobsPhotograph by Jason Bell (VANITY FAIR)

Delightfully goony,” wrote The New York Times of Dan Stevens’s performance in his first professional play. It was 2005, and the young British actor, straight out of Cambridge University, was at Brooklyn Academy of Music, cast as Orlando in Peter Hall’s touring production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. “A breezily confident professional debut,” agreed Variety, calling Stevens’s Orlando a “sweet, swooning lad.” 

It’s been seven years since that play, and now the world is swooning for Stevens. Playing the upstanding Edwardian heartthrob Matthew Crawley in the Masterpiece mega-hit Downton Abbey, he has acquired a global fan base and a high profile. This October he returns to the New York stage in the role of a more complicated heartthrob: Morris Townsend, the handsome bounder in The Heiress, the 1947 adaptation of the Henry James novel of 1880, Washington Square.

READ MORE: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/11/matthew-crawley-downton-abbey

Kenneth Branagh interviewed at Castro Theatre (SF GATE)

The San Francisco Film Society gave this year’s Founder’s Directing Award to Kenneth Branagh on Wednesday night at the Warfield theater, but on Friday night the actor/director, who’s arguably best known from his popular film adaptations of William Shakespeare’s work, was in the glorious Castro Theatre for an onstage interview with CalShakes director Jonathan Moscone. Branagh’s 1988 noir thriller film Dead Again rounded out the evening.

Moscone started off by reading a litany of headlines & quotes about Branagh from over the years — and pointed out how many times the phrase “renaissance man” has used to describe the Belfast-born blonde, who has directed and acted in numerous stage, film and and TV productions. In addition to directing the Bard’s Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost and As You Like It, he also helmed Dead Again, Swan Song, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Magic Flute, Sleuth, and Thor. He co-launched the Renaissance Theater Company in 1987 and has been nominated for five Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards, and has won an Emmy Award and three BAFTA Awards.



He did a lot a relatively young age (Branagh wrote his autobiography at age 28 — the first installment, anyway) and that raised some eyebrows– and possibly prompted some schadenfreude when a rare clunker surfaced. Janet Maslin wrote that of his direction in 1994′s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that “Frankenstein is a cogent reminder that Mr. Branagh’s reputation as a film maker rests primarily on seductive popularizations of Shakespeare.” Ouch. If you’re going to miss the mark, be as inspired as you can and miss it my miles, otherwise you’re not trying, Branagh countered.


READ MORE:  http://blog.sfgate.com/culture/2012/04/29/sfiff-last-friday-kenneth-branagh-interviewed-at-castro-theater/

Benedict Cumberbatch is absolutely brilliant, reading from As You Like It for Google ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQDYt61yHdg&feature=player_embedded#!


First time I have ever cried over a Google ad

Kenneth Branagh Picked To Take Over Jack Ryan Spy Thriller With Chris Pine (CINEMA BLEND)

published: 2012-03-27 15:32:27
Author: Katey Rich

Though he's not set to return for the sequel to his big hit Thor, Kenneth Branagh is apparently not done stepping into the director's chair behind very, very big movies. According to Variety, he's been selected as the new director for the next movie about Jack Ryan, the character created by Tom Clancy who will be revived by Chris Pine.

The untitled film will presumably be in the vein of previous Ryan adventures like The Hunt For Red October and A Clear and Present Danger, and really nothing at all like Branagh's previous films Hamlet, Dead Again and As You Like It (among others).

READ MORE:  http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Kenneth-Branagh-Picked-Take-Over-Jack-Ryan-Spy-Thriller-With-Chris-Pine-30164.html

Spotlight On ANONYMOUS: Shakespeare's Top 5 Lines; videos from prior great Shakespeare films

BroadwayWorld 

Thursday, October 27, 2011; Posted: 01:10 PM - by Pat Cerasaro

Today we continue our special SPOTLIGHT ON series consisting of five entries total, each of which highlight a different facet of the rich and wonderful world of William Shakespeare and all with a particular emphasis on the controversial new feature film that explores the time, place, politics and goings-on of the Elizabethan era and focuses on the possibility that the true author of the esteemed plays we now know may very well have been someone else entirely - Edward de Vere - and how the question of the canon’s true creation then comes into play - ANONYMOUS.

“All the world’s a stage,” after all, so it should come as no surprise that acts of lust, bloodshed and betrayal would exist in the actual life - or even the supposed one - of the man who created the most bloody and thought-provoking tragedies in the history of literature - whoever he may have actually been. Perhaps some brief analysis of the finest leading players, most memorable lines and moments, as well as an exploration of other notable acts of grand betrayal in Shakespeare’s plays will aid us on the journey to understanding the thesis of ANONYMOUS and bring us into a closer relationship with the individual who penned the greatest plays in the English language.

Since we have now analyzed the top ten male and female Shakespearean performers of the last few decades, today we are going to take a look at some of the most famous lines from Shakespeare’s plays and some of the best audiovisual examples of them given full weight in their dramatic context - ROMEO & JULIET, AS YOU LIKE IT, RICHARD III included - with leading players as iconic as Marlon Brando, Kevin Kline, Sir Ian McKellen, Kenneth Branagh and Leonardo DiCaprio!

Be sure to check out the introductory essay in this SPOTLIGHT ON ANONYMOUS series here, as well as the two previous columns in this 5 Top 5 special series singling out the top present day leading men and leading ladies of Shakespeare both onstage and onscreen.

A little bit AMADEUS, with a touch of TIMON OF ATHENS; a dash of DANGEROUS LIASONS and a heaping of HENRY IV: Parts 1 and 2; a generous helping of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE with a wink to MERCHANT OF VENICE; a bit of BARRY LYNDON and a hint at HAMLET; romance and jealousy ala ROMEO & JULIET; Iago-ian sexual intrigue evocative of OTHELLO; maybe even a malicious, macabre moment of murderous violence or two reminiscent of MACBETH; then, all of it collectively taken, shaken, stirred and whipped up into a visual feast only the man behind THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW could possibly conjure up - like THE TEMPEST's Trinculo himself. That is only some of what ANONYMOUS can and could very well turn out to be. Find out for yourself on October 28!

All The Men And Women Merely Players

As the forlorn and disillusioned artist and balladeer Jaques intones in AS YOU LIKE IT, “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players,” and so goes today’s spotlight on some of the greatest and most-quoted Shakespeare lines to date. While every highschooler knows the balcony scene from ROMEO & JULIET and Marc Antony‘s funereal oration for the fallen JULIUS CAESER, perhaps the RICHARD III material - oh so applicable to modern times, particularly the fearless and prescient McKellen version sampled herein - may also ring a bell or three for you, too. Iago is one of Shakespeare’s finest creations and his monologues in OTHELLO are littered with famous phrases and quotable quips, yet his chilling “I am not what I am” cuts closest to the quick insofar as compelling drama revelations are concerned. From Kenneth Branagh to Marlon Brando to Kevin Kline, as well as modern-day Shakespeare stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, these lines are just a handful of the many momentous occasions of poetic brilliance throughout the comedies, tragedies, histories and latter plays and give an idea of the extent of rich imagery and unforgettable rhetoric inherent in the works of the world’s greatest dramatist, William Shakespeare.

#5 AS YOU LIKE IT - “All the world’s a stage…”

Taken from Kenneth Branagh’s recent film adaptation of the gender-bending comedy/drama AS YOU LIKE IT, first seen on HBO in the US but released in cineplexes internationally, here we have noted Shakespeare interpreter Kevin Kline as an award-winning Jaques, delivering a lovely and lilting song before reciting one of the most recognizable and adored speeches from any Shakespeare comedy - or any play at all, for that matter - the Seven Ages Of Man monologue, which is of course otherwise known as “All the world’s a stage….”



#4 ROMEO & JULIET - “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?”

Baz Luhrmann’s simply stunning and unprecedented modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s most classic romantic tragedy shocked and awed audiences when it was released fifteen years ago, yet the power of the Bard’s most potent and youthful speeches come through in full force now as much as then, if not more - particularly in the balcony scene as effectively and innovatively directed by Luhurmann and acted by an assured Claire Danes and a deeply romantic Leonardo DiCaprio, ideally cast in the tragic title roles.




#3 RICHARD III - “Now is the winter of my discontent…”

In perhaps the most ironic staging of any famous and notable Shakespearean line in today’s countdown, see master thespian Sir Ian McKellen deliver Richard III’s immortal “Now is the winter of my discontent” speech as you have most certainly never seen it before: while in the men’s room and making a pretty clear - as it were - comment with an in-your-face visual metaphor to beat the band. What a bustling musical accompaniment we get to go along with the irony, to boot!




#2 OTHELLO - “I am not what I am”

Kenneth Branagh’s worldwide presence as one of the foremost Shakespeare interpreters of the twenty-first century has been firmly established prior here with his appearance as one of our Top Ten Leading Men - if for his Hamlet alone - yet his palpably, desperately sinister portrayal of the diabolical anti-hero Iago in the 1995 film version of OTHELLO is proof that he can conjure considerable dramatic magic even when performing under another director besides himself, as he does so brilliantly and subtly and memorably here in Iago’s most pivotal of his many genius scenes in the complex, sex-drenched tragedy.


#1 JULIUS CAESAR - “Friends, Romans, countrymen…”
Saving the most remembered and riveting for last, here is perhaps the best known Shakespeare line of all - or at least one of the many, many quotable lines that have become a part of our language and culture in the last near-five hundred years - delivered with earth shattering gravitas by one of the greatest and most beloved American actors of all time, Marlon Brando. Here is Mark Antony’s funereal remembrance of his fallen leader, Julius Caesar, and his impassioned words of potential perseverance and, at last, naked honesty, given to the people of Rome.


So, which Shakespeare line do you think will go down in the history books as the most memorable and oft-quoted of all? Surely, more people are familiar with the balcony scene from ROMEO & JULIET than perhaps any other play or musical in history, so, at the end of the day, that may take the prize. Yet, who can help but me moved by Mark Anthony’s heroic words - particularly as performed by the legendary Marlon Brando? As with all of our entries in this special column, limiting the possible entrants to five precludes some of the riches in this collection of the greatest dramatic writing the world has ever known.
Be sure to stay tuned to BroadwayWorld for all things ANONYMOUS as we anticipate its release in movie theaters on October 28. Also, check back for our next Top 5 features, highlighting the Bard's most memorable scenes and moments of deception.

Read more: http://broadwayworld.com/article/Spotlight-On-ANONYMOUS-Shakespeares-Top-5-Lines-20111027#ixzz1cBIUPdF6