The Smell Of The Greasepaint

[poliphilo]

I've never been much of a theatre goer. If I'm honest I find theatre disappointing. 

I wish I'd seen Olivier on stage. I really do. Maybe then I'd have understood why he's supposed to be so great. 

I saw Alec Guinness in one of Alan Bennett's plays about spies. It was awfully talky. I remember the verbal music and a wonderful twitchy, mini-nervous breakdown thing he did at the end.

I saw Antony Hopkins as Lear. Not very good. Hopkins admitted afterwards he really didn't understand what he was doing. The best thing in that production was Anna Massey's Goneril.

 Dorothy Tutin and Alec McCowen as Antony and Cleopatra. Both of them woefully miscast. That's the nearest I've come to falling asleep during a show.

Charlton Heston in the Caine Mutiny, Lauren Bacall in Sweet Bird of Youth:  just because you can fill the screen doesn't mean you can hold the stage.

Good experiences? David Warner's Hamlet- and a sexy, greenwoody As You Like It in Manchester with Janet McTeer as Rosalind.

Comments

[queen-in-autumn.livejournal.com]

Film acting and theater acting are not the same talent. Fine film actors often flounder on stage -- and sometimes I'm sure they've been cast only to bring in ticket buyers who wouldn't bother if it didn't have someone famous in it.

One of my favorite performances was our local theater's production of Arson and Old Lace, which I'd never seen before. I loved it. The wolfling loved it. We rented the movie, and even though I'm a Cary Grant fan, I enjoyed the play much more.

It's all about what the actors bring to the performance -- truth-telling as well as technical skill -- and what the director does to shape it all.

My favorite target for film-director bashing is Geroge Lucas, who can take talented actors, people capable of giving extrordinary performances, and transform them into wooden puppets.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love the movies and am lukewarm about live theatre.

And that's another reason why I'm a bit down on Olivier. I think it's absurd to call a man the greatest actor of the century when he never entirely mastered the movies.

For me the greatest actor of the last century is Jimmy Stewart.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

Another of the GREAT still-living actors is Derek Jacoby - He can do stage and film equally brilliantly. And he's a true gentleman. I met him when he came to a production of Pericles that my company was doing in NYC - He's just a doll.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I like Jacobi too. And he does seem a nice man. There's something twinkly about him.

He narrates In The Night Garden- the new(ish) TV show for very small children. It's a delight.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

He's a lovely man. He was great with my daughter who was then about 10.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He must like children.

Perhaps that's why he got the Night Garden gig.

[msjann65.livejournal.com]

WOW! Coming from you that is quite a statement! I have always enjoyed Stewarts offerings, but it never crossed my mind to nominate him as "greatest. You could be right, though. He had great range and could do almost anything. Plus he had "staying" power, like Cary Grant - from youth to old age.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's the range that convinces me. He was great in comedy, but he was completely convincing as a western hero or as one of those oddly twisted individuals he played for Hitchcock. And what a great filmography- classic after classic- from the Philadelphia story to Vertigo to Anatomy of a Murder!

[kinderheldin.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with all your comments on Olivier. I had to laugh when I read what you wrote here and in another entry.

Salinger's character, Holden Caulfield, calls Olivier a "phony."

Personally, I love Branaugh's Hamlet, although my favorite is Kevin Klein's Hamlet --
http://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Festival-Broadway-Theatre-Archive/dp/B00005NG0C

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see Kevin Kline's version. My favourite of the productions available on DVD is the one with Nicol Williamson and Marianne Faithfull.