Henry V...
Nov. 22nd, 2007 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fajrdrakoYesterday I had the interesting task of going through old clippings in the archives of the theatre where I work, looking for reviews of our plays from the past - preferably the distant past, but I didn't find much before the 1940s.
I did however find some interesting things, like this picture of Christopher Plummer as Henry V, on the cover of Saturday Night magazine from June 23, 1956.
The accompanying article reads like hagiography and therefore isn't very interesting. It compares Plummer embarrassingly often to John Barrymore, and makes a rather strained extended parallel between Plummer and Henry V, whom he was playing at Stratford that year. Yeah, right, a mid 20th century Canadian actor and a medieval warrior-Prince - I can barely tell them apart myself.
The article does have a couple of good bits:
Once, while appearing at the Brae Manor Playhouse at Knowlton, Que., in The Rivals1, he forgot a line and didn't get a prompt. With no embarrassment, he paced over to the prompter's box and said quite confidently and audibly, "What's that line, dear?", then went on with the performance as if nothing had happened.And:
It is, of course, difficult to know what any man of 26 is "really like".2 Plummer hovers between conceit and modesty. His language like his personality emphasizes the unexpected. He carries the unmistakable mark of breeding,3 but frequently he will salt his remarks with popular four letter words. He is ambitious, but not recklessly so. He knows where he is going, or at least where he wants to goI wonder if he got there.
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1 How I wish I could have seen that show!
2 What an ageist remark. Are people any less themselves at 26 than at any other age?
3 Breeding? Breeding? This is a publication of 1956; it reads like 1856.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 03:00 am (UTC)Frankly, I think he'd be beautifully cast as the two Rudolfs. And in 1961 he would have been about thirty, right? That would be worth seeing.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 12:03 pm (UTC)Breeding? Breeding> This is a publication of 1956; it reads like 1856.
I sincerely wish more young people nowadays gave evidence of it. There is too much celebration of boorishness, a lack of gentility in social interaction. Binge-drinking and general coarseness.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 01:52 pm (UTC)My comment on breeding was not a comment on manners, but on the Victorian implication that by 'breeding', manners were genetically inbred.
In these parts, the general level of consideration for others and gentility in general is rather high. Public drunkenness is rare, except maybe in university circles. I know people who drink for pleasure but most of my friends and acquaintances drink very seldom.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 04:53 pm (UTC)I don't go out at all in the evenings and I wouldn't go into the town centre in the evening, especially at a weekend. It's now more or less a staple that young people (professionals, students and yobs alike) go out with the express purpose of getting drunk. It appalls me. It's something that's developed in the past 15-20 years. When I was a student, if one of your number got legless on an evening out, it was an embarrassment.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 05:06 pm (UTC)It could be also part of the old Ontario tradition - somewhat puritanical where drinking is concerned. In all my growing up years, everyone went to Hull to get drunk. (You may laugh at the irony -?) Because Hull was just over the river in Quebec, it had different drinking laws, much more liberal, and bars were open later. And of course these bars were known for a certain rowdiness.
I don't know if it's still true. Not so much. Not nearly so much.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 06:22 pm (UTC)