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Jun. 22nd, 2024 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe Emails from an Actor readalong experience wrapped up a few months ago, and given that as a whole it's consumed more of my brain space than anything else I've read this year, and also that I went to go see the National Theater Live performance of The Motive and the Cue AND watched a recording of the original Richard Burton Hamlet in order to continue having more of the experience, and also that I just placed an order for a copy of the anniversary edition of Letters from an Actor in sheer appreciation of all the joy it brought me, I probably should spend some time writing a few words.
1. The Book/s
When I first posted about joining this readalong back in February, I had already become moderately obsessed with Mr. William Redfield. Over the subsequent months this became increasingly a problem. I have never been an RPF person, but I want to study this real human man like a bug under a microscope and I really appreciate that he wrote a whole book about his passions and anxieties that allows me to do just this. A representative sequence from my friend Bill, discussing his endless pursuit of John Gielgud in an effort to get personalized direction:
Like it's truly worth it just to acquire Letters from an Actor and meet Mr. Redfield on his own terms. I cannot more highly recommend the experience. HOWEVER the experience is really heightened when you read it in parallel with the other book about the production, with occasional excerpts from Gielgud and Burton's diaries and interviews as they relate thrown in for color, and get contrasts such as
FROM REDFIELD
FROM STERNE (the guy who actually brought a tape recorder)
Gielgud's ideas about Hamlet as reported are interesting in their own right; but Gielgud's ideas about Hamlet as reported AND THEN REFRACTED through the highly individual and inaccurate perceptions and anxieties of his cast members ... the whole is more than the sum of its parts, if you follow me.
Also midway through this whole experience the person putting together the read-along uncovered some more lore -- or at least unverified gossip -- about Mr. Redfield's relationship with Marlon Brando, which honestly wouldn't be relevant to the whole readalong experience if Redfield didn't keep putting things about Marlon Brando in his book! the book that's the reason that they stopped being friends!
2. The Play/s
So as I mentioned more or less in the midst of all of this I draggedgenarti and another friend out with me to go see The Motive and the Cue, which is a play about Burton and Gielgud and this Hamlet that is very clearly and very specifically inspired by Redfield's book. I know it is inspired by Redfield's book because they keep putting in quotes that are direct from Redfield, that are very specific opinions that Redfield has and shares.
However! Mostly they're not putting them in Redfield's mouth, though Redfield is a minor character in the play and he does get to slip in a monologue about Marlon Brando, in a present just for me. But most of his interesting opinions about acting and about Hamlet are given to either Gielgud or Burton -- there's a whole scene of Gielgud and Burton debating how Hamlet feels about stabbing Polonius and it's all just Bill's ideas, but he's not important enough in this play to voice them -- and simultaneously I do understand why (this is a play about Gielgud and Burton, people know the names Gielgud and Burton) and feel that this is doing my man deeply dirty (if a guy has a lot of interesting ideas and writes them all down while working with some more famous people, it feels a bit rude to take all of them and put them in the mouths of those more famous people.)
I enjoyed The Motive and the Cue a lot; I thought Johnny Flynn and Mark Gatiss did really impressive work as Burton and Gielgud, Flynn especially doing a fantastic job navigating between "acting Hamlet genuinely well" and "convincingly getting annoyed and frustrated and acting Hamlet badly on purpose," and they give the actress playing Elizabeth Taylor some genuinely interesting things to do, and of course I love to watch two hours of people getting overinvested in theatrical meta! This is catnip to me at all times! But there's a large part of me -- which truly might just be the part of me that is obsessed with William Redfield and can't help but feel he was done a bit dirty -- that wishes that instead of narrowing the focus down to these two famous guys and giving them some issues to fight about, we had instead gotten the actual plot of Redfield's book, which is the story of what it feels like to be part of a communal enterprise that is centered around these two guys who draw all the air out of the room by virtue of their star status. To me, that's a more compelling story than the daddy issues the play has decided to give Richard Burton.
All that said if you have a chance to see The Motive and the Cue you should absolutely see it and then come back and tell me what you thought about it. If you read either Letters from an Actor or the fully compiled Emails from an Actor (you can get access to the whole thing as a PDF now by subscribing to the substack!), ditto. And I apologize in advance for all the times in the future that I will likely read an actor's memoir and go "this was so great! also, I miss the William Redfield Experience," because that's likely to go on for some time.
1. The Book/s
When I first posted about joining this readalong back in February, I had already become moderately obsessed with Mr. William Redfield. Over the subsequent months this became increasingly a problem. I have never been an RPF person, but I want to study this real human man like a bug under a microscope and I really appreciate that he wrote a whole book about his passions and anxieties that allows me to do just this. A representative sequence from my friend Bill, discussing his endless pursuit of John Gielgud in an effort to get personalized direction:
Once I had absorbed the hard fact of Gielgud’s impending departure, I embarked upon a cagey plan. I would not wait for him to come to me. I would not approach him in front of others. I would be sneaky and desperate. I would get my direction by hook or crook.
From that day forward, I lay in wait for him like a cutpurse, poised to seduce a penny’s-worth of wisdom from his carmine lips. Let him take an unfamiliar route through the catacombs of the O’Keefe and I am there—curled and lurking. Out of my shadows I burst with a cheerful and cogent question, ignoring his horrified shudder. “Good evening, John!” I cry. “Did you like the white sweater I wore tonight? And what about the first scene with Richard? I played it differently. It’s better, I think!”
The agony of St. Bartholomew comes into his eyes and he answers me like an actor in a passion play. “White is a blinding color. I could not see your face. The acting was splendid.”
He moves on to someone else’s dressing room, but I am after him swiftly. “What about my posture? Is it improving, John?”
He does not break his stride but there is a timeless sadness in his voice. “You have a fine, straight back. Most refreshing. Try not to overuse it.”
He places a hand on a doorknob and I all but claw at his fingers. “Listen to this, John! I’d like to wear an ascot scarf in my opening scene. Some mad little thing to give it a flair!”
His attention is finally arrested. He turns in place and there is a suggestion of tears in his eyes. “Please,” he croons to me, “no mad little thing. We suffer cruelly from mad little things. Let us have fewer mad little things. Don’t worry. I beg you not to worry. You need no ascot scarf. You’re such a good actor.”
Like it's truly worth it just to acquire Letters from an Actor and meet Mr. Redfield on his own terms. I cannot more highly recommend the experience. HOWEVER the experience is really heightened when you read it in parallel with the other book about the production, with occasional excerpts from Gielgud and Burton's diaries and interviews as they relate thrown in for color, and get contrasts such as
FROM REDFIELD
Some of you may well ask: why a ‘rehearsal’ production? Why not merely modern dress? I think this: Like all of you, I have so often seen a final run-through, before the costumes and sets arrive, which had a drive and simplicity and . . . oh, an ease, somehow . . . which the actors never got back once the stone columns and marble tables came on and all the yards and yards of red velvet and blue silk and ruffs and farthingales were tossed about their simple bodies. So much for traditional productions. Very well, then, why not contemporary clothing and drawing-room sets? Because it’s even more depressing really, and I’ve seen so much of it. I’m sure you have, too. Claudius drinks a martini and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter with frightfully tight umbrellas, to say nothing of their trousers, and Laertes offers Ophelia a Lucky Strike from a gold cigarette case and they both puff away while Polonius talks of the French . . . It makes the audience uneasy when they’ve come to see Shakespeare. What I’d like to do is to free the verse from all its fustian trappings, but I see no point in obscuring it some other way merely to be modern. Edwardian productions and Victorian productions are perfectly fine, but they’ve been done to death in the last ten years and the novelty’s gone.
Richard and I have discussed this endlessly, and finally wondered if it wouldn’t be a neat trick to do a run-through. As few props and gimmicks as possible. A pre-dress rehearsal run-through of a traditional production put on just before the sets have been erected and the costumes fitted. We will all have to be careful of what we wear, but I have so often been fascinated by what actors wear to rehearsals. Have you noticed that what an actor wears on the first day usually indicates how he feels about his part? One even gets a hint of how he feels about himself. Weeks later, we see the actors wearing things entirely different, and we all know why, don’t we? It’s a form of evolution in the shortest possible time. The actor changes his mind about his role so many times, and whenever he does he changes his clothes. I would like to keep this production lively and quick and still in rehearsal. Granville-Barker used to say that Hamlet was a permanent rehearsal, and I believe that. I would like you to wear what you would normally wear to rehearsals, and sooner or later we’ll all hit upon something. I think it could work out quite well. Don’t you?”
The company showed its approval by applauding and so did I, but I have a reservation. Not about the fundamental idea, which I think is bold and beautiful, but about the way it is being handled. The theatre is not a place so magical that wishing will make things so. To imagine thirty separate actors independently choosing not only the right sort of “casual” clothes for themselves but then being able to vary colors and styles properly with their twenty-nine colleagues is wishful thinking in the extreme, and I told Jessica Levy so over five weeks ago. To pull off such a feat in Toronto—with each actor four hundred miles from a tailor he trusts—is next door to impossible. The hardest costume design conceivable is what we call “rehearsal clothes”—more difficult by far than suits of mail, Elizabethan-Tudor, or Louis Sixteen. One man’s notion of rehearsal clothing conflicts with another’s, and it takes but one contradiction to throw the scheme off center. I am also told that our costume coordinator (note that she is not called a designer) does not go on salary for ten days to two weeks—a mortally false economy. We should all have been discussing these “rehearsal clothes” for months. Oh, get thee behind me, Cassandra.
FROM STERNE (the guy who actually brought a tape recorder)
We have had brilliant productions of many of the classics in modern dress, but I have always felt that when the actors begin to have revolvers, cigarette holders, umbrellas, and all sorts of things which the audience associates with other periods, these are distractions. Yet if we have a sword strapped round us as we do at rehearsal while we are wearing trousers instead of tights, after a few minutes nobody will notice the trousers.
Now let’s have a look at the model of the set. The rear doors are used only when we have entrances from the outside—when the Players come, when the Ghost appears, or in the Fortinbras scene. There will be different directions for the movement of the actors in the platform scenes from those in the court scenes, in order to give an illusion of different locale when the scene changes. For example, the first platform scene moves diagonally across the stage, and the first court scene moves straight up and down, or horizontally. For the costuming, I am going to have Jane [Greenwood], the costumer, watch very closely at rehearsals to see if we should wear duffle coats and fur hats and boots and things, and if we see people wearing something effective, we’ll try to copy them, or have people use their own clothes. I’m always fascinated by the way actors try to get into a part. Don’t feel that you must dress in rehearsal clothes that make you look the part, but dress in the clothes that help to make you feel the part.
Well, now let’s start reading and see how far we get this afternoon. If anybody feels strongly about cuts, or if there are things that I’ve cut out that they would love to have back, I will do my best to put them back. The play should begin like a pistol shot. We don’t want the usual striking bells and wind to give atmosphere. Francisco believes he has seen the Ghost and shouts out “Who’s there?” suddenly and with great force. All right, let’s begin.
Gielgud's ideas about Hamlet as reported are interesting in their own right; but Gielgud's ideas about Hamlet as reported AND THEN REFRACTED through the highly individual and inaccurate perceptions and anxieties of his cast members ... the whole is more than the sum of its parts, if you follow me.
Also midway through this whole experience the person putting together the read-along uncovered some more lore -- or at least unverified gossip -- about Mr. Redfield's relationship with Marlon Brando, which honestly wouldn't be relevant to the whole readalong experience if Redfield didn't keep putting things about Marlon Brando in his book! the book that's the reason that they stopped being friends!
I once got drunk enough to tell Marlon Brando that being a good or bad actor had nothing to do with success in motion pictures. He stared at me in silence for so long a time that I finally became embarrassed. After all, I was in his house and it is a very expensive house. I was also drinking his scotch. [...] I have not yet been banned from Brando’s house, but the day may come. Consistency, after all, is the hobgoblin of little minds. And Brando, carp though you may, qualifies in my eyes as a very large mind indeed.
2. The Play/s
So as I mentioned more or less in the midst of all of this I dragged
genarti and another friend out with me to go see The Motive and the Cue, which is a play about Burton and Gielgud and this Hamlet that is very clearly and very specifically inspired by Redfield's book. I know it is inspired by Redfield's book because they keep putting in quotes that are direct from Redfield, that are very specific opinions that Redfield has and shares.However! Mostly they're not putting them in Redfield's mouth, though Redfield is a minor character in the play and he does get to slip in a monologue about Marlon Brando, in a present just for me. But most of his interesting opinions about acting and about Hamlet are given to either Gielgud or Burton -- there's a whole scene of Gielgud and Burton debating how Hamlet feels about stabbing Polonius and it's all just Bill's ideas, but he's not important enough in this play to voice them -- and simultaneously I do understand why (this is a play about Gielgud and Burton, people know the names Gielgud and Burton) and feel that this is doing my man deeply dirty (if a guy has a lot of interesting ideas and writes them all down while working with some more famous people, it feels a bit rude to take all of them and put them in the mouths of those more famous people.)
I enjoyed The Motive and the Cue a lot; I thought Johnny Flynn and Mark Gatiss did really impressive work as Burton and Gielgud, Flynn especially doing a fantastic job navigating between "acting Hamlet genuinely well" and "convincingly getting annoyed and frustrated and acting Hamlet badly on purpose," and they give the actress playing Elizabeth Taylor some genuinely interesting things to do, and of course I love to watch two hours of people getting overinvested in theatrical meta! This is catnip to me at all times! But there's a large part of me -- which truly might just be the part of me that is obsessed with William Redfield and can't help but feel he was done a bit dirty -- that wishes that instead of narrowing the focus down to these two famous guys and giving them some issues to fight about, we had instead gotten the actual plot of Redfield's book, which is the story of what it feels like to be part of a communal enterprise that is centered around these two guys who draw all the air out of the room by virtue of their star status. To me, that's a more compelling story than the daddy issues the play has decided to give Richard Burton.
All that said if you have a chance to see The Motive and the Cue you should absolutely see it and then come back and tell me what you thought about it. If you read either Letters from an Actor or the fully compiled Emails from an Actor (you can get access to the whole thing as a PDF now by subscribing to the substack!), ditto. And I apologize in advance for all the times in the future that I will likely read an actor's memoir and go "this was so great! also, I miss the William Redfield Experience," because that's likely to go on for some time.
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Date: 2024-06-23 04:13 am (UTC)I agree that the actual plot of Redfield's book sounds more compelling than Richard Burton's (possibly unreal) daddy issue
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Date: 2024-06-23 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-25 05:34 pm (UTC)- actual bio Dad Jenkins (alcoholic tough mining man, A Character; similarities to Richard are obvious, and he felt always guilty for leaving Dad and Dad's name in favour of other Dad and a life with a future)
- his oldest sister Cis' husband Elfed (Cis and Elfed did the actual raising of kid Richard, given the mother was dead and Dad was busy drinking, and kid!Richard did not get along well with Elfed, considering him stuffy; also felt competitive about sister Cis)
- adopted Dad Philip Burton (was kid Richard's schoolmaster, saw the potential in son of drunken Welsh mining man, talked Cis and Elfed into allowing the adoption, sent Richard to Oxford)
Now it's been decades since I've read Bragg's biography of Burton, but I dimly seem to recall that Philip having sided with the first Mrs. Burton (aka the one dumped for Elizabeth Taylor) meant there was a rift, and that Richard B. didn't get the hang of Hamlet in that production with Gielgud until Elizabeth Taylor contacted Philip and gave him a passionate "he needs you, please come and reconcile" and then the first Mrs. Burton when asked by Philip said this was okay by her, too, so off Philip went, a reconcilation ensued, and Burton played a good Hamlet. At least that's how Bragg told it in my memory.
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Date: 2024-06-23 04:36 am (UTC)I am WHEEZING. I have a copy of the more sober book, which I remember as very thorough, but omg your guy is funny.
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Date: 2024-06-23 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-23 07:28 am (UTC)This is only relevant in the sense of also being theatrical meta, but...
...there is a quite recent play entitled Born With Teeth playing this year (as in opened in March, runs through October) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Two actors. One is Shakespeare, one is Marlowe. They are working on the Henry VI plays. They are getting tangled up in high-level Elizabethan intrigue. And the playwright is also giving us scarily hot Will/Kit slashfic right out in front of God and everybody.
I saw that play a couple of weeks ago. The trailer on the Web page is amazing, but the full show (90 minutes, no break) is more so. I would not, before seeing it, have thought myself a Will/Kit 'shipper, but now? I can see it.
(Why yes, I am suggesting that a cross-country trip to Ashland might be worthwhile. There are, after all, a bunch of other very good plays in the repertory. And I am already booked to see five of them come September.)
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Date: 2024-06-23 09:48 pm (UTC)On the other hand, if someone were to email me at petralemaitre at gmail, I could hook them up.
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Date: 2024-06-23 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-23 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-23 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-23 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-24 12:40 am (UTC)And thanks for your The Motive and the Cue report! I haven't been able to see it yet, but I am Judging it. :( Come on, at least let Bill narrate!
Oh, and I think you'll really appreciate Adam Redfield's afterword in the anniversary edition - there's new Brando lore. :D
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Date: 2024-06-24 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-24 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-24 01:39 am (UTC)(& I am extremely looking forward to your Motive and the Cue thoughts whenever you get a chance to see it!)
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Date: 2024-06-24 03:05 am (UTC)(I'm dying to see it! Fingers crossed for a Broadway run or online release sooner rather than later...)
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Date: 2024-06-24 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-26 05:04 pm (UTC)