(no subject)
Jun. 22nd, 2024 10:24 pmThe 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:
( He's the most annoying man in the world. I love him so much. )
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
( Redfield's account of Day 1 vs Sterne's )
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!
( tragic Brando foreshadowing )
2. The Play/s
So as I mentioned more or less in the midst of all of this I dragged![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.
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:
( He's the most annoying man in the world. I love him so much. )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
( Redfield's account of Day 1 vs Sterne's )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!
( tragic Brando foreshadowing )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.
