CRITICS are often snooty about amateur theatre. Kenneth Tynan described it as ‘an exhibitionist alternative to bridge’ and James Agate, in his heyday at The Sunday Times, used to say that the difference between amateur and professional actors was that the former lacked the technique to convey emotion when they felt it, whereas the latter had the skill to express it even when they didn’t.
Now, a critic, Michael Coveney, has come along with a richly entertaining and informative book, Questors, Jesters and Renegades (Methuen), that at last does justice to the massive contribution of amateur theatre to national life.
One of Mr Coveney’s sharpest points is that almost all the best actors started as amateurs. Dame Judi Dench made her debut in the 1951 staging of the York Mystery Cycle, starting with a small role and graduating, in later years, to the Virgin Mary; in 1952, Sir Ian McKellen played a page in a Bolton Little Theatre production of Emlyn Williams’s Spring 1600, a forerunner of the film Shakespeare in Love; Sir Michael Gambon was a Vickers apprentice engineer who first trod the boards at the Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre in Crayford and at the Unity Theatre in London, where he was Buck Mulligan in Joyce’s Bloomsday; Sir Kenneth Branagh, patron of the Little Theatre Guild, was a 16 year old when he joined The Progress Theatre in Reading and, as he records in the book, went on to make a total hash of his job as a stage manager.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 18, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 18, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds