Robert Tanitch reviews three theatre books
YEAR OF THE FAT KNIGHT. The Falstaff Diaries by Antony Sher (Nick Hern Books, £16.99). Falstaff is one of the great roles and though there is no such thing as a definitive performance in Shakespeare, the actor who came nearest to it in the 20th century was Ralph Richardson. It was a role Laurence Olivier had wanted to play but after Richardson’s success he didn’t want to do it and risk being second best. Antony Sher, as he is the first to admit, is not the first actor you would think of when casting the Fat Knight and yet he surprised everybody, himself most of all, with his success in Greg Doran’s production for the RSC. It is fascinating to read Sher’s diaries and to be able to follow his progress from first thoughts to first night. It is the most enjoyable book on Falstaff I have read since Dover Wilson’s brilliant Fortunes of Falstaff.
GREAT SHAKESPEARE ACTORS Branagh to Burbage by Stanley Wells (Oxford University Press, £16.99). Here is a record of some of the greatest performances: Garrick’s Hamlet, Siddons’ Volumnia, Macready’s Leontes, Booth’s Hamlet, Irving’s Shylock, etc, etc. 39 actors in all. Wells’s vignette reports will make you wish you had been there. Nothing is more ephemeral than the performances of actors. Gielgud used to say he was grateful there were no filmed recordings of his famous roles, fearing his acting would seem dreadfully old-fashioned to modern audiences. The film of Olivier’s Othello (grossly inferior to his stage performance) will make future audiences wonder why he was so admired in the role. Much better, in a way, are the eye-witness accounts, and especially when they are by actors such as Helen Faucit in the 19th century and by such academics as Stanley Wells in the 20th.
OLIVER! A Dickensian musical by Marc Napolitano (Oxford University Press, £22.99). Consider Yourself One of Us. I doubt if there will be a more academic critique (but aimed to be accessible to non-academic readers) of Lionel Bart’s musical than by the Professor of English at West Point, the United States Military Academy. The book has just won the 2015 Theatre Book Award. There is the great Dickens film by David Lean, with an incomparable cast including Alec Guinness, Robert Newton and Kay Walsh, and there is the great British musical, with the incomparable Ron Moody and Georgia Brown. They are two entirely different things. Bart’s musical gets less and less Dickensian and more and more like the jolly Carol Reed film the bigger it has to get to fill Drury Lane Theatre and The London Palladium. Oliver! was at its most Dickensian when it was small and intimate at the New Theatre (now Noel Coward Theatre) and it was directed by Peter Coe and had a wonderful set by Sean Kenny and Moody picked a pocket or two and Brown sang As Long As He Needs Me.
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