Why we no longer make Shakespearean stars
When a great Shakespearean actor imparts his immortal lines, it’s as if the words are tumbling forth spontaneously, refining our understanding of the play, deepening our appreciation of the human condition, even defining our age. It can also feel dizzily akin to being in communion with Shakespeare’s mind, which – to quote Hazlitt – contained “a universe of thought and feeling”.
Where are the great young Shakespeareans of today? When Laurence Olivier took the lead in Henry V on screen in 1944, he rallied wartime morale and affirmed Shakespeare at the heart of our national story. When Kenneth Branagh blazed a trail in the role 40 years later at the RSC, he was hailed as the “new Olivier” (so taken were Charles and Diana with his performance that it’s suggested that Prince Harry was so named as a consequence).
Back then, Shakespeare was still at the epicentre of our cultural life. Although Charles is now on the throne, and lending institutional gravitas to Shakespeare on stage (he’s patron of the RSC), the landscape seems much less fecund, even worryingly patchy.
When Ian McKellen fell off stage last month playing Falstaff, an accident which brought his stint in Player Kings to a premature close, it wasn’t just an alarming moment for him and his many fans but an alarm bell more generally. At 85, he’s our greatest living active Shakespearean, but it’s as if he has been holding the line beyond the limits of endurance; his equally venerated contemporaries Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi are now no longer in the market for these stage roles. Where are their successors?
One reason, I think, why there was so much ire around the Tom Holland-led Romeo and Juliet – which generated the most bitterly divided critical response in years – is that Holland seemed to epitomise a new breed of have-a-go Shakespearean. Here he was – 27 going on 28 – landing in the heart of the West End, essentially on the back of his global renown as Spider-Man.
You could argue that director Jamie Lloyd calculatedly tailored the performance to the debutant’s inexperience – the truncated text was often delivered in little more than an amplified mumble. The provocation undoubtedly got people talking. But effectively parachuting in a famous face is a far cry from the days when hopefuls clambered up the ropes.
The likes of Dench, Jacobi and McKellen all embraced Shakespeare as if their lives depended on it. They understood that besides demanding fleet intelligence, physical stamina and a substantial emotional and vocal range, the complex characters and the demands of the language required slogging application. From there, the world was your oyster. Michael Parkinson’s 1975 interview with Helen Mirren remains notorious on account of his sexism – but what’s striking is that she’s introduced as a creature of the stage, the new queen of the RSC.
At least you can say that Lloyd’s next venture – announced this week – which presents Shakespeare at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane for the first time since The Tempest in 1958 (starring John Gielgud) – nods to that traditional route. Yes, Sigourney Weaver, playing Prospero, represents Hollywood A-list casting (albeit she was last in Shakespeare off-Broadway in 1986).
But Tom Hiddleston, cast opposite Hayley Attwell in Much Ado About Nothing, did earn his spurs in Shakespeare. His talent was spotted by Cheek by Jowl, and he was later an intense Coriolanus at the Donmar (2013) and a commended Hamlet, too, albeit only briefly at Rada (2017), his alma mater, directed by Branagh. The latter gave him the “red book”, a copy of Hamlet passed down the generations from the Victorian actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson in a ritual of anointed inheritance.
Even so, he can hardly be said to have yet proved himself as Olivier’s true inheritor. And if he cut his teeth on Shakespeare, many of his peers seem only to be flossing with it.
One glaring example of this is Ben Whishaw, so rivetingly febrile as Hamlet 20 years ago, aged 23, at the Old Vic. Distinguished work on the BBC’s Hollow Crown series aside, that early stage potential hasn’t been fulfilled. Likewise, Eddie Redmayne was a brilliantly sensitive Richard II in 2011 at the Donmar; the crown was there for the taking, but he hasn’t seized it. Benedict Cumberbatch, who spent two formative seasons at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, caused a stampede at the Barbican box office when he played Hamlet in 2015, but hasn’t capitalised on that sensation.
Likewise, his Sherlock co-star Andrew Scott played the part at the Almeida with equally measured finesse but it’s still his only Shakespeare stage credit. Most bafflingly, in 2012 Matt Smith – who followed that ever-exciting (RSC alumnus) Shakespeare stalwart David Tennant into the Tardis – told The Telegraph that the Bard was on his to-do list; since then not a squeak.
What a contrast to Simon Russell Beale, Ralph Fiennes and Harriet Walter, who still commit to Shakespeare work as if it were the central thrust of their careers.
What’s going on? Partly, streaming has made screen-work more lucrative, and so young superstars can be more picky. The ladder to Shakespearean acclaim is also less stable than it was: touring and regional theatre have suffered decline, while the big organisations haven’t been bastions of star-making excellence.
The National under Peter Hall, Richard Eyre and Nick Hytner carried the torch (with Adrian Lester’s Henry V a bright flame at the start of Hytner’s regime) but Rufus Norris has let it slip a little. In Stratford, after the upheavals at the end of Adrian Noble’s reign in 2003, the RSC reasserted an ensemble ethos under Michael Boyd, with consolidation the watchword under Gregory Doran.
Some decent actors emerged in this period – take Jonathan Slinger (a fine Richard III) or Jonjo O’Neill (a memorable Orlando) – but catching public attention? That was often left to the battle-hardened Antony Sher (Doran’s late husband).
Perhaps the biggest shift in this time has been the rise of gender-flipping and gender-blind casting; though there is historical precedent, the vogue has broadened the range of leading roles for women, and inevitably shrunk the standard available pool for men.
The debate around the Globe, with its content warnings and seminars on anti-racism, highlights a wider cultural tension in Shakespeare performance. On the one hand, the onus has always been on moving things forward – a shift nicely caught by Jack Thorne’s The Motive and the Cue, when, in 1964, Gielgud “hands over” Hamlet, the part he once made his melodious own, to Richard Burton, who’s eager to put his own wilder stamp on it.
What afflicts the scene today, though, is perhaps a new reticence about putting a forceful imprimatur on the roles and the canon tout court; the idea of dominance can itself seem patrician. Who hasn’t been able to play the role, rather than who has bagged it and how they play it, is oft the nagging question. The “star” becomes a statement of representational intent; the director often has free rein, the actor is more on a leash.
Michelle Terry, who defied convention by playing Henry V at the Open Air Theatre (these days rarely making time for Shakespeare as of old) ended up in the firing line for taking on Richard III at the Globe this year, now the presumed domain of disabled actors with the right lived experience.
Yet we need to resist the creeping prevalence of singular turns over sustained involvement, and while diversity and inclusion are crucial they’re not the only benchmark. It will be a gathering tragedy if the most exciting crop of Shakespearean players fall victim to a zeal for egalitarianism, however well-meant. The clock is ticking; Branagh was only 28 when he put Henry V on screen; in 1958, Gielgud was 53, his defining glories behind him.
There are still grounds for some hope. Taking to the stage in Pericles at Stratford this week is Alfred Enoch, who has not only been stealthily accruing Shakespearean experience (he was the best thing in the Globe’s socially worthy 2017 Romeo and Juliet) but has sensible things to say about the work itself, recently telling The Telegraph he isn’t that interested in topical parallels: “You don’t want to box the play in if you can help it.”
Perhaps at 35, he can be a model for the future; graceful, self-effacing and in conscientious thrall to the work. Such quiet stars need nurturing and flaunting. Every generation will lose some of its stage giants too soon – (Daniel Day-Lewis crumbling mid-Hamlet, Anthony Hopkins tiring after Lear, Helen McCrory, a dazzling Lady Macbeth, gone before her time) but generationally there needs to be a new mood of dedication, and support for it.
Coleridge famously said of Edmund Kean (1787-1833): “Seeing him act was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.”
Styles have changed but we still yearn for that revelatory lightning. Let’s hope some of it strikes with force at Drury Lane.
‘The Tempest’ runs at Theatre Royal Drury Lane from Dec 7, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ from Feb 10; lwtheatres.co.uk
