A real-time readalong of two books chronicling the creation of the John Gielgud-Richard Burton production of Hamlet. Now complete, but feel free to subscribe if you're finding this late and want to backread! See pinned post for details.
Do you like Hamlet? John Gielgud? Richard Burton? Theatre and film history? The process of putting on a show? Snarky, insightful, really entertaining commentary on all of the above? Then you're in the right place! Emails from an Actor is a (mostly) real-time readalong of John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in Hamlet: A Journal of Rehearsals and Letters from an Actor, two books written about the 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet. Both have been out of print for decades, but I acquired PDFs, extracted the text, edited it, and now they exist in accessible form, woohoo! (Edit: Letters from an Actor is coming into print again on March 5! I'm still going ahead with the emails, but buy it when it's out!)
John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in Hamlet: A Journal of Rehearsals by Richard L. Sterne, is, well, what it says on the tin! Sterne, who played the Gentleman and understudied Laertes, secretly tape recorded rehearsals, going so far as to hide under a platform for a private rehearsal with just Gielgud and Burton. The book summarizes and quotes heavily from those recordings. It also includes a prompt-script for the production with descriptions of the blocking and acting choices - I haven't edited that part yet, but I plan to.
Letters from an Actor by William Redfield, who played Guildenstern, is less objective but way more fun. I love it so much that when I first got it in 2006, I just about killed my hands typing up quotes to share on Livejournal. Redfield had an extensive career in theatre, film, and TV. He's best known for playing Dale Harding in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but if you happen to be a musical nerd, you might know him as Mercury in Cole Porter's Out of This World. (Also relevant to musical nerds: Alfred Drake as Claudius, John Cullum as Laertes, and George Rose as the Gravedigger!) The book is structured as letters to a friend, Robert Mills, who wanted to know about life in the theatre. Redfield took Mills from his audition through opening night on Broadway, relating thoughts and anecdotes about his profession along the way. As in Hamlet, Richard Burton plays a major role, with stories of his own and a glimpse into his life with Elizabeth Taylor in the days surrounding their (first) wedding. The rehearsal process was frustrating for Redfield, and with all the time he and his Rosencrantz spend feeling lost, the book kind of comes across as a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead AU.
I'll be sending out the journal entries and letters on the days they were written and/or are about, with just a little bit of jumping around in time. Subscribe here! I made it private for copyright reasons, but don't worry, I'll approve everyone. The emails will start with some introductory material on January 24 and continue through an epilogue in mid-April. Follow this blog for some extras! And reblogs, if people end up talking about this! Tag me or use the tag "emails from an actor" if you want me to see something.
I'm so excited to share these books with people! But mostly Letters from an Actor. Seriously, it's so good.
Hey, has anyone been missing William Redfield's Opinions? Because guess what I found 3,829 words of on the Internet Archive. :D It starts on page 20 of this issue of P.S., a very short-lived magazine. Or, read it below!
***
The Audience is Dead
by William Redfield
At the curtain of Clifford Odetsâ electrifying âWaiting For Leftyâ the cast shouted âStrike! Strike! Strike!â and so did the audience. They were alive, then, those shouting savages. Half of them stood four-square against unions, but the eveningâs drama had grabbed them where the hairs are short and they responded. They had never heard of hip or the big beat. They were gullible, emotional, excitable, and faithfulâthe audiences of the 30s. Their counterparts of the 1960s, to put it bluntly, are over-sophisticated bores.
Nearly all the wits and critics who comment upon the Broadway scene have spoken tirelessly on Whatâs Wrong With Todayâs Theatre. Plays, actors, box-office men, ushers, and even concessionaires have had a thorough working over. But the audienceâthe ticket-buying group which sits to watch the playâhas been largely ignored. What Oscar Hammerstein II called âThe Big Black Giantâ is perhaps the least understood factor in the theatrical equation as well as the most crucial. Has audience response changed in the last 30 years? Yes. Has that change anything to do with the decline of Broadway? With all due regard for other elements involved, the answer is Yes again.
In September of 1936 the brothers Shubert presented a farce-comedy at the Booth Theatre entitled âSwing Your Lady.â It was about as distinguished as Ann-Margretâs latest movie, yet it ran for over 100 performances to chuckling audiences. The plot concerned a professional wrestler (female) and her brood of hillbilly children. Would there be an audience for such a play today? The question is inwardly rhetorical and outwardly absurd.
In 1931, the Group Theatre produced a play called â1931ââwhich seems fair enoughâbut on Opening Night, one audience member stood up in the balcony to shout: âHooray for the Soviet Union!â The cast was basking in curtain calls at the time and Mr. Franchot Tone, ignoring the leftÂwing implications of the play, stepped forward and shook an angry fist at the offensive balcony. âHooray for the United States!â he shouted back. Politics aside, can you imagine such an exchange in a Broadway playhouse circa 1965? You can? You must believe very theatrically in civil rights.
In 1928, Eugene OâNeillâs âThe Great God Brownâ ran for eight months on Broadway despite luke-warm reviews. Even a bad rifleman could have dispatched elk in the orchestra at every performance, but the balcony seats went consistently clean. In other words, people of limited pocketbook were buying the play. Highbrows were low on it but middlebrows and lowbrows thought it pretty hot stuff. At one performance, Mr. Lawrence Langner overheard two young ladies discussing the play. âItâs awfully dramatic, isnât it?â said one. âYeah,â said her friend, âbut itâs good.â
Both girls spoke with Bronx-ish accents and both were dressed as cheaply and plainly as thirty-a-week shop-girls. Mr. Langner was deeply impressed and so am I. Where are such playgoers now? I wish I knew, as does every producer in New York, but Iâm willing to bet that the same two lower-income ladies also saw âSwing Your Ladyâ in 1936 and even â1931â in 1931. Perhaps they didnât like them very much, but they saw them. Today they are doubtless stay-at-home grandmothers watching âBewitched,â âBonanza,â and âThe Andy Williams Show.â For a certainty, neither has seen a Broadway production since âThe Hot Mikado.â But worse than that, their grand-daughters havenât either.
Broadwayâs old-timers and middle-timers grumble a good deal about modern acting (âThey scratch and they mumbleâ); modern plays (âFour letter words and fagsâ); and modern tickets (âToo expensive and too hard to getâ). These are perfectly good grumbles but being a young old-timer (Iâm 38), I would like to add a further grumble of my own: the modem audience. It too has changed and very much for the worse, nor am I entirely persuaded that the chicken came before the egg. Apropos of chickens as well as churns, todayâs Broadway audience is composed largely of butter-and-egg men who want the dancing girls brought on as soon as possible and who cannot understand why there are so many dancing boys. These partially dead salesmen are enticed to the theatre by fearless flacks and PR men who have seen everything but monkeys making doughnuts and wouldnât pay cash money to see Mandy Rice-Davies in Richtofenâs Flying Circus unless it meant a contract to promote World War III. The overwhelmingly tired businessman has been so heroically publicized lately, one wonders why he doesnât go back to his hotel and to bed. Tired or not, the businessman is also drunk. Both buyer and buyee have dined anywhere from Pavilion to â21â to Toffenettiâs, depending on the size of their corporations. They have consumed from three to six cocktails, a bottle of wine, and enough well-seasoned food to put them into a state of near-catatonia. Ethel Merman and a brass band might succeed in keeping them awake but a serious playwright can hardly hold their attention for the better part of Act One.
Harsh of me? Yesâsince âA Man For All Seasonsâ; âWhoâs Afraid of Virginia Woolfâ; and the Gielgud-Burton âHamletâ have all been put on successfully within the past four seasons. Add âLuther,â if you wish. Very well. Four serious successes in four seasons. It begins to look as though Bored-way has room for one serious play per seasonâperhaps as a sop to culture. But up to the time of World War IIâand even for a short time thereafterâwas there not room on Broadway for not only serious theatre but for any sort of play which did not depend upon loud music and semi-clad showgirls? Yes, there wasâbecause the audience still contained a goodly portion of shop-girls and shoe-clerks, to say nothing of head-waiters, 7th Avenue models, and sailors. The issues of cost and convenience have been much discussed and there can be no denying that many people cannot now afford either the price of an orchestra ticket or the inconvenience of purchasing a cheaper seat in the balcony, but a glib run-down of the change in prices will leave a number of sophisticated questions unanswered. For example, it was possible to put on a first-class Broadway production during the mid-thirties for as little as $15,000 when an orchestra seat was priced at $3.30. The same production today would cost $100,000 and up while the seat is priced at $7.50. In other words, production costs have sextupled while the ticket price has little more than doubled. Producers will love me for pointing this out, but it will not help them to drag John and Jane Doe back to Broadway. For the real truth is that the carriage-trade audience (orchestra seats) has never been the heart of a healthy theatre. Up to 1941, it was possible to see any non-musical playâbig hit or small, comedy or dramaâfor 55 cents. Moreover, such 2nd Balcony seats were available on short notice. First Balcony tickets cost $1.10 and up, but not up very far. Recent attempts to woo the common audience back into Broadway playhouses by making balcony seats available at prices relative to motion picture prices have been admirable but only semi-successful. The hard truth is that Mr. and Mrs. Doe of New York City and Toledo are out of the theatre-going habit and it will take no less than a major sea-change to seduce them back.
During the lamentable meantime, Broadway audiences have become lazy, mindless, and bored. They simply do not supply the high-voltage response necessary to an incalescent performance. The performance of a play staffed with living actors changes from night to night, and these changes take place in direct relationship to the audience. No two performances are ever exactly the same, which is quite as it should be. Any theatre audience receives excitement and stimulation in direct ratio to its participation in the events on stage. Down through relentless time, actors have commented upon the dampening effect of a âdeadâ audience as well as the exhiliration provided by a quick group eager to share the dramatic experience. The connection between an audience and a cast of actors is so similar to the connection between a pair of lovers that a well-bred Protestant could practically blush. Many years ago, I attended the Broadway opening of a failure called âBrooklyn Biarritzâ (Coney Island) which was no more tasteful or interesting than its title. The climax of the Second Act showed us a man killing another man beneath the boardwalk of Brighton Beach, the killer adding insult to injury by cursing his victim while strangling him. Sonafabitch was shouted several times and there was much gurgling appropriate to crime at the Spa. One young lady who was seated next to me stood up and cheered as the curtain descended. Tears in her eyes, she then turned to her companion and said: âOh, I think this is just terrific! â
Aesthetic considerations aside, I envied that young woman and I still do. Certainly I have never seen anyone, bright or stupid, drunk or sober, behave in such a way at the showing of a motion pictureânot even a great one. But I behaved that way when I saw Marlon Brando in the stage version of âA Streetcar Named Desireâ as I also did when I first saw Laurette Taylor. So does every theatre-goer sooner or later, because thrills and excitement belong to the living theatre and the finest movie ever made will never generate such an open-hearted response. A truly electric communication between the viewer and the event takes place only on a real stage with live actors.
But todayâs Broadway audiences do not lean forward in anticipation, hoping to be thrilled, uplifted, or enlightened. Instead, they lean back apathetically as if to say: âShow me.â There are individual exceptions, but such individuals cannot keep even the average Broadway production running for more than a month. Not only do we lack a significant body of stage-struck ticket purchasers, a great majority of our population has never seen a play at all and couldnât care less. And I am speaking of the population of New York City, not Austin, Texas.
Todayâs theatrical audience has misplaced vulnerability, naivete, andâmore importantlyâthe ability to listen, to participate, or to be moved. Some observers, Mr. Howard Taubman included, have said that really good plays will bring the serious audience back to our playhouses. I fear not. What little serious audience is left to us does not need bringing back. They stand at the box-offices like so many ravenous dogs, anytime they are given half the chance to be genuinely engaged. They loved âA Man For All Seasons,â just as they loved âVirginia Woolfâ and even âAfter The Fall,â but they are a shrinking group. I do not believe that the widespread success of the first two plays indicates a resuscitation of widespread interest. I believe that it indicates critical acceptance followed by a mass of bored, but status-seeking snobs. The relative success of âThe Deputyâ strikes me as parochial and guilt-inspired rather than as a manifestation of serious theatrical interest. Finally, I am convinced that should there be more than one âSeasonsâ or âWoolfâ or âDeputyâ in a given season that Drama #2 would fall on its financial face, critics and public defenders notwithstanding. The expense-account audience is prepared to enjoy âHello, Dolly!â and to put up with âA Man For All Seasonsâ only because it is necessary to tell the neighbors that they saw Paul Scofield act.
The terrible truth is that Broadway audiences are not an isolated phenomenon; they indelibly represent a national trend. That trend recklessly careens toward disinterest, lack of engagement, and an inability to be thrilled by anything less than Frank Sinatra singing at The Sands or a roller-coaster ride steep enough to frighten a test pilot. Neither experience is worth an aesthetic pin but both are flashy and âinâ, while anything less or even different is irrevocably âoutâ. Should these same people literally see Laurette Taylor, they would begin to look with a jaundiced eye upon Sinatra, but if they donât see her, they will never know. Those who do see are so drunk or so tired that they can only be reached by fire-works and so the vicious circle completes itself, to the wasting of life.
Today, I can see the âbig dealâ in every human eye and I can see it wherever I look. Our society has managed to glorify cynicism, lack of participation, selfishness, and âIâm gonna get mineâ to the exclusion of the perhaps puritanical virtues on which this nation was built. This is progress of a sort, for puritanism contained many repressions, but we have also paid a price and that price is reflected clearly in the modern Broadway audience. For every step of social progress, a price must be paid, and the New York theatre pays that price today. Not being a qualified social philosopher, I dare not carry the implications of this notion too far but theatre audiences indubitably reflect the trend at which I wag my finger. Modern Broadway audiences refuse to work. They refuse to listen. They refuse to participate in the emotional event which takes place on stage. One can only conclude that unrelieved self-interest (and social laziness) leads eventually to a breaking down of the emotional and intellectual muscles six ways from the Jack, and that todayâs young people (and old people) want life and pleasure and entertainment brought to them, with the least amount of effort and sensory participation on their own part.
To watch a motion picture or a television show demands no effort whatever. It is no more comparable to watching a theatre performance than reading comic books is comparable to touring the Louvre. Even a serious film moves quickly, contains little verbiage, and causes its audience to think only indirectly. The modern art film, which supposedly substitutes for the sort of live theatre once attended by culture-buffs, rarely demands of its audience what was demanded by âDeath Of A Salesmanâ or even âOur Town.â Films are visual rather than verbal. They are dream-like rather than real. They are easy rather than hard. They are also entirely unaffected by the audience, be it good or bad, dead or alive. A motion picture is in the can: over and done with, unaffectable, inaccessible. And like all things stuffed into cans, it is less alive than something fresh, even if it tastes good.
Our audience has become film-going rather than theatre-going because our audience is half-dead and mortally canned. What is worse, our audience remains dead even when they do go to the theatre. The only encouraging note is the wild peal of laughter heard now and then at plays directed by Mike Nichols and written by Neil Simon. Such laughter is a touching echo of what I heard thirty years ago from people closely resembling human beings. We have become, by and large, a nation of spectators rather than participators. But a really alive theatrical audience must be made up of individuals who want to participate and are capable of identifying with the pleasure and pain on stage. They are not drunken night-clubbers, capable only of identifying with a rock-and-rollerâs latest vocal innovation or lyric distortion; they are humans wishing to identify with a human experience which surpasses the gimmicks of modern success. In other words, they wish to respond to the works of an artist, rather than be titillated by the tricks of a fake.
A bored gentleman twisting the dial of his television set, trying to weigh the relative merits of âBonanzaâ and the âMillion Dollar Movieâ alters the shape of neither. Whatever his choice, both products will remain the same. Why? Because they are products, rather than works. But let a theatre actor catch sight of a seat-holder trudging up the aisle toward a door marked EXIT and his next few lines will show at least a tiny bit of strain, I assure you. The theatre actor is affected by his audience, individually and collectively. Audience and play are inevitably one. When they are not, the evening will beâto one degree or anotherâa failure.
I recall a New York performance of âA Man For All Seasonsâ during which a ticket-holder in the first row began groaning and mumbling with displeasure before the play was five minutes old. His behavior was noisy, distracting, and upsetting to both cast and audience. Was he drunk? Was he crazy? Was he a hatchet man for David Merrick? Was heâin factâDavid Merrick?* I discussed the matter with George Rose who, as the Common Man, addressed the audience directly through much of the play and could therefore be most understandably annoyed by any unruly behavior. Mr. Rose merely shrugged when I declared that the fellow was driving me batty. âHeâs just bored,â he said. Such an attitude is both professional and sophisticated, but rest assured that the eveningâs performance was far from being one of the best our company delivered. In choosing so depressing and negative an anecdote, I hope to apostrophize my conviction precisely: the very relationship which makes it possible for a single member of the audience to disrupt a theatrical evening is the self-same relationship which should be cherished and protected by anyone who loves entertainment in any form whatever.
*(The play was presented by a rival producer named Robert Whitehead.)
Years ago, Broadway actors dreaded matinee performances because they were usually half-filled and often with children and their governesses. Today, the afternoon performances are among the best given in New York. Why? Because the audience is more attentive. The housewives, stage-struck little old ladies, teenagers, drama students, and would-be actors who attend the daytime shows are in their seats neither reluctantly nor as status-seeking snobs. Instead, they are in love with the theatre and cannot find comparable excitement elsewhere. They are, in fact, the final, decimated residue of the shop-girl, shoe-clerk audience for which I so achingly yearn. In other words, they are human beings. They are neither drunk nor tired; they think Frank Sinatra is a clown; and they need neither Olsen and Johnson nor semi-nude girls to keep them awake. All they do need is a good play, properly put on. In fact, the play need not be a masterpiece to please them. It need merely be a live theatrical experience which surpasses the pre-digested, bloodless pap which appears on our ubiquitous silver screens.
Can something be done about all this? I doubt it, but it is surely worth noting that such social phenomena as bored and indifferent audiences are symptomatic of a larger illness. A theatre audience, though it is composed of individuals, is not an isolated group breathing rarified air. It is a cross-section of human types which reflects the immediate pre-occupations of a particular society at a particular time. It is entirely possible that audiences, as well as people in general, have lost a certain squareness. The salt, in fact, seems to have been sifted from the earth and âsquareâ is now a dirty word. When an entire society becomes hip and cynical, it also becomes harder to reach and engage. A motion picture such as âWhatâs New, Pussycat?â intrigues its audience precisely because it takes hipness and cynicism a few steps further than even the audience dared hope.
The audience I cry for so plangently is not necessarily a hip group or even an intelligent one. In fact, they are sometimes less than discriminating, which is perfectly all right with me, since I have found that discriminating audiences tend to be wrong as often as they are right. They will reject âThe Great God Brownâ because itâs a bore, darling, and accept âHush, Hush, Sweet Charlotteâ because itâs camp. But the undiscriminating, unhip, and possibly unintelligent group has a healthy distaste for camp, whether High, Middle, or Low. It is more accessible than it is snobbish; more emotional than it is intellectual; and quite a bit more ready to shout its approval than to nod its acceptance. What I prize in an audience, regardless of intelligence or sophistication, is an appetite for participation and a capacity for emotional response. Mr. George Bernard Shaw was surely an intelligent and sophisticated man, but Hilaire Belloc said of him: âMr. Shaw is so determined not to be taken in that he remains forever out.âÂ
So does our current audience. It is hip, you bet, but I wonder if the hip are happy? Sometimes I even wonder if they are in. For this very reason, I have blithely ignored the off-Broadway movement, which has practically dropped dead from in-ness. Despite some noteworthy achievements, such as âThe Connection,â âThe Fantasticks,â and âThe Threepenny Opera,â off-Broadway has suffered from a lack of âsquareâ audiences. Now that the ticket prices are almost as high as they are uptown and the seats almost as comfortable, off-Broadway has developed all the symptoms of creative asthma. It is breathing hard and heavy and can barely be distinguished from its moribund brother uptown.
Senator Margaret Chase Smith recently unburdened herself of a fascinating battle-cry. âWhat this country needs,â said the lady, âis more squares.â She added that there had been too much glorification of the confidence-man, the corner-cutter, and the goof-off. Perhaps there has also been too much ironic laughter, too much easy tolerance, too much, black humor, as well as too little earnest participation in the issues of living. Hardly a more tiresome adjective than âearnestâ exists in the English language, and the fellow for whom âlife is real, life is earnestâ has long been a figure of fun, but when I was a small boyâand I really was at one timeâI saw cheaply dressed young ladies and gentlemen arriving at the Belasco Theatre for performances of âDead Endâ and, later, âGolden Boyâ whose eyes were lit up with earnest anticipation and eagerness. Maybe they were a bit too earnest but they also managed to be a long way from complacent. They were surely not drunk; they had surely not eaten at Pavilion or even Toffenettiâs. Most likely their pre-theater supper was ingested at Nedickâs and consisted of one hot dog and one orange drink. No doubt they saved fifty cents that way, which was close to the price of the ticket. âDead Endâ and âGolden Boyâ were good plays, as were âThree Men On A Horseâ and âBorn Yesterday.â But they also played to good audiences. What the old professionals call âlive ones.â
Oh, you beautiful shop-girls and shoe-clerks and low brows and middle-brows, fling away your pop-corn and your boredom and come back to the living theatre where you belong! Yesterday might turn out to be tomorrow. If you can pay $2.50 to stand on line for âWhatâs New, Pussycat?,â why not pay the same for a balcony seat to âThe Odd Coupleâ? Believe me, itâs a funny play. And, just like you, it is alive.
Hey, has anyone been missing William Redfield's Opinions? Because guess what I found 3,829 words of on the Internet Archive. :D It starts on page 20 of this issue of P.S., a very short-lived magazine. Or, read it below!
***
The Audience is Dead
by William Redfield
At the curtain of Clifford Odetsâ electrifying âWaiting For Leftyâ the cast shouted âStrike! Strike! Strike!â and so did the audience. They were alive, then, those shouting savages. Half of them stood four-square against unions, but the eveningâs drama had grabbed them where the hairs are short and they responded. They had never heard of hip or the big beat. They were gullible, emotional, excitable, and faithfulâthe audiences of the 30s. Their counterparts of the 1960s, to put it bluntly, are over-sophisticated bores.
Nearly all the wits and critics who comment upon the Broadway scene have spoken tirelessly on Whatâs Wrong With Todayâs Theatre. Plays, actors, box-office men, ushers, and even concessionaires have had a thorough working over. But the audienceâthe ticket-buying group which sits to watch the playâhas been largely ignored. What Oscar Hammerstein II called âThe Big Black Giantâ is perhaps the least understood factor in the theatrical equation as well as the most crucial. Has audience response changed in the last 30 years? Yes. Has that change anything to do with the decline of Broadway? With all due regard for other elements involved, the answer is Yes again.
In September of 1936 the brothers Shubert presented a farce-comedy at the Booth Theatre entitled âSwing Your Lady.â It was about as distinguished as Ann-Margretâs latest movie, yet it ran for over 100 performances to chuckling audiences. The plot concerned a professional wrestler (female) and her brood of hillbilly children. Would there be an audience for such a play today? The question is inwardly rhetorical and outwardly absurd.
In 1931, the Group Theatre produced a play called â1931ââwhich seems fair enoughâbut on Opening Night, one audience member stood up in the balcony to shout: âHooray for the Soviet Union!â The cast was basking in curtain calls at the time and Mr. Franchot Tone, ignoring the leftÂwing implications of the play, stepped forward and shook an angry fist at the offensive balcony. âHooray for the United States!â he shouted back. Politics aside, can you imagine such an exchange in a Broadway playhouse circa 1965? You can? You must believe very theatrically in civil rights.
In 1928, Eugene OâNeillâs âThe Great God Brownâ ran for eight months on Broadway despite luke-warm reviews. Even a bad rifleman could have dispatched elk in the orchestra at every performance, but the balcony seats went consistently clean. In other words, people of limited pocketbook were buying the play. Highbrows were low on it but middlebrows and lowbrows thought it pretty hot stuff. At one performance, Mr. Lawrence Langner overheard two young ladies discussing the play. âItâs awfully dramatic, isnât it?â said one. âYeah,â said her friend, âbut itâs good.â
Both girls spoke with Bronx-ish accents and both were dressed as cheaply and plainly as thirty-a-week shop-girls. Mr. Langner was deeply impressed and so am I. Where are such playgoers now? I wish I knew, as does every producer in New York, but Iâm willing to bet that the same two lower-income ladies also saw âSwing Your Ladyâ in 1936 and even â1931â in 1931. Perhaps they didnât like them very much, but they saw them. Today they are doubtless stay-at-home grandmothers watching âBewitched,â âBonanza,â and âThe Andy Williams Show.â For a certainty, neither has seen a Broadway production since âThe Hot Mikado.â But worse than that, their grand-daughters havenât either.
Broadwayâs old-timers and middle-timers grumble a good deal about modern acting (âThey scratch and they mumbleâ); modern plays (âFour letter words and fagsâ); and modern tickets (âToo expensive and too hard to getâ). These are perfectly good grumbles but being a young old-timer (Iâm 38), I would like to add a further grumble of my own: the modem audience. It too has changed and very much for the worse, nor am I entirely persuaded that the chicken came before the egg. Apropos of chickens as well as churns, todayâs Broadway audience is composed largely of butter-and-egg men who want the dancing girls brought on as soon as possible and who cannot understand why there are so many dancing boys. These partially dead salesmen are enticed to the theatre by fearless flacks and PR men who have seen everything but monkeys making doughnuts and wouldnât pay cash money to see Mandy Rice-Davies in Richtofenâs Flying Circus unless it meant a contract to promote World War III. The overwhelmingly tired businessman has been so heroically publicized lately, one wonders why he doesnât go back to his hotel and to bed. Tired or not, the businessman is also drunk. Both buyer and buyee have dined anywhere from Pavilion to â21â to Toffenettiâs, depending on the size of their corporations. They have consumed from three to six cocktails, a bottle of wine, and enough well-seasoned food to put them into a state of near-catatonia. Ethel Merman and a brass band might succeed in keeping them awake but a serious playwright can hardly hold their attention for the better part of Act One.
Harsh of me? Yesâsince âA Man For All Seasonsâ; âWhoâs Afraid of Virginia Woolfâ; and the Gielgud-Burton âHamletâ have all been put on successfully within the past four seasons. Add âLuther,â if you wish. Very well. Four serious successes in four seasons. It begins to look as though Bored-way has room for one serious play per seasonâperhaps as a sop to culture. But up to the time of World War IIâand even for a short time thereafterâwas there not room on Broadway for not only serious theatre but for any sort of play which did not depend upon loud music and semi-clad showgirls? Yes, there wasâbecause the audience still contained a goodly portion of shop-girls and shoe-clerks, to say nothing of head-waiters, 7th Avenue models, and sailors. The issues of cost and convenience have been much discussed and there can be no denying that many people cannot now afford either the price of an orchestra ticket or the inconvenience of purchasing a cheaper seat in the balcony, but a glib run-down of the change in prices will leave a number of sophisticated questions unanswered. For example, it was possible to put on a first-class Broadway production during the mid-thirties for as little as $15,000 when an orchestra seat was priced at $3.30. The same production today would cost $100,000 and up while the seat is priced at $7.50. In other words, production costs have sextupled while the ticket price has little more than doubled. Producers will love me for pointing this out, but it will not help them to drag John and Jane Doe back to Broadway. For the real truth is that the carriage-trade audience (orchestra seats) has never been the heart of a healthy theatre. Up to 1941, it was possible to see any non-musical playâbig hit or small, comedy or dramaâfor 55 cents. Moreover, such 2nd Balcony seats were available on short notice. First Balcony tickets cost $1.10 and up, but not up very far. Recent attempts to woo the common audience back into Broadway playhouses by making balcony seats available at prices relative to motion picture prices have been admirable but only semi-successful. The hard truth is that Mr. and Mrs. Doe of New York City and Toledo are out of the theatre-going habit and it will take no less than a major sea-change to seduce them back.
During the lamentable meantime, Broadway audiences have become lazy, mindless, and bored. They simply do not supply the high-voltage response necessary to an incalescent performance. The performance of a play staffed with living actors changes from night to night, and these changes take place in direct relationship to the audience. No two performances are ever exactly the same, which is quite as it should be. Any theatre audience receives excitement and stimulation in direct ratio to its participation in the events on stage. Down through relentless time, actors have commented upon the dampening effect of a âdeadâ audience as well as the exhiliration provided by a quick group eager to share the dramatic experience. The connection between an audience and a cast of actors is so similar to the connection between a pair of lovers that a well-bred Protestant could practically blush. Many years ago, I attended the Broadway opening of a failure called âBrooklyn Biarritzâ (Coney Island) which was no more tasteful or interesting than its title. The climax of the Second Act showed us a man killing another man beneath the boardwalk of Brighton Beach, the killer adding insult to injury by cursing his victim while strangling him. Sonafabitch was shouted several times and there was much gurgling appropriate to crime at the Spa. One young lady who was seated next to me stood up and cheered as the curtain descended. Tears in her eyes, she then turned to her companion and said: âOh, I think this is just terrific! â
Aesthetic considerations aside, I envied that young woman and I still do. Certainly I have never seen anyone, bright or stupid, drunk or sober, behave in such a way at the showing of a motion pictureânot even a great one. But I behaved that way when I saw Marlon Brando in the stage version of âA Streetcar Named Desireâ as I also did when I first saw Laurette Taylor. So does every theatre-goer sooner or later, because thrills and excitement belong to the living theatre and the finest movie ever made will never generate such an open-hearted response. A truly electric communication between the viewer and the event takes place only on a real stage with live actors.
But todayâs Broadway audiences do not lean forward in anticipation, hoping to be thrilled, uplifted, or enlightened. Instead, they lean back apathetically as if to say: âShow me.â There are individual exceptions, but such individuals cannot keep even the average Broadway production running for more than a month. Not only do we lack a significant body of stage-struck ticket purchasers, a great majority of our population has never seen a play at all and couldnât care less. And I am speaking of the population of New York City, not Austin, Texas.
Todayâs theatrical audience has misplaced vulnerability, naivete, andâmore importantlyâthe ability to listen, to participate, or to be moved. Some observers, Mr. Howard Taubman included, have said that really good plays will bring the serious audience back to our playhouses. I fear not. What little serious audience is left to us does not need bringing back. They stand at the box-offices like so many ravenous dogs, anytime they are given half the chance to be genuinely engaged. They loved âA Man For All Seasons,â just as they loved âVirginia Woolfâ and even âAfter The Fall,â but they are a shrinking group. I do not believe that the widespread success of the first two plays indicates a resuscitation of widespread interest. I believe that it indicates critical acceptance followed by a mass of bored, but status-seeking snobs. The relative success of âThe Deputyâ strikes me as parochial and guilt-inspired rather than as a manifestation of serious theatrical interest. Finally, I am convinced that should there be more than one âSeasonsâ or âWoolfâ or âDeputyâ in a given season that Drama #2 would fall on its financial face, critics and public defenders notwithstanding. The expense-account audience is prepared to enjoy âHello, Dolly!â and to put up with âA Man For All Seasonsâ only because it is necessary to tell the neighbors that they saw Paul Scofield act.
The terrible truth is that Broadway audiences are not an isolated phenomenon; they indelibly represent a national trend. That trend recklessly careens toward disinterest, lack of engagement, and an inability to be thrilled by anything less than Frank Sinatra singing at The Sands or a roller-coaster ride steep enough to frighten a test pilot. Neither experience is worth an aesthetic pin but both are flashy and âinâ, while anything less or even different is irrevocably âoutâ. Should these same people literally see Laurette Taylor, they would begin to look with a jaundiced eye upon Sinatra, but if they donât see her, they will never know. Those who do see are so drunk or so tired that they can only be reached by fire-works and so the vicious circle completes itself, to the wasting of life.
Today, I can see the âbig dealâ in every human eye and I can see it wherever I look. Our society has managed to glorify cynicism, lack of participation, selfishness, and âIâm gonna get mineâ to the exclusion of the perhaps puritanical virtues on which this nation was built. This is progress of a sort, for puritanism contained many repressions, but we have also paid a price and that price is reflected clearly in the modern Broadway audience. For every step of social progress, a price must be paid, and the New York theatre pays that price today. Not being a qualified social philosopher, I dare not carry the implications of this notion too far but theatre audiences indubitably reflect the trend at which I wag my finger. Modern Broadway audiences refuse to work. They refuse to listen. They refuse to participate in the emotional event which takes place on stage. One can only conclude that unrelieved self-interest (and social laziness) leads eventually to a breaking down of the emotional and intellectual muscles six ways from the Jack, and that todayâs young people (and old people) want life and pleasure and entertainment brought to them, with the least amount of effort and sensory participation on their own part.
To watch a motion picture or a television show demands no effort whatever. It is no more comparable to watching a theatre performance than reading comic books is comparable to touring the Louvre. Even a serious film moves quickly, contains little verbiage, and causes its audience to think only indirectly. The modern art film, which supposedly substitutes for the sort of live theatre once attended by culture-buffs, rarely demands of its audience what was demanded by âDeath Of A Salesmanâ or even âOur Town.â Films are visual rather than verbal. They are dream-like rather than real. They are easy rather than hard. They are also entirely unaffected by the audience, be it good or bad, dead or alive. A motion picture is in the can: over and done with, unaffectable, inaccessible. And like all things stuffed into cans, it is less alive than something fresh, even if it tastes good.
Our audience has become film-going rather than theatre-going because our audience is half-dead and mortally canned. What is worse, our audience remains dead even when they do go to the theatre. The only encouraging note is the wild peal of laughter heard now and then at plays directed by Mike Nichols and written by Neil Simon. Such laughter is a touching echo of what I heard thirty years ago from people closely resembling human beings. We have become, by and large, a nation of spectators rather than participators. But a really alive theatrical audience must be made up of individuals who want to participate and are capable of identifying with the pleasure and pain on stage. They are not drunken night-clubbers, capable only of identifying with a rock-and-rollerâs latest vocal innovation or lyric distortion; they are humans wishing to identify with a human experience which surpasses the gimmicks of modern success. In other words, they wish to respond to the works of an artist, rather than be titillated by the tricks of a fake.
A bored gentleman twisting the dial of his television set, trying to weigh the relative merits of âBonanzaâ and the âMillion Dollar Movieâ alters the shape of neither. Whatever his choice, both products will remain the same. Why? Because they are products, rather than works. But let a theatre actor catch sight of a seat-holder trudging up the aisle toward a door marked EXIT and his next few lines will show at least a tiny bit of strain, I assure you. The theatre actor is affected by his audience, individually and collectively. Audience and play are inevitably one. When they are not, the evening will beâto one degree or anotherâa failure.
I recall a New York performance of âA Man For All Seasonsâ during which a ticket-holder in the first row began groaning and mumbling with displeasure before the play was five minutes old. His behavior was noisy, distracting, and upsetting to both cast and audience. Was he drunk? Was he crazy? Was he a hatchet man for David Merrick? Was heâin factâDavid Merrick?* I discussed the matter with George Rose who, as the Common Man, addressed the audience directly through much of the play and could therefore be most understandably annoyed by any unruly behavior. Mr. Rose merely shrugged when I declared that the fellow was driving me batty. âHeâs just bored,â he said. Such an attitude is both professional and sophisticated, but rest assured that the eveningâs performance was far from being one of the best our company delivered. In choosing so depressing and negative an anecdote, I hope to apostrophize my conviction precisely: the very relationship which makes it possible for a single member of the audience to disrupt a theatrical evening is the self-same relationship which should be cherished and protected by anyone who loves entertainment in any form whatever.
*(The play was presented by a rival producer named Robert Whitehead.)
Years ago, Broadway actors dreaded matinee performances because they were usually half-filled and often with children and their governesses. Today, the afternoon performances are among the best given in New York. Why? Because the audience is more attentive. The housewives, stage-struck little old ladies, teenagers, drama students, and would-be actors who attend the daytime shows are in their seats neither reluctantly nor as status-seeking snobs. Instead, they are in love with the theatre and cannot find comparable excitement elsewhere. They are, in fact, the final, decimated residue of the shop-girl, shoe-clerk audience for which I so achingly yearn. In other words, they are human beings. They are neither drunk nor tired; they think Frank Sinatra is a clown; and they need neither Olsen and Johnson nor semi-nude girls to keep them awake. All they do need is a good play, properly put on. In fact, the play need not be a masterpiece to please them. It need merely be a live theatrical experience which surpasses the pre-digested, bloodless pap which appears on our ubiquitous silver screens.
Can something be done about all this? I doubt it, but it is surely worth noting that such social phenomena as bored and indifferent audiences are symptomatic of a larger illness. A theatre audience, though it is composed of individuals, is not an isolated group breathing rarified air. It is a cross-section of human types which reflects the immediate pre-occupations of a particular society at a particular time. It is entirely possible that audiences, as well as people in general, have lost a certain squareness. The salt, in fact, seems to have been sifted from the earth and âsquareâ is now a dirty word. When an entire society becomes hip and cynical, it also becomes harder to reach and engage. A motion picture such as âWhatâs New, Pussycat?â intrigues its audience precisely because it takes hipness and cynicism a few steps further than even the audience dared hope.
The audience I cry for so plangently is not necessarily a hip group or even an intelligent one. In fact, they are sometimes less than discriminating, which is perfectly all right with me, since I have found that discriminating audiences tend to be wrong as often as they are right. They will reject âThe Great God Brownâ because itâs a bore, darling, and accept âHush, Hush, Sweet Charlotteâ because itâs camp. But the undiscriminating, unhip, and possibly unintelligent group has a healthy distaste for camp, whether High, Middle, or Low. It is more accessible than it is snobbish; more emotional than it is intellectual; and quite a bit more ready to shout its approval than to nod its acceptance. What I prize in an audience, regardless of intelligence or sophistication, is an appetite for participation and a capacity for emotional response. Mr. George Bernard Shaw was surely an intelligent and sophisticated man, but Hilaire Belloc said of him: âMr. Shaw is so determined not to be taken in that he remains forever out.âÂ
So does our current audience. It is hip, you bet, but I wonder if the hip are happy? Sometimes I even wonder if they are in. For this very reason, I have blithely ignored the off-Broadway movement, which has practically dropped dead from in-ness. Despite some noteworthy achievements, such as âThe Connection,â âThe Fantasticks,â and âThe Threepenny Opera,â off-Broadway has suffered from a lack of âsquareâ audiences. Now that the ticket prices are almost as high as they are uptown and the seats almost as comfortable, off-Broadway has developed all the symptoms of creative asthma. It is breathing hard and heavy and can barely be distinguished from its moribund brother uptown.
Senator Margaret Chase Smith recently unburdened herself of a fascinating battle-cry. âWhat this country needs,â said the lady, âis more squares.â She added that there had been too much glorification of the confidence-man, the corner-cutter, and the goof-off. Perhaps there has also been too much ironic laughter, too much easy tolerance, too much, black humor, as well as too little earnest participation in the issues of living. Hardly a more tiresome adjective than âearnestâ exists in the English language, and the fellow for whom âlife is real, life is earnestâ has long been a figure of fun, but when I was a small boyâand I really was at one timeâI saw cheaply dressed young ladies and gentlemen arriving at the Belasco Theatre for performances of âDead Endâ and, later, âGolden Boyâ whose eyes were lit up with earnest anticipation and eagerness. Maybe they were a bit too earnest but they also managed to be a long way from complacent. They were surely not drunk; they had surely not eaten at Pavilion or even Toffenettiâs. Most likely their pre-theater supper was ingested at Nedickâs and consisted of one hot dog and one orange drink. No doubt they saved fifty cents that way, which was close to the price of the ticket. âDead Endâ and âGolden Boyâ were good plays, as were âThree Men On A Horseâ and âBorn Yesterday.â But they also played to good audiences. What the old professionals call âlive ones.â
Oh, you beautiful shop-girls and shoe-clerks and low brows and middle-brows, fling away your pop-corn and your boredom and come back to the living theatre where you belong! Yesterday might turn out to be tomorrow. If you can pay $2.50 to stand on line for âWhatâs New, Pussycat?,â why not pay the same for a balcony seat to âThe Odd Coupleâ? Believe me, itâs a funny play. And, just like you, it is alive.
Elizabeth Taylorâs eloquent and powerful speech while accepting the Vanguard Award at the 11th annual GLAAD Media Awards in 2000. After her dear friend and co-star Rock Hudson announced that he had AIDS prior to his passing in 1985 (the first high-profile celebrity to do so), Elizabethâagainst great opposition during the fear-based AIDS hysteria and stigmatization prevalent in the 1980sâimmediately organized a fundraising benefit to raise money for AIDS research (she later stated that she had the phone hung up on her repeatedly while trying to enlist the help of other celebrities with the benefit, and that some people thought she was âcrazyâ for getting involved with the cause). After Rock passed away on October 2nd, 1985, she also organized his memorial service and soon after became the co-founder (alongside Dr. Mathilde Krim) of the first AIDS research center amfAR. Her separate Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation was established in 1991 with the specific focus of providing nutritious meals (as well as medical and financial assistance) to people living with HIV and AIDS. She also lobbied the U.S. congress to contribute more money for AIDS research and education, devoting the last twenty-six years of her life to the cause. After Elizabeth passed away in 2011 at the age of 79, a large portion of the $156,800,000 raised at the Christieâs auction of her legendary jewelry collection was bequeathed to her charity in order to continue providing the services and assistance she believed were important in perpetuity.
My local cinema informs me that an upcoming biopic about Richard Burton is on the way. Maybe it will be of interest to my fellows from the Emails from an Actor group.
As for kissing his male co-star, [Robert] Goulet says it wouldnât be his first time. Back in 1960, "Moss Hart was directing this scene between Richard Burton and me in Camelot, and weâre supposed to come face to face. We had been drinking and I said to Richard, âShall we kiss?â And he said, âAlright ⊠on the lips?â Now I had never kissed a man before in my life, not even my father, but I couldnât back down. We said, âMr. Hart, could we show you the relationship between Lancelot and [King Arthur] so the audience will know immediately?â He said, âBy all means.â Then Richard and I kissed. It took an hour and a half to get Moss off the ceiling. He made us do it again for [Alan Jay] Lerner and then for [Frederick] Loewe. Moss made us do it once more for the [chorus] kids. And everybody laughed, except two of the boy dancers cried."
From this 2005 interview with Robert Goulet, when he was in La Cage aux Folles.
Happy anniversary of the Gielgud-Burton Hamlet's first day of rehearsals! I realized I'd never made good on my promise to sort through and post the color photos from this production, so here's a start! These seem to have been staged for promotional material rather than taken during a performance.
It's that time of year again! Kicking off my best-ofs of 2024 with books, since I'm not in immediate danger of finishing more before the year ends. Here's my top five (as ever, unranked):
Devotions, Mary Oliver As you may have noticed for yourself, 2024 was, uh, challenging. In a variety of ways. And while I'd long been familiar with some of Oliver's greatest hits, I finally decided to turn to this collection to explore further (since it had been hanging out, unread, on my bookshelf). Not only did I love the poetry itself, but the anthology's choice to move backward in time created an intriguing effect as you watched Oliver's interest shift as she youthened. Strong recommend.
The Dutch House, Ann Patchett I've hollered before about my love for Patchett, but even so, this book felt made for me and my noted love of stories about siblings. I took this book with me on a vacation and devoured it in big, delicious chunks. Maeve, especially, is going to stick with me for a long time.
The Last Chronicle of Barset, Anthony Trollope OK this one probably would not hit as hard if you picked it up on its own, but as the finale of the Barsetshire Chronicles, hot damn. When I tell you this is my 1867-flavored Endgame, I need you to understand I was beside myself every single time a character from an earlier book appeared, and it was so many times. The other books in this series are pretty loosely connected for the most part, but Trollope let almost everyone come back and take a bow here at the end. Shed a tear for Septimus Harding.
Letters From an Actor, William Redfield Shoutout to @emailsfromanactor for introducing me to this delightful book. Redfield played Guildenstern in the John Gielgud-Richard Burton production of Hamlet, and provides a front row seat along with plenty of commentary. Our boy has opinions, and I was here for them. (Emails From An Actor also incorporated Richard L. Sterne's John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in Hamlet: A Journal of Rehearsals, which I did enjoy, but Redfield's authorial voice got him in the top five.)
Men at Arms, Terry Pratchett I've been reading Discworld on and off since high school, but I'd never read the Watch books. This is largely because many people I trust told me I'd love them; I sort of developed a "break glass in case of emergency" vibe around that portion of the series. But 2024 seemed to call for something delightful, and these were it. I also read Guards, Guards and Feet of Clay this year, but Men at Arms squeezed ahead because of the extremely Pratchett-typical approach to the MacGuffin and the introduction of Angua, for whom I would take a bullet (though she wouldn't need me to).
Further Brando information! According to Adam Redfield's afterword, Marlon Brando had been sent every letter he was mentioned in with the expectation that if he didn't like it, he'd say something.
Yeah! And he never did, so he really didn't have the right to complain about them being published. Unless something happened and he didn't get the letters, I guess.
