Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Wednesday March 9, 2011
|
AND FURTHERMORE
Judi Dench as told to John Miller
St
ISBN 978-0312659066
268 pages
$26.99
Reviewed by Diana McLellan
Suddenly, every time I point my TV remote, out jumps Dame Judi Dench. She twinkles as elderly ingenue Jean Hardcastle in the sitcom "As Time Goes By." She bosses crisply as "M," scolding James Bond as "a sexist misogynistic dinosaur." She swans about with rotten teeth and a heart of gold in "Shakespeare in Love."
Dame J's sweet little face, sturdy little person and slanted sapphire eyes always toss us such a cozy frisson that we forget the long, brilliant theatrical career she laid down long before these relatively piddling TV and movie triumphs. Encouraging parents helped. In 1960, as young Dench hurled herself into the role of Shakespeare's Juliet for England's Old Vic, and cried in anguish, "Where are my father and my mother, Nurse?" her doctor Daddy called consolingly from the audience, "Here we are, darling, in Row H." (True? Well, as my friend Maggie says, "It is now.")
She's always played a great queen. She was Titania, the Fairy Queen, in 1962 and again in 2010. The second go-round, she based her style on her own Elizabeth in "Shakespeare in Love" -- perhaps to make up for getting that Oscar for "eight quick minutes."
More fondly, she recalls cradling Anthony Hopkins in her arms during his lengthy death scene onstage in Shakespeare's "Anthony and Cleopatra" in 1987. The Egyptian Queen had another whole act to go before clasping the asp to her bosom, so he'd whisper smugly in the midst of his death throes, "You do Act V, and I'll have a nice cup of tea." A close observer might have noticed her shoulders shaking when she played Queen Victoria in the movie "Mrs. Brown": During an enchanting long shot of her trusty ghillie leading Herself through the Highland braes, her pony broke wind with almost every step.
On the printed page, she's no dazzling raconteur like Alec Guinness or tell-all hellion like Tallulah Bankhead. She's wry, dry, sly -- even shy when it comes to showing her stuffing in this new mini-memoir, "And Furthermore."
But, yes, she's had regrets. She wishes she'd played Shaw's Joan of Arc in 1966 as "a real troublemaker, a pain in the arse, which she must have been." She deplores a curly wig she sported as Portia in a 1971 production of "The Merchant of Venice."
Even more, she regrets the slip of the tongue that had her tell Bassanio (played by her real-life husband) that she spoke so long as "to stay you from erection." (It was supposed to be "election.") Half the cast and the wind band got the giggles and had to leave the stage.
She blanches still over the 1982 nightmare when, playing the fearsome Lady Bracknell in "The Importance of Being Earnest," she dropped the most important half-page of dialogue, including the immortal line on Jack Worthing's origins in a bag left at a train station: "A handbag?" Probably most of the audience just filled it in, but one former fan wrote to her bitterly, "You have ruined my entire Christmas."
For non-theater fans, "And Furthermore" will seem a too-dutiful recounting of stories about obscure cast members. For me, too much is left out. When Dame Judi says she learned a lot, I want to ask her, "How about sharing that?" When she mentions a "lovely" house or "enjoying" a play, Ms. Nosy here wants to know: Exactly how? And why? This small flaw, I guess, must be laid at the door of her "as-told-to" amanuensis, John Miller. Perhaps he was too awed by her damehood to press for details.
It's hard to picture this terrifying Lady Catherine de Bourgh in "Pride and Prejudice" and this decaying Iris Murdoch in "Iris" as the young, all-guts-and-garters Sally Bowles in "Cabaret." But she was, in 1968. She still treasures the memory of overhearing, from her basement dressing room, a departing member of the audience reproaching, "Arthur, you told me it was all about nuns and children!"
Splendid photographs throughout the book form a fine peep show of graceful aging. Now in her late 70s, Judi Dench has no intention of retiring. Like Sarah Bernhardt, who played Hamlet after losing a leg, she sees no reason to slow down. "There are all those parts you can play lying in bed, or in a wheelchair," she points out. I hope that, if necessary, she will.
Diana McLellan is author of "The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood."
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
|
| Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top |
LASTINGNESS: The Art of Old Age
Nicholas Delbanco
Grand Central
ISBN 978-0446199643
261 pages
$24.99
Reviewed by Reeve Lindbergh
Nicholas Delbanco's new book examines creative achievement in old age, though the author acknowledges that our culture concerns itself primarily with the young. We seem, nonetheless, ambivalent about age, expecting our leaders to evince a certain maturity.
Delbanco, a distinguished literary figure since the mid-1960s, studies the later accomplishments of artists, writers and musicians over the centuries, from William Shakespeare to John Updike, from Claude Monet to Georgia O'Keeffe, from Franz Liszt to Eubie Blake. He does not confine himself to those whose best work was done toward the end of their lives, though he includes examples of such people, among them Monet, Yeats, Verdi, Goya and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (author of "The Leopard"). Nor does he focus exclusively on the truly old: Shakespeare, who wrote about old age with remarkable perception yet did not live to see it, also captures his attention.
Delbanco is primarily engaged in discovering how creativity continues into old age. He looks at geniuses of every art, from every era, scrupulously including both men and women while noting with regret that "the great bulk of recognized artists in our culture's history were men." The research is meticulous; the writer's observations are beautifully presented and deeply informed. His opinions are often delightful, if occasionally merciless. Of Thomas Hardy, he writes, "few authors have published so much that is splendid adjacent to so much that's bad"; of Hoelderlin's late verses, "This sort of easy rhyming and Hallmark-like simplicity is far removed from his previous work."
Delbanco has the clear-eyed courage to look at the final chapters of the creative lives of others and to admit that he is anticipating the final years of his own career. He writes in his introduction, "What interests me is lastingness: how it may be attained. For obvious reasons, this has become a personal matter; I published my first novel in 1966 and very much hope to continue." Setting aside debilitating illness or physical collapse, he wonders why some artists' work seems to diminish in quality or to fade into mere repetitiveness or self-parody. Other people continue to produce good work to the end, adjusting to the challenges of age as necessary. Cellist Pablo Casals left the physical rigors of concert performance behind him for the most part, turning to the somewhat less demanding tasks of composing and conducting yet remaining fully active within the world of his art until his death at the age of 97. Monet "took advantage of what might have seemed a deficit ... he incorporated loss into artistic gain." Because of his increasing blindness and infirmity, in late life Monet remained at home in Giverny. There he painted his glorious last project, the series of water-lily paintings known as the Nympheas, which many critics believe to be his finest work.
O'Keeffe, who continued to paint into her 90s before she, too, lost her eyesight, is considered an iconic artist of the American Southwest, known for "brilliant light, the signature paintings of crosses and skulls, of cliffs and clouds and half-closed doors." Interestingly, Delbanco finds O'Keeffe's later years as an artist troubling. "Although both fame and solitude increased during her life's long closing act, the painter came -- or so I think -- to substitute gesture for substance, to reject and not remain available to change." It is not enough simply to endure and to be recognized. The artist must avoid rigidity, must stay fresh and open to possibility, if he or she is to achieve "lastingness."
Painter Alice Neel "remained unflinching, gimlet-eyed" in old age, and before she died "she trained her gaze -- in one of her last portraits -- on her own old naked body." Aurore Dupin, known to us as George Sand, enjoyed tobacco, wrote late into the night, and was hard at work on a novel and a collection of stories for children at the time of her death at 72. Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Falstaff" premiered in the composer's 80th year, and throughout his long life (he died at 87, in 1901) Verdi "was constantly productive, even if -- in later years -- he took his careful time."
Delbanco identifies a quality he calls "adaptive energy" in the old artists who continue to work, undaunted, to the last possible moment. He also credits them with originality, consistency and impatience, as "the old painter, musician, and writer have a shared distaste for every interruption." Passion is at work here, not only in the stories of a fascinating multitude of artists, but in the force and flow of the book itself. Readers of "Lastingness" will be eager for whatever comes next.
Reeve Lindbergh has written a number of books for children and adults, including "Forward From Here: Leaving Middle Age and Other Unexpected Adventures."
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
|
| Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top |
|
|
 |
| Recent Stories |
 INHERENTLY UNEQUAL: The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1865-1903
CRAZY U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid into College
TOUGH WITHOUT A GUN: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart
THE NATURAL NAVIGATOR: A Watchful Explorer's Guide to a Nearly Forgotten Skill
PLEASURE BOUND: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
