The stage world's response to the death of Richard Griffiths shows certain theatrical traditions have an enduring relevance
A friend who went to see the Alan Bennett double bill Untold Stories on Tuesday night reported an unusual twist to the curtain call. Alex Jennings, who plays Bennett in the two short plays, silenced the applause from the audience and told them that, earlier that night, the lights in London's West End had been dimmed in memory of the actor Richard Griffiths, a "great friend and collaborator", who had died that week. As many involved in the production had worked with Griffiths – Jennings co-starred with him in Bennett's The Habit of Art – there was considerable emotion on stage. It was shared by many in the audience, who will have had their own long memories of the actor.
The ceremonies given to Griffiths – a brief darkening of the neon in the theatre district and the footlights announcement – are two traditional ways, in both London and New York, of honouring theatre's illustrious departed. Some cynics will regard these rituals as proof of the frequently alleged tendency of theatrical people towards excessive sentimentality. For me, though, they are a proper and logical conclusion to a significant theatrical career. They have an importance for performers and a poignancy for audiences, not just because of the natural melancholy at the death of someone we have known (or known of), but because the fundamental quality of theatrical performance is its "liveness"– the physical presence of the event in front of us. In a profession that marks the end of each performance with applause, there is neatness, too, in the performer's end provoking a final round. (And in fact the custom has spread to sport, where a minute's clapping is now more common than silence to pay tribute to a late player or manager.)
Even in the case of writers, strictly invisible from the event, there is a relationship between audience and author that is changed by whether the dramatist is living (a new play by Stoppard or Ayckbourn feels like a continuation of a conversation with them), long dead (Shakespeare), neglected but recently rediscovered (Terence Rattigan), or has recently died.
Acknowledging this, Michael Gambon, who led the 2008 West End production of Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, silenced the closing applause at the first performance after the playwright's death and asked for a moment's silence. There was an additional charge to that performance because Pinter had asked Gambon to read some lines from No Man's Land, about memory and the dead, at his funeral.
Gambon apparently handled the announcement with grace and solemnity. But Broadway legend contains a gruesome example of how not to handle things. On the morning of 25 August 1980, the choreographer-director Gower Champion died with the opening of his Broadway revival of 42nd Street only hours away. The producer David Merrick, whose abrasive manner earned him the nickname "The Abominable Showman", kept the news from the cast (presumably in order not to distract them) until immediately after the premiere, when he suddenly stilled the standing ovation to announce that Champion was dead – a rare example of a show-stopper moment in a show that had already stopped, and which some have interpreted as a vulgar dramatic gesture by Merrick.
There was a gentler memorial shadow over a show I saw in New York last month. Most of the attention around Lucky Guy at the Broadhurst theatre has understandably focused on the Broadway debut of Tom Hanks. The actor received long and noisy adulation from the audience for achieving the simple task of walking on stage, deepening my detestation (which I've written about before) for the American habit of giving an "entry round" to star performers (even if, on this occasion, I could almost excuse it because of the sheer improbability of such a recognisable screen actor being "live" before our eyes). But I had more trouble adjusting to the unfairness of the play's author being dead. So my preference was to hold a private minute's silence, before the show began, for Nora Ephron (1941-2012), the screenwriter (When Harry Met Sally) and writer-director (Sleepless in Seattle, with Hanks), who completed this stage play, based on the life of the New York journalist Mike McAlary, shortly before her death last year.
The play has explicitly become a memorial to Ephron, and Hanks has admitted to finding the first night difficult because there had been hopes that she might defy her medical prognosis and take the traditional writer's bow on opening night. In another obituary ritual common on Broadway, Ephron's photograph was projected onto a screen within the set that carries newspaper headlines throughout the play.
Irritating as "entry rounds" may be in theatre, there is something fitting about figures such as Griffiths and Ephron being given an exit round. Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.
A friend who went to see the Alan Bennett double bill Untold Stories on Tuesday night reported an unusual twist to the curtain call. Alex Jennings, who plays Bennett in the two short plays, silenced the applause from the audience and told them that, earlier that night, the lights in London's West End had been dimmed in memory of the actor Richard Griffiths, a "great friend and collaborator", who had died that week. As many involved in the production had worked with Griffiths – Jennings co-starred with him in Bennett's The Habit of Art – there was considerable emotion on stage. It was shared by many in the audience, who will have had their own long memories of the actor.
The ceremonies given to Griffiths – a brief darkening of the neon in the theatre district and the footlights announcement – are two traditional ways, in both London and New York, of honouring theatre's illustrious departed. Some cynics will regard these rituals as proof of the frequently alleged tendency of theatrical people towards excessive sentimentality. For me, though, they are a proper and logical conclusion to a significant theatrical career. They have an importance for performers and a poignancy for audiences, not just because of the natural melancholy at the death of someone we have known (or known of), but because the fundamental quality of theatrical performance is its "liveness"– the physical presence of the event in front of us. In a profession that marks the end of each performance with applause, there is neatness, too, in the performer's end provoking a final round. (And in fact the custom has spread to sport, where a minute's clapping is now more common than silence to pay tribute to a late player or manager.)
Even in the case of writers, strictly invisible from the event, there is a relationship between audience and author that is changed by whether the dramatist is living (a new play by Stoppard or Ayckbourn feels like a continuation of a conversation with them), long dead (Shakespeare), neglected but recently rediscovered (Terence Rattigan), or has recently died.
Acknowledging this, Michael Gambon, who led the 2008 West End production of Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, silenced the closing applause at the first performance after the playwright's death and asked for a moment's silence. There was an additional charge to that performance because Pinter had asked Gambon to read some lines from No Man's Land, about memory and the dead, at his funeral.
Gambon apparently handled the announcement with grace and solemnity. But Broadway legend contains a gruesome example of how not to handle things. On the morning of 25 August 1980, the choreographer-director Gower Champion died with the opening of his Broadway revival of 42nd Street only hours away. The producer David Merrick, whose abrasive manner earned him the nickname "The Abominable Showman", kept the news from the cast (presumably in order not to distract them) until immediately after the premiere, when he suddenly stilled the standing ovation to announce that Champion was dead – a rare example of a show-stopper moment in a show that had already stopped, and which some have interpreted as a vulgar dramatic gesture by Merrick.
There was a gentler memorial shadow over a show I saw in New York last month. Most of the attention around Lucky Guy at the Broadhurst theatre has understandably focused on the Broadway debut of Tom Hanks. The actor received long and noisy adulation from the audience for achieving the simple task of walking on stage, deepening my detestation (which I've written about before) for the American habit of giving an "entry round" to star performers (even if, on this occasion, I could almost excuse it because of the sheer improbability of such a recognisable screen actor being "live" before our eyes). But I had more trouble adjusting to the unfairness of the play's author being dead. So my preference was to hold a private minute's silence, before the show began, for Nora Ephron (1941-2012), the screenwriter (When Harry Met Sally) and writer-director (Sleepless in Seattle, with Hanks), who completed this stage play, based on the life of the New York journalist Mike McAlary, shortly before her death last year.
The play has explicitly become a memorial to Ephron, and Hanks has admitted to finding the first night difficult because there had been hopes that she might defy her medical prognosis and take the traditional writer's bow on opening night. In another obituary ritual common on Broadway, Ephron's photograph was projected onto a screen within the set that carries newspaper headlines throughout the play.
Irritating as "entry rounds" may be in theatre, there is something fitting about figures such as Griffiths and Ephron being given an exit round. Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.