Word: gielgud
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...music-hall format in which the Standwells excel has attracted a number of well-known admirers, among them Conductor Leonard Bernstein, Duo-pianists Gold and Fizdale, and Sir John Gielgud. Perhaps the highest professional compliment the Standwells ever received was from Director-Choreographer Jerome Robbins. While experimenting with repertory theater in 1967, Robbins bought out the theater one night and invited his cast. He had been impressed by a puppet performance of a scene from Romeo and Juliet; that evening, he asked Peschka and Murdock to repeat the scene, leaving out the words but explaining their puppets' actions...
David Storey's Home is an asylum, and his characters are madmen. But his home is far closer to ours, and its inhabitants hardly seem madder than the people around us. When Harry, played by John Gielgud, walks onto an almost bare stage, neatly folds his gloves and newspaper onto a table, and lowers himself into a frame chair, he could be anywhere. At a garden party, or perhaps a seaside resort. And Jack (Ralph Richardson), moving painfully to the table, smiling slightly, asking if he may sit down-is that what a lunatic looks like? Not until Jack asks...
...such a simply written play, the actors become especially important. Gielgud and Richardson are extraordinary. Their meticulous performances, with countless shades and nuances of expression and speech-repeating the same words and sighs in slightly different, carefully thought-out ways-make the play beautiful to watch. In difficult roles without any real action, the two masters complement each other perfectly. Their dialogues have the counterpoint of music and the precision of ballet. Also in the original London production, Mona Washbourne as Kathleen and Dandy Nichols as Marjorie are funny and excellent, and Graham Weston, as Alfred, the lobotomized wrestler...
...action, and there is virtually none, for this is a Chekhovian mood piece, takes place in a mental home. There are no acute aberrations. The place is no nuttier than the world, or life. Richardson and Gielgud are two men who stand on the crumbling threshold of old age, all passion spent, memories distant but present, vivid yet garbled. For them, every dawn is dusk, and every dusk is darkened with the knowledge of imminent death...
...play is laced with laconic, seemingly perfunctory responses such as "Oh, yes," "Ah, well," "Really?" but Director Lindsay Anderson has orchestrated these in a stylized contrapuntal flow that achieves the repetitive impact of similarly sparse dialogue in Pinter and Beckett. Gielgud and Richardson are a beautifully complementary pair, the dandy and the tradesman, Gielgud's elevated clarinet tones v. Richardson's deeper bassoon. When Gielgud narrows his eyes he seems to be glimpsing the Elysian Fields; when Richardson widens his, he seems to be devouring a plate of sausages. Gielgud has a troubled introspective psyche; Richardson tries...