Word: sirs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...probably blunted us to its absence. And to a lot of other things. Most Americans have never heard of the National Endowment for the Arts, let alone its leaders; British newspaper readers and telly-watchers, though, know a lot about The Arts Council of Great Britain. Its secretary-general, Sir Roy Shaw, is one of the most powerful, most passionately scrutinized arts administrators in the world. Sir Roy, who will speak on "Politics and Policies in the Arts" tonight at the Kennedy School, wields a budget of 80 million pounds (roughly $145 million)--about 25 per cent more than...
Government subsidy of the arts began in Britain in 1945, when the post-war administration sought to boost the morale of a battle-scarred population during the difficult and painful work of reconstruction. "We have developed the public service in arts much more than you have," says Sir Roy, who has spent about 25 years of his life teaching adults and lecturing on adult education. The assumption is that art can tangibly improve the quality of a person's life--stimulating and sharpening his imagination, so, in the words of British playwright Arnold Wesker, he can make "imaginative leaps...
...dimensions of that love are tested and proved in the course of the play. On the eve of appearing in King Lear, Sir has abdicated the realm of sanity, gone mad before his cue. In the aftermath of an air raid, he has fled into the center of town and shredded his clothes in a driving rain. Hospitalized, he releases himself and bombards his way into his own dressing room. What Norman is confronted with is a shuddering, sobbing hulk of a man who cannot remember the first lines of a play he has performed 426 times. Sir...
Apart from its affectionate snapshots of theatrical mechanics, backstage bitchiness, superstitious rituals and votive dedication, The Dresser's compounded impact comes from its being a Lear within a Lear. Norman is Shakespeare's Fool as much as he is Sir's. The storm-ravaged heath is Britain under the lightning bolts of the Luftwaffe, and Sir's stunted wartime company resembles the decimated retinue of soldiery left to Lear's command. In his foray into town, shivering, soaked, his mind cast adrift from its moorings, Sir could be Lear's naked "unaccommodated man" shorn...
What the play owes to its two leading actors is incalculable. Rogers' Sir is a white-maned lion who roars formidably against his self-sought fate. He is a ham to his hocks, but he serves Shakespeare with feudal valor ("We've done it, Will, we've done it"). As for Courtenay's Norman, as his voice echoes sepulchers and his hands etch the air with images of touching vulnerability, he opens the book of acting to a previously uncut page. -By T.E. Kalem