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justforbooks · 1 year

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In a spoof obituary written while he was still in his 40s, Barry Humphries, who has died aged 89, described himself as “an ancient comic” who had long since become “a self-indulgent and inaudible has-been” with no sense of progressive social relevance.

The Republic of Australia’s Art Squad had, he said, banned Humphries’ work in his native land. He had endured his last years of “exile and obloquy” in the tarnished splendour of “a Lusitanian spa”, where he occasionally gave clandestine performances to his dwindling, reactionary and hard-of-hearing followers. He was survived, the obituary concluded, “by innumerable wives, great-grandchildren and creditors”. It was a generally appropriate death notice of a satirist who delighted in guying both himself and his critics.

Never a genial humorist, there was always a whiff of sulphur in his comedy. “What is there to say about me?” he would gull his interviewers. “I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I am Church of England – I wash my car on Sundays. There must be some way you can jazz me up.” This was Humphries disguised as a candid interviewee. Being oneself, he would add, is a form of disguise.

There were many other disguises. One minute he would be a monocled Edwardian dandy or a mad scientist or a sad, sexless suburbanite. The next he would assume the mask of a beach bum or a shady art dealer or an embittered intellectual. But the most famous masks of all were his hellcat, the housewife megastar Dame Edna Everage, and his alcoholic political freeloader, professional adulterer and family man Sir Les Patterson.

Humphries grew up in suburban Melbourne, the son of Louisa (nee Brown) and Eric Humphries, a prosperous builder. He was an old boy of an exclusive school (or as he put it: “self-educated; attended Melbourne grammar”) and was briefly a student at Melbourne University. He began his extraordinary career on the back of an arts council bus touring the country towns of Victoria in 1954. It was his first professional role – the lovesick Duke Orsino to Zoe Caldwell’s Viola in Twelfth Night.

At each town, a patron of the arts, often the lady mayoress, would welcome the company over refreshments. Later, to help pass the time on the bus, Humphries invented a character to lampoon these municipal occasions. She was a drab, mousey and relentless hostess, simply named Edna.

The character was thought amusing enough to try out on stage in a Christmas revue in Melbourne. So it came about, on 13 December 1955, that Mrs (as she then was) Edna Everage made her stage debut – a volunteer hostess for the Melbourne Olympics, six feet tall, with brown basilisk eyes and a large chartreuse cabbage rose pinned on her charcoal suit. Her family – husband Norm, son Kenny, daughter Valmai, and mother (in a twilight home) – were given honourable mention, although their miserable fates in Edna’s triumphal backwash were not yet evident. Humphries, then as always, wrote the script.

The sketch was only a moderate success, but enough to point Humphries away from dramatic acting and towards the revue, music hall or cabaret. Also in 1955 he married Brenda Wright, and the following year they moved to Sydney to join a London-inspired theatre of “intimate revue”. He had found his metier, although Sydney satire was still too bland and self-congratulatory to satisfy his dandiacal rage. What Australia still needed, he said, was not mild satire, but a heroic act of espionage.

He finally found it playing the anguished Estragon in a 1958 production of Waiting for Godot. Humphries tramped the streets of Sydney in a sandwich board advertising the play, stuck Godot stickers on posts and windows, and scoured the scrap yards for trash with which he designed the stage sets. The audiences received the play with overwhelming indifference, but Humphries said it changed his life.

When he returned to revue, it was a new Humphries and a new Edna. She became at last a fully ad-libbing monologuiste, teasing if not insulting her audience. This was Edna’s breakthrough. She never looked back.

Australian theatre, however, remained in the doldrums. One critic said there was better theatre in a march-past of lifesavers on Bondi beach. In London, meanwhile, Beckett, Brecht, Osborne and Pinter were leading “the great uprising” from Sloane Square to Stratford East. Humphries found it irresistible.

His first marriage having come to an end after a couple of years, in 1959 Humphries married the ballet dancer Rosalind Tong, took a steamer to London – and into a decade of obscurity (and deepening alcoholism). He found some small parts, notably the undertaker in the original production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! (1960). But his future fame lay with the one-man shows which at that point only his faithful Australian audiences would even contemplate. Three years after arriving in London, he returned to Melbourne and staged, in mid-1962, A Nice Night’s Entertainment, in which he again paraded Edna and her family, along with some of his other creations, from a tortured, expatriate-hating journalist to a nose-picking, guitar-toting beatnik.

The popular success of the show emboldened Humphries to try out his characters in London – at the Establishment Club in May 1963. It was a flop (or as he put it, “a highly successful five-minute season”). He returned to small roles, notably in Frank Norman’s A Kayf Up West, at Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Royal, Stratford East (1964). He also created for Private Eye the randy hobbledehoy Barry (“Bazza”) McKenzie, whose boozing, vomiting, urinating adventures, narrated in comic-strip form in a largely invented vernacular, reflected and mocked Humphries’ life in the swinging 60s. A film based on the character, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, was released in 1972, and a sequel, Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, two years later, with Humphries taking several small roles in each; in the latter, the Australian prime minister of the time, Gough Whitlam, apparently invests Edna as a dame.

Humphries did two more Australian tours before testing the water in London again. The first – in 1965 – was the triumphant Excuse I, which filled huge Australian theatres for weeks on end. No one-man show had ever done such business in Australia. It was on this tour that Humphries introduced the gladioli-hurling finale. The next tour – the 1968 Just a Show – introduced further variations. Edna now abandoned her dowdy appearance and came on stage smiling like a shark in a red Thai silk coat over a green dress. (“Am I overdressed?” she asked, looking around. “No, I don’t think so.”) She also began entering from the stalls chatting to her “possums”.

The enormous success of Just a Show encouraged him to try again in London – at the Fortune theatre. Once again the show was a flop. Harold Hobson dismissed it in one devastating sentence: “Most of Barry Humphries’ Just a Show will give pleasure to most Australians in London.”

The great turning point in Humphries’ career came in 1970 when he collapsed, an alcoholic wreck. That June, he was arrested in the streets of Melbourne’s leafy, affluent Camberwell and charged with being drunk and disorderly. A sensible magistrate adjourned the case for six months, ordering that charges be withdrawn if there were no further “incidents”. Humphries booked into a private hospital specialising in alcoholism. The man who for more than 10 years had started the day with a “grappling hook” (brandy and port) became an abstainer – and one of the great comedians of his age.

Still he had not yet conquered London. His Australian shows of the early 1970s (A Load of Old Stuffe, in 1971, and At Least You Can Say You’ve Seen It, in 1974) further refined Edna. She was now a name-dropping predator of radical views and treacly-trendy sentimentality, wearing glittering scarlet hotpants split to the groin. Soon critics were ransacking the dictionary for adjectives to describe her: psychotic, hysteric, Dionysiac, Amazonian, crypto-fascist, anally obsessed, a piranha, a hectoring Medusa, a blue-rinsed beast of Belsen, the Australian daughter of Torquemada.

As her curtain raiser, and to incarnate his disgust with alcoholism, Humphries also created a new character, half Sir Toby Belch, half Apeneck Sweeney – exuberant clown and revolting drunk, the cultural attache Sir Les Patterson. Staggering down the aisle, whisky in hand, he would invite his audience to give Edna the clap she so richly deserved.

In 1976 had come yet another assault on the West End, this time succeeding sensationally when Housewife-Superstar opened at the Apollo. It ran to packed houses for four months and almost 500,000 people saw it.

This was the first of Humphries’ enormously popular one-man shows in London, which included A Night With Dame Edna (1978-79) and Back With a Vengeance (for a number of seasons 1987-89 and 2005-07). Critics now acclaimed him as the greatest one-man showman since Charles Dickens and perhaps in the history of theatre.

He reached an even wider audience on British television, including two series of The Dame Edna Experience (1987-89) for LWT, a highly successful comedy chatshow in which Dame Edna interviewed celebrities – or delivered monologues interrupted by total strangers, as she herself described it. On both stage and screen a silent, doleful background presence was provided by her “New Zealand bridesmaid” Madge Allsop, played from 1987 to 2003 by Emily Perry.

The US took longer to conquer. In 1977, Humphries presented Housewife-Superstar at West 55th Street, off Broadway, where the critics dismissed it as “abysmal”, “pointless” and “like the litter on 42nd Street, something worth missing”. It was to be 20 years before the New York critics submitted to the Humphriesian tornado. In 2000, he was awarded a special Tony for the “theatrical event” of the year – a category invented for the occasion since his show, Dame Edna: The Royal Tour, was neither play nor musical. His success led to subsequent US tours, and a role in the TV comedy drama Ally McBeal in 2002.

In March 2012, Humphries announced a farewell stage show, Eat Pray Laugh!, which toured Australia, the UK and the US. It featured his best-known characters – Dame Edna, the stoic old convalescent Sandy Stone, and Sir Les Patterson (with a bit part for his brother, Gerard, a paedophile priest). But in an eerie finale, there were glimpses of other unforgettable creations: among them Lance Boyle, the trade union racketeer; Brian Graham, the 1960s Sydney executive and closet homosexual in navy blue shorts and long white socks; and Phil Philby, the lefty experimental film-maker.

Before the final curtain, Humphries himself took the stage, thanked the packed house, and ambiguously urged them to come to his final “farewell”. In a wave of emotion while the band belted out “Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye”, his tearful fans delivered a standing ovation.

In 2015, Humphries was artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret festival, where, with characteristic panache, he announced that he had banned the use of the word “fuck”, which too many comedians, including some good ones, use in a desperate attempt to get a laugh. (Humphries himself had often done so.) The patrons, he said, would be relieved and delighted by his new espousal of censorship.

As intended, the resulting controversy generated enormous publicity for the festival, but nonetheless he continued “to defend to the ultimate my right to give deep and profound offence”. Remarks of his on transgenderism – including dismissing it as a fashion – led in 2019 to the Melbourne international comedy festival dropping his name from its major prize, the Barry award.

Perceptions of what was considered either cutting edge or decadent in the jazz-infused music of Germany of the 1920s and 30s had fascinated him since finding a bundle of sheet music in Melbourne. In Australia in 2013 and in London seasons in 2016 and 2018, he explored it in the show Weimar Cabaret, with the chanteuse Meow Meow.

Humphries was based permanently in London from the late 1960s, although he visited Australia frequently, maintaining good relations with fans, friends and family. “To live permanently in Australia,” he would say, “is rather like going to a party and dancing all night with one’s mother.” He collected art and books, describing himself as a “compulsive bibliomaniac”, and owned 25,000 volumes.

Over the years, he made recordings, wrote books, a novel and a volume of verse, and in 2007 he held an exhibition of his paintings in Melbourne. He had roles in several films, including Finding Nemo (2003) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012). He dismissed most his books as trifles and promotions, but not his autobiography More Please (1992), which is less a comic story of an actor’s life than a de profundis or an alcoholic’s almanac; it is also noteworthy for its piety towards his family. It won the JR Ackerley prize for autobiography in 1993. Humphries was the subject of several biographies, including John Lahr’s Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilisation (1991), One Man Show (2010), by Anne Pender, and my own book, published in 1991, The Real Barry Humphries.

He was appointed OA in 1982 and CBE in 2007.

From his marriage to Rosalind, Humphries had two daughters, Tessa and Emily. In 1979, he married the artist Diane Millstead, and they had two sons, Rupert and Oscar. Following his third divorce, in 1990 he married Lizzie Spender, daughter of the poet Stephen Spender. She survives him, along with his four children.

🔔 John Barry Humphries, comic actor and scriptwriter, born 17 February 1934; died 22 April 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #Barry Humphries #in memoriam

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scotianostra · 3 months

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On February 1st 1918 the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh.

Spark did not publish her first novel until she was almost 40, but she quickly gained admirers for her taut, comically disturbing works that often depicted odd, malevolent forces insinuating their way into the lives of ordinary people. She was best known for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," her 1961 novel about a charismatic schoolmistress.

Originally Muriel Sarah Camberg, she attended the James Gillespie's High School for Girls. There she met educator Christina Kay who became the inspiration for one of Spark's most famous characters.

At the age of 19, she married Sydney Oswald "Ossie" Spark. The couple sailed to Africa soon after they wed. The union proved to be a brief and turbulent one. She had a son, Robin, with her husband before the pair split up. For a time, Spark supported herself doing odd jobs. She returned home during World War II, leaving her son in Africa in the care of some nuns.

Back home, Spark became involved in London's literary world. She served as editor of the Poetry Review from 1947 to 1949, and published poetry, short stories and critical biographies of figures like William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley and Emily Brontë. In the 1950s, Spark suffered a nervous breakdown and converted to Catholicism. Her first novel, The Comforters in 1957, earned critical acclaim from such established British writers as Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh.

While she largely considered herself a poet, Spark built up an impressive career for herself as a novelist. After The Comforters, two more novels soon followed —Memento Mori and The Ballad of Peckham Rye . But it was her tale of a teacher at a girls school that really brought her widespread commercial success. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie became a best seller when it was published in 1961. The book began the basis of a successful London play starring Vanessa Redgrave in 1964. This production later moved to Broadway with Zoe Caldwell as the title character. In 1969, Maggie Smith starred in the film version, which earned Smith an Academy Award for best actress.

By the end of the 1960s, Spark moved to Italy. She lived in Rome for many years. There Spark met artist Penelope Jardine. The pair became inseparable, eventually setting up house together in Tuscany. Jardine acted as Spark's aide and companion. While some have speculated that their relationship was a romantic one, Spark told reporters that it was an "old-fashioned friendship," according to The New York Times.

As her career progressed, Spark continued to explore both the dark and light sides of life in her work. Not everyone knew what to do with this odd balance of the comic and tragic. Scottish writer, Allan Massie (Who I met several times at a writers workshop when at school) described her as "a comic writer with a sense of evil, a metaphysical in all sense of that difficult word" in the Spectator. Another critic for New Criterion wrote that "what first seems like caricature often passes, on closer reading, as unvarnished reportage."

Spark turned her mighty pen on her own life with the 1992 memoir Curriculum Vitae. In 2004, Spark published The Finishing School, which proved to be her final novel.

Muriel Spark died, aged 88, on April 13,th 2006, in Florence, Italy and is buried in the cemetery of Sant'Andrea Apostolo in Oliveto.

#scotland #scottish #history #edinburgh #author #witer #strong woman #literary figure

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six-costume-refs · 11 months

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Do the Howard pony lengths vary?

Oh my god yes. Thank you for this ask, I’ve been dying to talk about this and never got around to making a post on my own.

Here are some examples of different lengths we’ve seen, just including first covers and principals:

Pictured: Vicki Manser (2019, West End); Jennifer Caldwell (2019, UK Tour); Chelsea Dawson (2021, Aus Tour); Mallory Maedke (2021, Broadway); Tsemaye Bob-Egbe (2022, West End); Aryn Bohannon (2022, Boleyn Tour)

I mean. SO much variation there. Vicki and Jen’s are both very short and very thinned out nearer the end, with Vicki in particular having some layering. Chelsea’s initial wig was very short and curled but also much fuller. Mallory and Tsemaye both have a middle ground in terms of length, but Tsemaye had the killer braids. And Aryn’s is very, very long and very full.

They’ve definitely been shifting towards the longer, fuller ponytails across the board, but there’s still variance in length/fullness/layering. Here’s most of the current Howard wigs:

Pictured: Koko Basigara (22-23 WE), Rachel Rawlinson (21-23 WE), Leah Vassell (22-23 WE), Lou Henry (23-24 UKT); Shakira Simpson (23-24 UKT), Zoe Jensen (22-23 Bway), Holli' Conway (22-23 Bway), Aubrey Matalon (22-23 Bway); Courtney Mack (23 Aragon Tour); Erin Palmer Ramirez (22-23 Aragon Tour), Aline Mayagoitia (22-23 Boleyn Tour), Aryn Bohannon (22-23 Boleyn Tour); Tay Pearlstein (22-23 Boleyn Tour), Sarah McFarlane (Breakaway 5.0), Artemis Chrisoulakis (Bliss 5.0), Jillian Worthing (Bliss 5.0)

West End still has the most variance. Rachel has a very short wig, more in the line of Jennifer Caldwell’s alt wig, which I suspect is partially for versatility since she also uses it for Parr. UKT is more standardized in length but all the Howards are new so all their wigs were presumably made together. NCL generally has fairly short ponytails, at least relative to current UK/US mainland productions! Many of them seem to have been reused a few times now too. US leans towards longer ponys, but of course there's still variation in length. See: Holli' vs Aryn.

#six the musical #six wigs #katherine howard six #vicki manser #jennifer caldwell #chelsea dawson #mallory maedke #tsemaye bob egbe #aryn bohannon #rachel rawlinson #holli' conway

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redladydeath · 8 months

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Six actors who's names share a common root

Hannah (12) Jana Larell Glover, Anna Uzele, Hana Stewart, Annamaria Baranyai, Anita Gado, Hannah Lowther, Annabel Marlow, Anna Peller, Gerianne Perez, Analise Rios, Hannah Taylor, Anna Terpiłowska

Elizabeth (9) Ellie Jane Grant, Izi Maxwell, Ella Burns, Bella Coppola, Izabela Pawletko, Analise Rios, Leesa Tulley, Elizabeth Walker, Ellie Wyman

Laurence (8) Laura Dawn Pyatt, Lauren Byrne, Lauren Irving, Lauren Mariasoosay, Laura Blair, Lauren Drew, Loren Hunter, Lori McLare

Margaret (7) Małgorzata Chrusciel, Meghan Corbett, Meghan Dawson, Meg Dixon-Brasil, Megan Gilbert, Maggie Lacasse, Megan Leung

Christos (7) Kirsty "Zara" MacIntosh, Keirsten Nicole Hodgens, Cristina D'Agostino, Kristina Leopold, Christina Modestou, Kristina Walz, Krisztina Magyar

Helen (6) Ellie Jane Grant, Elena Breschi, Ella Burns, Elena Gyasi, Aline Mayagoitia, Ellie Wyman

John (6) Jana Larell Glover, Gianna Grosso, Jaina Brock-Patel, Janique Charles, Janice Rijssel, Lori-Jane McLare

Nicholas (6) Nicole Louise Lewis, Nikki Bentley, Nikolett Gallusz, Collette Guitart, Nicole Kyoung-Mi Lambert, Nicole Lamb

Alexander (5) Alexia McIntosh, Sasha Renae Brown, Alexandra "Zan" Berube, Aleksandra Gotowicka, Ji-sun "Lexie" Kim

Gabriella (5) Gabbi Mack, Gabrielle Davina Smith, Gabriela Francesca Carillo, Gabriella Stylianou-Burns, Gabriella Boumford

Jasmine (5) Jasmine Shen, Jasmine Smith, Jasmine Forsberg, Jasmine Hackett, Jaz Robinson

Julius (5) Juli Horanyi, Giulia Marolda, Julia McLellan, Julia Pulo, Jillian Worthing

Adal (4) Alicia Corrales-Connor, Alyssa Giannetti, Alize Ke'Aloha Cruz, Aline Mayagoitia

Amy (4) Amy Bridges, Aimie Atkinson, Amy Di Bartolomeo, Kara-Ami McCreanor

Courtney (4) Courtney Monsma, Courtney Stapleton, Courtney Bowman, Courtney Mack

Emil (4) Amelia Walker, Emily Rose Lyons, Emily Harrigan, Emilia "Millie" O'Connell

Katherine (4) Caitlyn De Kuyper, Kathryn Kilger, Caitlin Tipping, Kate Zulauf

Kayla (4) Kala Gare, Khaila Wilcoxon, Kaylah Attard, Kayla McSorley

Monica (4) Monika Nika Veres, Monique Ashe-Palmer, Janique Charles, Mónika Horváth

Sophia (4) Sophie Golden, Sophie-Rose Middleton, Fia Houston-Hamilton, Sophie Isaacs

Abigail (3) Abigail Sparrow, Abbi Hodgson, Abby Mueller

Aenor (3) Ellie Jane Grant, Ella Burns, Ellie Wyman

Danielle (3) Danielle Steers, Danielle Mendoza, Danielle Rose

Eireann (3) Aryn Bohannon, Erin Palmer Ramirez, Erin Caldwell

Hayley (3) Haley Izurieta, Hailee Kaleem Wright, Hailey Lewis

Laura (3) Laura Dawn Pyatt, Laura Blair, Lori McLare

Lucius (3) Lucy Aiston, Lucia Valentino, Lucinda Wilson

Natalie (3) Natalie Pilkington, Natalie Paris, Natalia Kujawa

Oliver (3) Olivia "Liv" Alexander, Olivia Donalson, Oliver Wickham

Rhiannon (3) Rhiannon Bacchus, Rhiannon Doyle, Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky

Sarah (3) Kala Gare, Sadie Hurst, Sarah McFarlane

Theodore (3) Terica Marie, Didi Romero, Dóra Csonka

Agnes (2) Inez Budd, Agnieszka Rose

Aisha (2) Aiesha Naomi Pease, Aisha Kardffy

Alan (2) Lana Zoe Jensen, Alana M. Robinson

Amanda (2) Amanda Lee, Amanda Lindgren

Ashley (2) Ashlee Waldbauer, Ashleigh Weir

Brian (2) Brianna Brito Mooney, Brianna Javis

Cassandra (2) Cassandra Lee, Cassie Silva

Cathassach (2) Casey Esbin, Casey Al-Shaqsy

Ceallach (2) Kelly Sweeney, Kelly Denice Taylor

Cennetig (2) Kennedy Carstens, Kenedy Small

Charles (2) Carly Mercedes Dyer, Caroline Siegrist

Chelsea (2) Chelsea Lorraine Wargo, Chelsea Dawson

Chloe (2) Chloe Zuel, Chloe Hart

Eloise (2) Eloise "Ellie" Sharpe, Eloise Lord

Eric (2) Terica Marie, Erika Herceg

Grace (2) Grace Mouat, Grace Melville

Hadrian (2) Adrianna Glover, Adrianna Hicks

Henry (2) Harriet Watson, Harriet Caplan-Dean

Holly (2) Holli' Conway, Holly Musgrave

Jennifer (2) Jennifer Caldwell, Ji-woo "Jennifer" Kim

Jessica (2) Jessica Niles, Jessica "Jessie" Bodner

Ludwig (2) Lou Henry, Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky

Maia (2) Maiya Quansah-Breed, Maya Christian

Martha (2) Marta Burdynowicz, Marta Skrzypczynska

Mary (2) Annamaria Baranyai, Marilyn Caserta

Matilda (2) Maddison Bulleyment, Maddison Firth

Melissa (2) Melinda Porto, Melissa J. Ford

Rachel (2) Rachel Rawlinson, Rachel "Rae" Davenport

Renatus (2) Renee Lamb, Brene "Bre" Jackson

Shannon (2) Shannen Alyce Quan, Su-jeong "Shannon" Pae

Sidney (2) Cydney Clark, Sydney Parra

Taylor (2) Taylor Iman Jones, Taylor Pearlstein

Victor (2) Victoria "Vicki" Manser, Viki Singh

#idk man i like lists #redlady speaks #six the musical

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emailsfromanactor · 1 month

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We're in a Redfield drought, so here's another one of his letters to The New York Times! This is from November 23, 1969.

TO THE EDITOR: Critics here and critics there. There seem to be critics everywhere. It’s enough to give a professional the pip. At times one gets the impression that we have more critics than plays. Martin Gottfried, fat with grants, is the drama critic for Women’s Wear and I think that’s nice. He seems to be on the side of the angels, culturally speaking, and that’s nice too. But when he barks so sharply at Walter Kerr because he considers him an apologist for Broadway (justifiably), he reveals himself as something worse: an amateur. Hard fact: the trouble with 99 per cent of critics is that they know nothing about the theater. So blunt a statement may seem a joke, but it isn’t. The not so surprising truth is that the only people who know anything about the theater are the people who put on plays. With all Mr. Gottfried’s endless gazings at the Alley Theater and Berliner Ensemble, he learns little of importance because he can neither act nor direct nor write nor pull a curtain rope for the theater. Until you can do one or all of these things, you end up knowing zero about what makes a production either move or be moving. Why such a polemic from me?

Because theater professionals get awfully weary of the war between critics. Granted many of them are just young fellows trying to get ahead, must they try so desperately to euchre each other? If I read one more attack on Clive Barnes by John Simon, I think I’ll throw up at the sheer “I want your job” of it all. It’s like “All About Eve,” for heaven’s sake. Mr. Gottfried, while making a painfully awkward case for resident theater, provides us a list of competing players. He lines up Zoe Caldwell, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Frank Langella and Stacy Keach against Jason Robards, Sandy Dennis, Paul Newman, Barbara Harris and Henry Fonda. He tells us, with beguiling certitude, that the first group are actors because they owe nothing to Broadway (not entirely true) and that the second group are merely Broadway-approved performers. So tortured an argument must not be pecked at too fiercely for want of space. Enough to say that Paul Newman, rightly or wrongly, never received totally approving reviews on Broadway; that Barbara Harris’s “development” (Mr. Gottfried’s word) has as little to do with Broadway as Zoe Caldwell’s; that Jason Robards’s original impact had entirely to do with Off Broadway; that Jon Voight has not had time to compete with him as a serious theatrical actor, though I doubt either of them give a damn; and that Sandy Dennis and Henry Fonda do not by any means hold firmer grips on “fine actor” reputations than Dustin Hoffman or Stacy Keach. The real point is: who cares? Reputations, as such, have always been questionable. Success is always questionable, so long as we are aware of why it is there. To say, as Mr. Gottfried does, that William Ball is “surely the finest director in America” is surely the sort of amateur’s extrapolation we expect from someone who has no idea of what he is watching. No rap on William Ball. He is a vigorous and important director, but how would Martin Gottfried know?

John Simon, for his part, has publicly chastised Harold Prince for daring to direct professional productions. Simon pointed out that directing is a far more difficult art than “all but the greatest acting” (sic) and that Prince would certainly shrink from starring himself in a production. Therefore, Simon says, how dare he direct? The question is gorgeous and the logic sublime. It places Mr. Simon, by his own request, at the lip of Mauna Loa—from which he obligingly dives into lava. What is certain, obviously, is that Mr. Prince directs Broadway productions because they are hugely successful. Also that he is hard-nosed enough, as producer, to discharge anyone, including himself, who cannot measure up to his assignment. It is no insult to Mr. Prince to say that if he were to star himself, he would close in Medicine Hat. Before disgorging themselves of so many top-hatted judgments, shouldn’t our more pretentious young critics learn how to dress a dancer? Or speak one line of dialogue before an audience? What is distressing for the theater workman (barring producers) is that such sweeping determinations too often quite literally control a fellow’s next job. This situation, by the way, is considerably more damaging to the “developing actor” than all of Gottfried’s eyewash about the importance of playing Pinter rather than being “directed by Abe Burrows.” I am not at all persuaded (after 33 years) that one experience is necessarily more developing than the other. The fact is that a great deal of resident theater acting is absolutely dreadful while a great deal of Broadway acting is pretty good. One of the reasons is, as Minnie Maddern Fiske pointed out some years ago, that repertory companies are often stuck with the wrong actors for too many of the parts. It is nice to know your fellow player and to have worked with him before, but it is not so nice if he is ghastly in his role. Individually cast productions—granted a sufficient rehearsal period—frequently work out better. Mr. Gottfried’s heart is nicely placed but he has badly blown his mind because he confuses goodness with creativity, reputation with ability, success with accomplishment, and Broadway with the devil. Mr. Kerr, on the other hand, and despite his sometimes maddening commercialism, knows what he is watching because he is a theatrical professional of considerable experience and decent accomplishment. And it is my belief that Mr. Barnes does not entirely deserve the continuing contumely of his colleagues. The fact is they know no more than he. And, in many cases, they know a great deal less. All I ask is that a critic either genuinely understand the creative process or leave off trying to fool me and the public into thinking that he does. Opportunism is not evaluation. Wrestling for reputation is not criticism. It is not even reviewing. A little less regal, gentlemen. In a very real sense, we are all in this together. And, if you don’t know that, you don’t know your proscenium from your apron. WILLIAM REDFIELD New York City

#emails from an actor #william redfield

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lustfulheart · 9 months

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INDIE SMUT RP (PLOT CENTRIC) - YOU MUST BE (PREFERABLY) 21+ TO ENTER PLEASE AND THANKS AND (AS OF 7/23/2023) I HAVE SWITCHED TO BETA EDITOR ONLY.

Welcome everyone to my page! I am a mostly mutuals only blog, but if you see an open in the tags you’re more than welcome to answer it even if we don’t follow each other! Some of the best partners are found that way, but just know I might be selective at times when it comes to muse and such. PLEASE DON’T PESTER ME IF I DO NOT FOLLOW YOU BACK. YOU MAY ANSWER AN OPEN IF YOU SEE ONE, BUT IF I DON’T REPLY PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO GUILT ME. I HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO AS I PLEASE ON THIS BLOG, THE SAME AS YOU DO.

I play both female and male characters (there is an obvious lean towards females) and while I’m not here to say you have to double up with one of my girls to get my guys, just know those threads might come a bit slower at times. I don’t try to drop threads without at least making some sort of PSA post about it though, so keep an eye out for them if I don't come directly to you with it!

When it comes to pairings, all of my men are straight and a majority of my ladies are bisexual! Leading the bulk of my threads to lean either towards m/f or f/f, but at the time of updating this (7/23/2023) I will not be including m/m content on my blog in a sexual sense. I have nothing against it, but I will not write it I am sorry 🖤 When writing a starter though, I will always include the preferences at the top so there is no confusion.

All standard rules apply here, don't be a dick and we should get along fine. Discord is more likely to be given out to people whom I have plotted with a little bit at least on here already, I just have to know it’s not gonna flop and go nowhere within a day or two. That, and it is now the place where all of my kinkier plots go to be written as to spare the dash as much as possible.

LINKS:

Muses | Banned FC's | Starters | Wanted Opposites | General Plot Wishlist

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Below the cut is my mobile friendly muse list! It will be updated as I continue to expand the roster.

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IF A “⩥” APPEARS NEXT TO THEIR NAME IT MEANS THE MUSE IS ONLY AVALIABLE UPON REQUEST / DEPENDANT UPON THE PLOT AT HAND! (I just simply do not wish to get rid of them entirely, but they are going to be a lower activity muse by default)

LADIES:

Jenny Boyd - Cassie Dunbrow

Ana De Armas - Elena Ortega “⩥”

Dove Cameron - Bella Grover

Madelyn Cline - Sydney "Syd" Limpkin

Dianna Agron - Violet Monroe “⩥”

Madelaine Petsch - Kat Hendricks

Grace Van Dien - Zoey White

Kathryn Newton - Twyla Allen

Zoe Colletti - Liddy Caldwell

Sadie Sink - Kirby Lewis

Holland Roden - Ginny Wallace

Gemma Chan - Mei Lin “⩥”

Natalia Dyer - Tori Van Dickson “⩥”

Camila Mendes - Izabel Torres

Ellie Bamber - Madison Penn

Sydney Sweeney - Charlie Kramer

Kaitlyn Dever - Hayley Sumpter “⩥”

Amy Adams - Lauren Moore

Anne Hathaway - Andrea Fernway

Sarah Rafferty - Monroe Danes

GENTS:

Tyler Hoechlin - Parker Hornsby “⩥”

Bradley Cooper - Ash Winger

Robbie Amell - Klaus Weber “⩥”

Idris Elba - Simon Huntsman

Matthew Noszka - Jaxon Krol

Pedro Pascal - Mateo Soto “⩥”

Dacre Montgomery - Ryker Collymore

Chris Pine - Ethan Sharp

Jason Momoa - Levi Madden “⩥”

Grey Sallow - Ryan Gosling

#🍎 pinned.#updated 7/23/2023 #mostly just streamlined from the old version but still

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