In a fascinating piece in today’s Times, actor-director-writer Simon Callow analyses one of the seismic shifts in the theatre of the last fifty years: the notion of theatrical stars, and the democratisation of the relationship of star actors and their audience.
“We lived in a world which has demoted personality in favour of celebrity”, he writes. And whereas “the great stage stars – Olivier, Redgrave, Guinness, Dame Edith Evans – invited their audiences to attend their performances like monarchs passing among their subjects” – nowadays, the stars “are different: they come into contact with their fans in a democratic spirit. Actors and audiences mirror each other.”
There have been gains: “Today’s actors are lighter, quicker, are more in touch with life as it is lived. For the old gang, the mysteries of personality and power, sex and stage sorcery, the potency of impersonation, made them different from others, and they fenced themselves off from the world.”
Callow quotes a story about Gielgud, from the new biography of Laurence Olivier by Terry Coleman, turning down a role in an all-star revival of The School for Scandal for the Festival of Britain in 1951, on the grounds “that instead of putting all the stars in one show they should each be in one of their own”. As Callow writes, “The idea of actors today, however stellar, carving up the West End like a personal fiefdom is hilarious”.
Instead, however, it has lately become the personal fiefdom of assorted American film and television actors, keen to earn their acting stripes in the West End, and producers hoping to make a fast buck. “Today, a large number of productions are star-driven,” says Callow: “The appetite of the audience for a glimpse of their favourite film or television stars remains immense.”
But whereas they would once get a sighting and a performance, too often nowadays they only get the sighting. Maybe the age of the theatrical star has burnt out; but what has replaced it? Now we have actors like Luke Perry – who, prior to appearing in Sexual Perversity in Chicago in the West End, had last appeared on stage in high school; or the arrival this week of Rob Lowe in A Few Good Men.
