A few weeks ago at the National Theatre’s annual fundraising event, a dinner with Nick Hytner and Helen Mirren was auctioned off for £40,000, as I blogged here (by comparison, a first night and dinner with me fetched £2,700…. And I thought I did well!) But yesterday, lunch with Mirren (and also attended by Hytner) cost me just £35 – a bargain indeed! It was the Critics’ Circle Annual Award lunch, being given for the 19th time, in which distinguished practitioners from each of the five divisions of the circle’s members’ sections – drama, dance, film, music and visual arts – are proposed and voted for by the entire membership (or at least the membership that bothers to return their voting forms) for the honour of the Critics’ Circle Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts.
Previous winners have included Sirs Peter Hall, Michael Tippett, David Lean, John Mills, Pete Ustinov, John Dummond, Peter Wright, Richard Eyre, Edwad Downes, and Ian McKellen; Dames Ninette de Valois, Judi Dench and Alicia Markova; and mere mortals Harold Pinter, Paul Scofield, Alfred Brendel, Mike Leigh and Alan Bennett.
Mirren, as eternally gracious as she is ever glamorous, has of course had an amazing year, already topped by her Oscar win as Best Actress; but was able to look on the bright side of accepting one more prize, because at least with this one – a beautiful glass goblet – it was something she said she could actually use! But then in a witty and charming acceptance speech, she analysed each part of her citation and wondered if it applied to her. “Distinguished” she found difficult to understand, since she didn’t see herself as such; “service” was even more difficult, since she was just doing a job, and that was as much about being able to pay the mortgage as anything else; as for “arts”, she said she was just an actress, and every word that came out of her mouth was thanks to the greatest of the artists, the writers.
Of course, the assembled throng were writers, too, but ones who write about the art that the artists create; but some of us are fans, too. One critic at my table remembered ushering for Mirren’s Cleopatra for the National Youth Theatre in 1966 and seeing it several times; another established a tenuous connection by also hailing from Ilford, Essex and therefore using that fact as an entrée to introduce himself proudly to the Dame.
In other news yesterday, I’ve already blogged about the postponment of the King Lear press opening that was originally scheduled for April 3 but moved the day before when Frances Barber sustained a bicycling accident and wasn’t able to perform. I’ve also previously blogged about the long wait the press were going to have in any case before being allowed to review its companion production of The Seagull – a total of 27 previews are being given before it opens to us on May 31, after which there are just 13 performances left to play before the run ends.
Now, Nunn has decided to give us a marathon run on May 31 and open both plays on the same day – which means a nearly two-month delay on the originally scheduled King Lear date. According to the press statement, “The decision to delay the Lear press performance is to allow the ensemble company time both to rehearse and perform The Seagull in repertoire with King Lear after Frances has made a complete recovery.” In fact, Barber’s Lear understudy, Melanie Jessop, will have to do double duty and do the opening performances of The Seagull, too, in Barber’s role of Arkadina in that production, too, until Barber is fit enough to take over.
Of course, the RSC – and Nunn, who used to run the RSC – loves a marathon, as with his famous two-part adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby; and the RSC is already inviting critics this August to a triple bill opening of Richard II (at 10.30am), Henry IV Part I (at 3pm) and Henry IV Part II (at 7.30pm) on August 16. But Nunn’s double bill of King Lear and The Seagull promises to be a long day for actors and critics alike, since he never does things by halves. And a long day, for me, in particular, since I’m flying to Sydney the very next day. But as a friend of mine has already ruefully remarked, it may be useful to get me into training for the flight.
