Departures of actors in the midst of rehearsals are invariably covered by the euphemism that the actor concerned has had to withdraw for “personal reasons”. In the case of Anthony Flanagan, who withdrew from the West End production of Glengarry Glen Ross the Friday before last, the play was in the midst of previews that had already begun. The understudy was hastily put on that night and no performances were lost, though an interview I was due to do with Jonathan Pryce at lunchtime on the Friday was cancelled when I got there – the company had been hastily convened to rehearse with the understudy.
By Monday morning, Peter McDonald was in rehearsal to take over, and when I returned to the theatre at lunchtime for my now rescheduled appointment with Pryce, he told me that McDonald had arrived for his first rehearsal that day already word perfect. [Click below to continue reading]
And five nights later, he and the play opened to the press, only two days later than they were originally due to. Even the programmes had been re-printed in time, erasing all mention of Flanagan! (And I’m going back to see it again today, just five days since I saw it first, to try to get a better view than I managed the first time, as I blogged about here on Monday).
The show, as they say, must go on. Now yesterday came another announcement, this time from the Royal Court, that Jasper Britton has withdrawn from its production of The Arsonists in the midst of rehearsals for it, for the aforementioned “personal reasons”. But in this case, its even more intriguing than usual what those might be, as the same acting company are also currently performing in Ionesco’s Rhinoceros at the theatre – and Britton will continue to perform in that. The good news, however, is that the Court have secured the services of Will Keen to replace him – who also stepped into the last minute breach when Iain Glen withdrew from the Donmar Warehouse’s production of Kiss of the Spiderwoman earlier this year. On that occasion, the theatre hid behind the phrase “indisposition” for Glen, but the production was salvaged and managed to get to the first night on time.
What these phrases usually means, of course, is that things just aren’t working out. Sometimes its entirely unavoidable: James Hazeldine was in the midst of previews for Christopher Hampton’s The Talking Cure at the National Theatre in 2002, in which he was playing Sigmund Freud, when he was taken ill – and soon after, died. The press night had to be hastily rescheduled, as it was for another National Theatre production, Howard Brenton’s Paul, in 2005 when actor Paul Rhys suddenly withdrew after two previews. That was, as I wrote here at the time, third time unlucky for him – in 2002 he had withdrawn from Ivanov at the National after rehearsals had already begun, then earlier in 2005, also withdrew from Deborah Warner’s production of Julius Caesear at the Barbican before it went into rehearsal. It’s sad to note that Rhys has not acted onstage since.
what were the "personal reasons" was it the accent?