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Articles
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Articles |
Well, there goes 2000...(2)Plays (continued) We had to wait until the end of the year for the biggest flop of them all - Jeffrey Archer's The Accused, the Noble Lord's debut as playwright and actor. Not many people manage to be so spectacularly disastrous at two things at once! The Almeida, as always, caught the attention during the year. If its productions of Richard II and Coriolanus with Ralph Fiennes and Linus Roache in the old Gainsborough film studios weren't enough, at the end of the year it took the opportunity offered by the partial demolition of the building (as part of the process of refurbishment) to set The Tempest amidst piles of rubble and pools of water. The National brought the Redgrave siblings, Vanessa and Corin, together for its Cherry Orchard. Michael Gambon did - and is still doing - great business with the revival of Pinter's The Caretaker. O'Neill's A Long Day's Journey into Night and Coward's Fallen Angels were revived, and the epic Tantalus opened in Denver and heads for the UK in 2001. People Theatre people received numerous honours during the year: Michael Caine and Anthony Sher received knighthoods; Tom Stoppard received the Order of Merit, the highest honour in the gift of the Queen personally; CBEs went to Julie Andrews, Elizabeth Taylor, Sian Phillips and Sam Mendes, whilst Josette Simon received the OBE and Wendy Richards the MBE. Other honours awarded included the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Dame Judi Dench, a Golden Quill for Kenneth Branagh and the Shakespeare Prize for Sam Mendes, and Penelope Keith became High Sheriff of the County of Surrey. Mendes, of course, got an Oscar for American Beauty, whilst Stephen Daldry was chosen as Best Director in the Indepent Film Awards for Billy Elliott. The expectation is that he will do well in both the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards in 2001. 2000 saw a positive rush by Hollywood stars to establish their legitimacy by appearing on the West End stage, following in the footsteps of Nicole Kidman (who is rumoured to be coming back in 2001). First was Kathleen Turner with her highly acclaimed portrayal of Mrs Robinson in The Graduate, and she was followed by ex-child star Macaulay Culkin (who pleased the critics) and Daryl Hannah, whose Seven Year Itch didn't even last seven months. On the other side of the Atlantic, Anthony Hopkins and Pierce Brosnan became American citizens. Playwright Lee Hall had a good year, with four productions of his plays in London: his versions of Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters and Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children, and his own plays Spoonface Steinberg, which started life as a radio play, and Cookin' with Elvis, which he wrote as writer-in-residence at Live Theatre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and had been a hit at the 1999 Edinburgh Fringe. Finally in this section, Geoffrey Cass left the RSC after fifteen years as its chairman. In Memoriam The following actors died during the year: Nicholas Clay, Tony Doyle, Sir John Gieldgud, Charles Gray, Sir Alec Guinness, Peter Jeffrey, Peter Jones, Stephanie Lawrence, Willie Ross. John Gielgud left £1.5m but the family of Sir Michael Redgrave were forced to sell his archive of letters, diaries, papers, photographs and recordings to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden for £200,000. NEXT >> Theatres; companies Articles Indices:
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