SPECIAL EDITION SNEAK PREVIEW

The 50th anniversary NT special edition of Edward’s book Slim Chances is to be published on 22nd October. It includes previously unpublished material, over eighty illustrations and a section on My Perfect Mind, for which Edward has received a UK Theatre Award nomination for Best Performance. There is also a bonus CD inside – Edward reading many of the poems featured in the volume.

The book will retail at £15, but check the Merchandise page of Edward’s official website for details of special offers and events related to the book’s publication. Meanwhile we are pleased to present a trailer for the book:

KR

STOP PRESS!

Photo by Manuel Harlan

We are delighted to announce the exciting news that Edward has been nominated for Best Performance in a Play for My Perfect Mind in this year’s UK Theatre Awards.

The UK Theatre Awards, established in 1991, recognize stage productions presented throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

This year’s awards, presented by the Theatrical Management Association (TMA), will be held at London’s Guildhall on Sunday, 20 October.

See the full list of nominations here.

And a reminder of some of the plaudits Edward received for his performance last spring:

Petherbridge’s mixture of bravado and frailty brings real heart to the enterprise. GUARDIAN

Petherbridge deliver[s] the mad king’s lines with a rare, spellbinding gentleness … My Perfect Mind is a show unlike any other and one that captures Petherbridge’s endearing personality, both as an actor – who can forget his extraordinarily moving Newman Noggs in the RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby? – and as a man. TELEGRAPH

Petherbridge gives a layered performance that combines candour, wit, quizzical vagueness and a dry dignity. His understated yet heartfelt work is essential to the success of this playful and highly unusual piece. EVENING STANDARD

In the guise of Lear, Petherbridge is both fragile and volatile – a great actor feeling at home in a great part. THE STAGE

What came out of all the heartbreak, physiotherapy and intense work Mr Petherbridge had to overcome was this stunning and incredibly beautiful production that in the case with all great works, left the audience laughing with the two actors but also more importantly empathising, a rare treat for any play to deliver in such great quantity. LIVERPOOL SOUND AND VISION

With Paul Hunter. Photo by Manuel Harlan

If you haven’t already seen them, be sure to catch the last two film blogs below – ‘The Poetry of Puppets’ and Puppetry of Acting’.

KR

THE PUPPETRY OF ACTING

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

George Eliot

A sequel to yesterday’s film on the poetry of puppets:

THE POETRY OF PUPPETS

A day when I saw a puppet show in my hotel drawing room – my first amazed awakening to the fact of theatre. 

Martha Graham 

War Horse.
Photo by Simon Annand

I was reminded on Friday evening, when I saw the National’s magical production of War Horse for the third time, that some of the best, most moving performances I have seen over the years have been given by puppets: splendid representations of the human spirit. I am thinking of the Bunraku puppets of Japan, Lotte Reiniger’s first silhouette film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, and, dare I mention, Toy Story 3 which, I understand, made adults weep. Two particular memories I have were the inspiration behind the shadow puppets that featured in my production of The Bacchae for the Actors’ Company. 

On holiday in Greece in 1974, I saw a shadow theatre play one night in the open air and was taken backstage to watch from behind. It was my first visit to Greece and a last-minute package tour got me to a little village called Kamena Vourla, with a single mini-highrise hotel by the beach. It was by chance I walked into the village one night and noticed a show beginning. I sat on a bench under a small pergola facing a rough stone-built ‘shed’, which housed a shadow screen, maybe four feet wide. The puppets were almost Javanese in appearance and the story that of a battle between the Turks and Greeks. I remember the Greek hero being killed and a laurel wreath floating down from the sky to rest on his head and all the while a rasping voice through a microphone, out-Heroding Herod, played the entire cast of characters and provided the narration.

Karagiozis, the main protagonist
of Greek shadow theatre

I don’t recall how I got backstage; perhaps I peeped through the open door in the back of the shed and was welcomed in by the puppeteer’s momentarily spare hand. He had two boy helpers, no more than twelve years of age, whom he seemed to curse and order about sotto voce, averting his mouth from the mike to whisper urgent instructions about music cues; there was a little electric turntable and a handful of records. The puppets themselves were hinged so that they could turn one way or the other: they could be taken away from the screen, flicked and pressed back, having miraculously changed the direction of their attention. The boys were very busy and even handled the minor characters and somehow, throughout the melodramatic diatribes, the coherence of the drama was sustained against the intense atmosphere of impending theatrical disaster.

* * *

Lotte Reiniger’s Prince Achmed (the first animated feature film) had captivated me when I saw the film in a cinema in London. There is a moment when the young prince sees some winged water nymphs descend to bathe in a little lake and he hides to watch them, pulling a palm branch down, in profile, to conceal himself. Lotte had a ‘trick table’ on which all the scenes and puppets were arranged, tiny move by tiny move, to build up the action, each part of the whole film’s sequence was photographed, tiny action by action, by her husband Karl on a camera fixed above the table. As Achmed watches, I remember, there is a close-up of him and his lips part in wonder at the nymphs’ beauty. It struck me as a perfect, human piece of acting, such a simple, elemental gesture.

Lotte Reiniger

The following film tribute to the poetry of puppets contains footage from my 1989 one-man show 7001 Nights, including an attempt by me to act the part of Edward Gordon Craig’s idea of his über-marionette which he never built; it remained part theory and part dream to supersede the limitations of the human actor. I fear I am too busy acting the presence of strings so that I supersede nothing! (Incidentally, Gerry Anderson, inventor of the Supermarionation filming technique and producer of the 1960s cult classic Thunderbirds, was yet another distinguished resident of West Hampstead.)

NT50 IN 50 LIMERICKS

As part of my forthcoming special edition of Slim Chances (expected publication date 22 October), I set myself the task of composing a history of the National Theatre’s 50 years in 50 limericks. The film below is a goodly sample of the results.

We have another film in the works, to be posted soon. Here is a preview:

Photo by EP

With autumn now in earnest upon us, you may notice the blog’s seasonal change of background!

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Photo by EP

A special edition of Edward’s book Slim Chances, to celebrate the National Theatre’s 50th anniversary, is now in press with an expected publication date of 22 October 2013. (It was on 22 October 1963 that the NT was launched at the Old Vic with Olivier’s production of Hamlet, starring Peter O’Toole.) The book will also feature a section on My Perfect Mind, which had a triumphant London premiere at the Young Vic last spring.

Details of the book’s release, availability and any events relating to its launch will appear here and on the News blog in due course, along with a trailer. In the meantime, an exclusive sneak preview of the book’s front cover and back blurb.

(Click to enlarge image)

To mark the National Theatre’s 50th anniversary, Edward Petherbridge has produced a special edition of his autobiography, Slim Chances, focusing on his long association with the NT and introducing previously unpublished material and photographs.  

Petherbridge began his six-year tenure with Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre Company in 1964, walking on in Olivier’s Othello. Three years later he created the iconic role of Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Among his parts for the National on the South Bank have been Faulkland in The Rivals; Gaev in The Cherry Orchard; the Cardinal in The Duchess of Malfi; Alceste in The Misanthrope; Dr Dorn in The Seagull; and Coupler in The Relapse. With Ian McKellen in the 1980s he established the NT’s McKellen-Petherbridge Group.  

Also included, for the first time, is the story behind My Perfect Mind, which premiered in the spring of 2013 to great critical acclaim. The show, created by Petherbridge, Paul Hunter and Kathryn Hunter, fuses two main plots into one unique entity: the story of Shakespeare’s King Lear and that of the stroke which prevented Petherbridge, on the eve of his 71st birthday, from playing the role of a lifetime. And it features an unforgettable cameo by ‘Laurence Olivier’.  

No ordinary memoir, Slim Chances is an invaluable theatre book, with unique insights into the mechanics of the actor’s craft, and a moving exposition of the very heart of its mystery. In it Petherbridge’s talents as an essayist, poet, raconteur and artist come gloriously to the fore.

EP (Jermey) with Olivier (Tattle) in Congreve’s Love for Love.
Photo by Zoë Dominic

Postscripts

This Bank Holiday Monday at 3pm (BST) on BBC Radio 4, hear the second of Edward’s ‘appearances’ on Quote ... Unquote. The episode will be repeated on Saturday 31 August at 11 p.m. and available on BBC iPlayer for seven days after that.

Regular readers of Petherbridge’s Fortnightly Post may have noticed that the recent blog titled ‘Urban Kinetics’ mysteriously ‘dropped off’ the site. This was an accident. If you missed the film first time round, here it is again:

KR

PITH IN A MOMENT

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work, and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence. 

Isadora Duncan

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald 

A new film from Petherbridge-Riley Studios – some thoughts on presentation, representation and indeed blogging:

It seems an apposite coda to a blog on presentation to mention that this month (28th August) marks the 50th anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. By way of celebrating that significant milestone, I leave you with a photograph I took, whilst on tour with the RSC in the late 90s, of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Photo by EP

Postscript

There is one day left to catch Edward in the first of two episodes of BBC Radio 4’s Quote ... Unquote. The second episode will be broadcast on Monday 26th August at 3 p.m. (BST). Don’t miss!

KR