"It's boring living in the past," Madeleine tells her old rival Frances during one of their many verbal volleys in David Hare's new play, "The Breath of Life." "You always know what's going to happen." Perhaps for her, but for two hours we're happy to watch and listen as these two women of a certain age sift through the ruins of their love for the same man -- and his betrayal of them both. For Madeleine is played by Maggie Smith and Frances by Judi Dench, and Hare has written a two-woman play that allows them to compete and commiserate, mourn and moan, and display some of the range that has made them perhaps the dominant actresses of their generation on the British stage.
The play, which opened this week, marks the first time Smith and Dench have performed together onstage in 43 years. And they're just part of what's shaping up to be an Autumn of the Divas in London. Down the road apiece, 77-year-old Elaine Stritch is packing them in for her one-woman musical-confessional, "Elaine Stritch at Liberty." Brenda Blethyn is getting mixed reviews for her role in a revival of George Bernard Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession," Emily Watson is winning polite praise for her performance in Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya," and Glenn Close is sprinkling Southern syllables and sexual fantasy in a new production of Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire" that was both loved and hated by the critics.
But Smith and Dench are the hottest draw. With three Oscars, a couple of Tonys and a wheelbarrowful of British Film Academy, Oliviers and other acting awards between them, either would attract big audiences. But together they've sold out the Theatre Royal Haymarket for a three-month run -- without a single advertisement and without either of them having granted a single pre-opening interview. There's already talk of bringing them to Broadway next year.
Smith's Madeleine is a proud, tart, acerbic and vulnerable academic researcher, a 1960s radical who has never quite recovered from her political defeats or her longtime extramarital affair with a radical lawyer named Martin. She's been living a life of monastic semi-retirement on the Isle of Wight, minding her own business, quite literally, when Frances, Martin's estranged wife, arrives unannounced one day for -- well, for what is not quite clear.
Dench's Frances announces at the outset that Martin has left her and moved to Seattle with a much younger woman. "Well, at least they have earthquakes in Seattle, and huge tidal waves," Madeleine points out helpfully. "All in all, it seems quite a hopeful environment."
Frances is a popular novelist, and at first it seems she has come in search of information for a vengeful memoir she is planning to write about her life with Martin. But it quickly becomes clear that she wants something else -- a chance to vent her anger yet also to gain some true insight into what went wrong, both for her and for the rival she never knew. Madeleine is wary -- but gradually Frances wears down her defenses. The women spar and spat and take turns gently skewering each other and, of course, the much-hated Martin. There are occasional cease-fires and moments of poignant reflection.
"Maybe you aren't a thoroughgoing bitch," Frances concedes to Madeleine at one point.
"I'm your enemy," Madeleine replies. "Don't lose sight of that."
Smith and Dench get equal time to emote onstage. There are some shared moments of double-heated passion, but more often they trade active and passive: When one is on the offense, stalking Madeleine's elaborately simple living room, the other sits or stands quietly. In an interview in the playbill, Hare says he didn't write "The Breath of Life" with either actress in mind. Writing for a specific actor would cramp his imagination and besides, "it also means you write to the idea you already have of an actor's identity. One of the joys of watching both actresses in rehearsal has been to see them rise to the challenge of playing the kind of people they have never played before."
The critics were mostly kind. Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph called the play "one of Hare's finest" and considered the two actresses "at the top of their game." Benedict Nightingale of the Times said it was "elegantly, shrewdly and wittily written." But the Independent's Rhoda Koenig was unsparing, saying the "listless production is like a Zen tennis match -- there's a player on each side of the play, one serves, the other responds, but where's the ball?"
Smith and Dench, both of whom turn 68 in December, first appeared together as part of the Old Vic ensemble in the 1959-60 season, even sharing a dressing room. They've also shared two movies: "A Room With a View" (1986) and "Tea With Mussolini" (1999). Smith has won two Oscars -- for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1969) and "California Suite" (1978). Dench was a regular for years on the British stage and in a pair of soggy British sitcoms memorable mostly for her presence. But she has become famous across the ocean for recent film parts, winning an Oscar for her eight-minute walk-on as Queen Elizabeth in "Shakespeare in Love" (1998) and Oscar nominations for "Mrs. Brown," "Chocolat" and "Iris." Spencer compares Dench to Matisse ("fleshy, welcoming, instinctive, warm") and Smith to Picasso ("angular, challenging, manifestly intelligent, difficult")...
This article appeared in Washington Post on October 19, 2002. I deleted the last two paragraphs which discussed a Glenn Close play. The picture above is an old one, taken as Dame Judi attended Closer in 1999.