from Richard Eyre's autobiography,
Utopia and Other Places (1994)"Judi Dench is an actress who works almost entirely on her instincts. Someone once told me that John Williams, the guitarist, never needed to practise, his technique is effortless. Like him Judi has technique to burn -- she can turn a line on a fragment of a syllable, a scene on the twist of a finger. She doesn't study a part but works through a process of osmosis, soaking up the details with a sometimes disconcerting randomness. She'll ask questions that seem hardly to bear on the character and, as if she'd disturbed you while reading a book, leave you as soon as you answer it, afraid that more talking would muddy the instinct. When I directed her in The Cherry Orchard for TV, she beckoned to me thoughtfully just before we went for a take; it was a long scene in which Ranyevskya talks about her life with her lover in France. 'She's a terrible old tart, isn't she?' she said, with a mixture of charity and envy. When she's rehearsing the elements of her performance seem disparate but gradually, and invisibly, the elements come together: head, heart, voice and body into a marvellous synchronicity. She reminds me of what Peggy Ramsay told me once about recognising whether an actor is in character, "Look at the feet,dear.' " (p.116)
"I wasn't at the Nottingham matinee during which Judi Dench played one of the soldiers, dressed from top to toe in chain-mail, and the whole company, but for John Neville, shuddered hopelessly with contagious frenzy. If I'd been in the audience I'd have demanded my money back, but if I'd been onstage I'd have shamelessly joined in the caper." (NOTE: Chain mail is flexible armor; made of interlinked metal rings)
from Celebration: 25 Years of British Theatre
by Michael Owen (1980)'The musical "Cabaret," based on Isherwood's "I Am a Camera" reflections of pre-war Berlin, opened with a central performance that in any year was quite outstanding. Judi Dench had donned the black stockings and suspenders of Sally Bowles and registered every nuance and facet of that curious "faux-naive." A few years later, not even Liza Minnelli could erase the memory of Miss Dench's creation.'
from the book Performing 'Classical' Brecht
by Margaret Eddershaw, (1996)Shortly before tackling Mother Courage, Dench had had considerable success with a television comedy series, "A Fine Romance," eamed with her actor-husband, Michael Williams.... This had confirmed with the public her comic lightness of touch and had shown off to perfection her impeccable timing in the handling of comic material. Her studiedly 'non-intellectual' approach to performance is borne out by her claim to have avoided all pre-rehearsal preparation for the Brecht production: -- 'I didn't read "Mother Courage" until the day before rehearsals' -- and she was pleased to share virginal naivety about the play with the production team: 'director, designer and translator all gratefully acknowledged they had never seen a production of the play.'
Dench's visual appearance contributed towards the creation of empathy with the character. She appeared as a diminutive, chirpy figure with a startling shock of red hair, striding about in heavy boots and a huge, oversize greatcoat. She used a gritty, Cockney-accented voice and she delivered the songs with considerable assertiveness. This caused her to have some problems with her voice during the first few weeks of performances and she had to rest several hours a day in order to overcome vocal strain, as the part made more demands of her than she had anticipated. Physically, though, Dench managed to convey a relaxed strength in Courage, planting her feet firmly apart and deploying frequent shrugs of the shoulders. But the toughness was only physical, not emotional. This Courage was a warm and amusing human being, lacking the temperamental toughness, even harshness, usually associated with her.
According to [Director Howard] Davies, Dench enjoyed finding practical rather than intellectual solutions to theatrical problems encountered in rehearsal....
Thanks to Delda White for sending these excerpts.