Dame Judi Dench returns triumphantly to the West End stage, playing Fanny Canvendish, the head of a theatrical dynasty in Edna Ferber and George S Kaufman's The Royal Family.
Critics agree, for the most part, that the performances and the production are stronger than the play itself. The strongest praise comes from John Peter (Sunday Times): “Peter Hall directs a superb piece of ensemble acting: headlong speed is combined with cunningly articulated pace, and the crescendos of the family rows are masterpieces of orchestration”. Susannah Clapp (Observer) notes pointedly that orchestration ultimately depends on the quality of the material at hand: “But lots of running up and down staircases, and slamming of doors doesn’t make for urgency. Lots of people talking at the same time doesn’t move along a slow tale. A showcase of talent doesn’t make a strong show.”
Michael Billington (Guardian) says the problem with the play is that no one, “other than showbiz historians,” can care now about the Barrymores, on whose lives and careers Ferber and Kaufman loosely based their story. However, Billington adds, the play is “a celebration of craft,” believing unshakeably “that the theatre imposes disciplines and demands that are perfectly honorable”. That being so, “there is an abundance of craft on display in Peter Hall’s star laden production”: “ Judi Dench makes the formidable Fanny an unsentimental disciplinarian who puts professionalism before personal happiness (‘Marriage isn't a career, it's an incident.) Harriet Walter as daughter Julie also hints, for all the temptation of marriage to an emerald millionaire, that she has inherited her mother's moral fibre. And, even if Toby Stephens as brother Tony does not attempt the 8ft leap from a balcony that Olivier made in a 1934 revival, he still brings out the adolescent self-obsession that is the obverse of the family's masonic pride.
”But it is Philip Voss who steals the show, lending the family's business-manager a wonderful mix of parental protectiveness and showbiz infatuation. When he's on stage you forget about the play's faintly fossilised quality and rejoice at the spectacle of an actor who relishes every moment and embodies the kind of exuberant professional skill that Kaufman and Ferber are celebrating.”
Paul Taylor (Independent) is less enthusiastic. Despite such crowd-pleasing lines as Dench’s “May God strike me dead if I ever appear in an all-star revival,” “...neither the presence of comic actors of the calibre of Julia McKenzie and Peter Bowles nor the somewhat synthetic bustle of Hall's production can disguise the fact that the wit is very thinly spread.”
Sarah Bassett (Independent on Sunday) turns her critical thumb up, despite reservations: “The cast's energy is uneven, and so are their accents. Yet Dench progresses from hilarious put-downs to poignant, terminal frailty. Ferber and Kaufman embrace the future, spotlighting proto-career women and Anthony's model of a Brechtian stage design. And ultimately Hall's gang rise above caricatures to celebrate the eternal pull of the theatre.” Dench's last West End appearance was in Filumena at the Piccadilly Theate in 1999, the same year she was awarded a Tony Award for her performance in David Hare's Amy's View. Recently, playing the leaders of two actual royal families, Dench won an Academy Award for her brief but memorable appearance in Shakespeare in Love as Elizabeth I and received universal critical acclaim as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown.
The Royal Family is based on the famous Barrymore family and Dench's role has previously been played by Rosemary Harris on Broadway. Kaufman and Ferber also co-wrote the play Dinner at Eight, which was televised in 1989 and starred Lauren Bacall.
The producers have found a royal group of actors to work with Dench.
Harriet Walter was in Yasmina Reza’s Life X 3, which transferred to the West End this spring after a successful run at the National. She starred alongside Antony Sher in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Macbeth last year. She won an Olivier Award for her performances for the same company in 1988. Her film and television work includes Onegin, Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, The Governess and the recent BBC series Unfinished Business. She was awarded a CBE in 1999.
Toby Stephens was applauded by critics earlier this year for his performance in Simon Gray’s Japes. He was “both subtle and brutally magnetic” (John Peter, Sunday Times) in Britannicus and “gave his best performance to date” (Robert Butler, The Independent) as Hippolytus in Phedre in 1998. His film and television appearances range from Photographing Fairies to Space Cowboys to the title role in the recent tv production of The Great Gatsby.
Peter Bowles followed Japes into the Theatre Royal Haymarket this spring, playing Beau Brummell in the two-hander, The Beau. The star of The Bounder, Perfect Scoundrels, To The Manor Born and The Irish RM on television, Bowles has been featured in many West End stage productions, including Separate Tables, The School For Wives and Major Barbara (with the Peter Hall Company).
One of Britain's pre-eminent performers of the Bard, Philip Voss’ vast range with the nation's flagship company, the RSC, has encompassed everything from Worcester and Lord Chief Justice in Henry IV, Pts 1 & 2 to Epicure Mammon in The Alchemist; from a much hailed Menenius to Toby Stephens’ celebrated Coriolanus w/Toby Stephens to Peter Quince in “The Dream” and Ulysses in Troilus & Cressida; from Malvolio in Adrian Noble’s Twelfth Night alongside LSW guest Stephen Boxer’s Feste to a truly olympian Shylock in Greg Doran’s production of The Merchant of Venice. At the RNT he has appeared in everything from Rodin in The Wandering Jew to the Troll King in Peer Gynt and Scherbuk in Piano. Mr. Voss’s excellent work with the imaginative Shared Experience Company include performances as Dr. Dorn in The Seagull and Chebutykin in Three Sisters.
Julia McKenzie directed Honk, the Ugly Duckling for the National Theatre and, in her debut appearance as a director, Stepping Out in 1984. McKenzie's most recent appearances in the West End were in Kafka's Dick at the Piccadilly in 1999, Communicating Doors at the Gielgud in 1996 and Into the Woods at the Phoenix in 1990. She has also appeared in the West End in Follies, the National’s 1982 production of Guys and Dolls, and Side by Side by Sondheim. Other London appearances include Cowardy Custard, Cole, The Norman Conquests, Outside Edge, On the Twentieth Century, and Hobson’s Choice. McKenzie won Olivier awards in 1982 for Guys and Dolls and in 1994 for Sweeney Todd. She is also known to television viewers around the world for her role in the series, Fresh Fields and French Fields, with Anton Rodgers.
Peter Hall, one of Britain’s most renowned directors, worked with Toby Stephens earlier this year when he directed him in Japes. Hall’s hugely successful Tantalus played in London after touring the United States and the United Kingdom. Hall founded the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960 and directed 18 plays, including the seven-play history cycle marking the Shakespeare Quatercentenary, as well as premieres of works by Harold Pinter, Edward Albee and John Whiting at the Aldwych Theatre. He became director of the Royal National Theatre in 1973, a position he held for 15 years. Hall has directed more than 40 operas at houses all over the world, including Glyndebourne Festival Opera (where he was artistic director from 1984 to 1990), Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Houston Grand Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera and Bayreuth, where he directed a celebrated Ring cycle.
This review appeared on the Good Show website on November 2, 2001.Return