Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Award-winning British actress known for versatile roles from Shakespeare to James Bond, and her Oscar-nominated performance as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown.
On the island
Eight records
Iona Brown, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner
perhaps because of its essential Englishness and if I'm going to go to this desert island. And I can't imagine it's going to be off the west coast of Scotland, which I'd like very much. That it's going to be far away, and I'll need this.
Funeral Sentences for the Death of Queen Mary, Z. 860: I. March
Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Philip Ledger
I remember the first time I heard it, uh it it started a long way off. I think I heard a live um recording of it and it started a long way off and and and came nearer. It was v visually, terribly exciting. I've never forgotten it.
Much Ado About Nothing: Act IV, Scene 1 (The Church Scene)
Sir John Gielgud and Dame Peggy Ashcroft
I have to take Sir John with me on my desert island, and I know you won't let me take him as a person, so then I'll have Sir John and Dame Peg um doing a bit of much ado.
The Lady in RedFavourite
this was on our daughter's sixteenth birthday. We had a marquee put in the garden and we decorated. I decorated, we went to Covent Garden, got the flowers and decorated, and it looked so enchanting, this thing. We were trying out the sound and we got this record, and Michael and I danced, and it's just this is the essence of our family, of the three of us, and now more of us, four of us now. But it it just brings back such a wave of strong kind of feeling about the family.
I love this kind of sound, and it reminds me of when. The Vic went to America for six months. And I was kind of introduced to jazz for the first time, real proper jazz. And this reminds me of those kind of you know, not in a place like the Albert Horn or anything, but those kind of really smoky. Dark rooms and this terribly haunting sound, and I love it.
Andrew Lucas, Choir of St Paul's Cathedral, John Scott
I've got such a memory of Michael played the lead in a television called Angel Voices, where he was a choir master. and took a lot of young boys off for a choir. Festival somewhere. And I have just a vision of Michael learning this because he had to conduct it and bring in everybody at the right time and things.
Patrick Doyle, Stephen Hill Singers, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle
I love working with Ken. I directed him in Much Ado with Sam Bond. It's very incestuous, isn't it, actually? And then I was lucky enough to be in in Henry the Fifth. And when I directed Much Ado, I met Pat Doyle. who writes all the music for Ken, and he is so clever, Pat, and this is a terribly moving in the film.
Così fan tutte, K. 588: Act I: Terzettino: Soave sia il vento
I've always called this calm season prosperous voyage from uh Cosi. But I think it has got another title. I think you know what it is, Sue, but I would love this. I adore the opera. And I had a most marvellous agent, Julian Belfridge, and we were at Central together. And then I went to America with a Vic and he wrote to me and said, I think I need to be an agent. Will you be my first person on the books? and I said yes. And he w he was such a wonderful friend, Julian, and he died a few years ago, and at his funeral this was playing, and I had never kn knew I knew that we had lots and lots of pieces of music in common, but I never knew that he and I had this, and it wasn't till that moment that I found out.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:08Now Judy, you won a triple crown five years ago, three awards in one year... but instead of cashing in you decided to take a great big chance. What was that chance?
Yes, actually Hal Prince decided for me. Um I was asked to to play Sally Bow[les] in the musical of Cabaret. Yes. I must say when I was asked I thought it was a joke. I said to my agent, 'This has to be this is somebody ringing up.'
Presenter asks
0:35How long did Cabaret run?
Nine months.
Presenter asks
0:41Do you like long runs?
Um I find them taxing and I find them difficult to do. I I find it difficult to sustain ... the same standard every night. I I do like the repertoire system where one is given a chance of of doing a play perhaps on a on a on a Monday night, and doing another on a Tuesday, and maybe the same one on the on on a Wednesday matinee, and something else on a Wednesday night. I enjoy that challenge. I think it is more difficult to do the long run of the same play.
The keepsakes
The book
An Ordnance Survey map of the world
I'm mad about maps absolutely mad about maps. Now if I had an Ordnance Survey map of the world, you know, I could always open it and I would know intimately one tiny little piece of something I would like. Very, very much.
The luxury
Titian's The Man with the Glove
I've always loved it. And, um It's that wonderful young man. with a ruff and he's got very dark short hair and he's looking straight out of the picture. He's in something very dark clothes. It's irresistible, and I just like him hanging around.
Presenter asks
But after cabaret, you went back to repertoire.
I did. I went back to Stratford again.
Presenter asks
1:27You did a production of Winter's Tale in which you doubled Hermione and Perdita. Had that been done before?
Yes, it had been done in in uh in, I think, eighteen eighty six by Mary Anderson at the Lyceum with Forbes Robertson. And actually during this, while we're talking about this, I must tell you a very strange thing, that on the day I was married, JC T[rewin] sent Michael and myself a sepia photograph of Mary Anderson, saying, 'You may or may not know this, but during the time that she was doubling Hermione and Perdita, she got married in exactly the same church that you're marrying today.'
Presenter asks
2:22Judy, have you planned your career?
No, I haven't. No, I in no way. I would I I can't plan anything, Roy. I'm very bad at that, because every time I imagine that something will happen, or I plan it, there's the man with the bucket of ice cold water right round the corner.
Presenter asks
5:43How close do you think [Queen Victoria] and John Brown really were?
Whether or not they had an affair was not really what we set out to say in the film. … I'm sure their relationship was … passionate, and how passionate it was I suppose we shall never know. But I'm sure there was passion attached to it.
Presenter asks
6:51Why don't you normally do such a lot of research into a part?
Pushing myself to the edge of fright, really. I need it, yes. I need to go right to the edge of the precipice before I fall off. … With another part, I just like to … It is a sense of fright.
Presenter asks
11:36When did you suddenly realize you actually wanted to be on the stage?
Well, my brother Geoffrey only ever wanted to be an actor, and it was his enthusiasm that that I caught. And then I saw a production of King Lear at Stratford in the fifties, with Michael Rydgrave and Mary Scoring, and and I saw the set for that. And it completely transformed my ideas about designing. I thought that's the kind of designer I would love to be, but that's not the imagination that I have. … So I decided I'm going to be really, really run of the mill if I was a designer. May not get any work. … I thought I'd just try and see if I can get into Central where Jeff had been.
Presenter asks
32:15What does [being a practicing Quaker] give you? Why do you go?
It gives me … The quiet gives me the still centre. which I didn't really have.
“I must say when I was asked I thought it was a joke. I said to my agent, 'This has to be this is somebody ringing up.'”
“I find them taxing and I find them difficult to do. I I find it difficult to sustain ... the same standard every night.”
“I enjoy that challenge. I think it is more difficult to do the long run of the same play.”
“I can't plan anything, Roy. I'm very bad at that, because every time I imagine that something will happen, or I plan it, there's the man with the bucket of ice cold water right round the corner.”
“I rarely read the play. It's just something that captures my imagination about a part, really.”
“I've always learnt by a kind of osmosis. But I used to just have to go home then and get into a hot bath and say I'm not getting out of this bath until I know the next three or four pages.”
“I know that I can give the illusion of being much taller and I can be the tall willowy blonde on the stage, whereas I can't be that on the stage.”
“The older I get, the angrier I get about things.”
“Michael once said to me You can't ever be. more on the stage than you are as a person. And I disagreed with him. But I underst now I understand that he's in actual fact quite right, because your borderline of despair or or joy or anger is only what you you can experience.”