Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
One of the great actors of his time, renowned for his Shakespearean roles.
On the island
Eight records
Just a pip. Uh Yeah. Uh On the professional stage. Oh, I walked on as a student at the old Vic under Robert Atkins in Henry the Fifth, and played a one line Herald.
And afterwards you worked with Komisajevski? Yes, I met him because he came to see a Chekhov production of The Seagull that I was in by an English director... And I learnt a tremendous lot from him.
Richard IIFavourite
Tremendous success in Richard de Bordeaux. That was a great gift by Gordon Daviot... it was the same character only with much more humour.
I have made quite a lot of films, but none of them were successful except Julius Caesar.
In listening to the best singers of Schubert and Schumann one discovers so well not only the composer's wonderful arch of shape in a song...
Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043Favourite
Fritz Kreisler and Ephraim Zimbalist
the first record that I bought and fell in love with was this record of Chrysler and Zimbelist jogging into here.
Dido's Lament (When I am laid in earth)
I fell very much in love again with the opera which I'd never seen before. And it's the one opera that if anybody asked me ever to direct an opera again, I would like to have a shot at because I think it's such a lovely work.
The Walk to the Paradise Garden
Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
I became very fond of Delius because my father liked his music very much and was a great devotee of Beecham... I find it soothing and romantic.
not only is it wonderful music to me, I came to it very late, but I have such a touching recollection of seeing her performance of Orpheus at Covent Garden, the last one she gave before she was taken desperately ill and died.
I came to it very late. I heard it only a few years ago... It's light and it's melodious and it takes you back to the kind of romance of youth when I used to dance a great deal in the twenties
The Chimney Sweeper and The Sick Rose
I wanted to have a an old friend's voice with me on the island, and so nobody could be better than Ralph Richardson.
Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622
Jack Brymer, Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
I play so much Mozart that I don't know which to choose. And I chose this movement from the Clarinet Concerto because it's one of my favorites.
In Paradisum (from Requiem, Op. 48)
Choir of King's College, Cambridge conducted by David Willcocks
it sounds rather solemn and religious, which it's a beautiful piece from the Fourier Requiem, which recently I had the pleasure of working on in Winchester Cathedral.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:41Was it a foregone conclusion in the family that you were going into the theatre?
No, the idea was that I should become an architect, and I was very anxious to design stage scenery, and I made a bargain with my father that as I couldn't do maths, I shouldn't become an architect, and I would like to go to a dramatic school for a few years. And if I hadn't succeeded by the time I was 25, I would go into architecture.
Presenter asks
1:11Did you find things difficult at the start of your career, or was it hard to get started?
Not very, because I was very lucky. My mother knew people, and Nigel Playfair and Barry Jackson, I think, both gave me auditions through influence, really. And my cousin Phyllis Nielsen Terry gave me my first job on tour as a stage manager. So I got on rather well through contacts, I'm afraid.
Presenter asks
4:06One of your less successful roles at that period was Shylock, and you've attributed that to not being so good at playing unsympathetic characters. Do you think that is so?
I tried to like playing villains, but I tried to play the Duke and the Duchess of Malfi without enormous success, and lately I've played Othello and Macbeth and been very dissatisfied with myself in both roles. I think that in a part that needs a primitive savagery and really very violent nature I'm not successful in conveying that to an audience. I have too much sort of withdrawalness...
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
the works of Proust which I feel it's my duty to read
The luxury
Presenter asks
6:05Now you've played all the great parts in the classical repertory. Is there any part you haven't played that you still want to tackle?
There's the part of Henry the Fourth as an old man in Henry the Fourth, part two, which I hope to play again one day, and I hope again to play Prospero and Lear, perhaps in six or seven years, when I'm really the right age for them.
Presenter asks
6:24Now what about modern plays? We've seen you in plays by Noel Coward and Graham Greene in recent years, but you haven't touched anything yet in the new school of drama.
No, I was asked to play an end game by Samuel Beckett, and I couldn't bear the play, and a play of Sartre was asked to be in. Once or twice things have come along, and I've tried to be courageous and say I like them, but if I don't like a thing wholeheartedly I can't give myself to the danger of letting myself in for a long and unhappy experiment.
Presenter asks
9:18You've seen the pattern of the theatre change quite a lot during your career. In recent years we've seen it shrink and contract, particularly in the provinces. Do you think there's going to be a theatre renaissance?
I don't know about that, it seems that people are more interested in building new theatres and trying to find new ways of directing... But the great danger to my mind of the present generation is that the actors and directors are trained in so many fields that they find it difficult to make up their minds whether they're going to be loyal to one or the other. And unless you really concentrate on the theatre, I don't think you ever become a first rate theatre man.
Presenter asks
5:24Did you take it for granted that you were going into the theatre?
No. My parents wanted me to be an architect and I was mad about drawing and I was mad on Gordon Craig because he was my cousin and because I was fascinated by his designs. And then I discovered I would have to learn blueprints and mathematics, at which I was very bad. And I was supposed to be going to Oxford when I left Westminster School. But I said to my parents, Well, let me try something on the stage if I can get a scholarship. And if I don't do well by the time I'm twenty-five, I'll go back to architecture and learn the mathematics. But I did well enough to encourage me to go on as an actor, though it wasn't my first thought.
Presenter asks
8:27What was your very first appearance on the professional [stage]?
Uh well, I walked on as a st unpaid student at the Old Vic in a production of Henry the Fifth, about nineteen twenty-one. A lot of us went and asked for jobs there, and they couldn't pay you, of course. And I carried a spear, and Henry V I came on and said, Here are the numbers of the slaughtered French, which was my only lie.
Presenter asks
9:26What was the first time you acted for money?
For my cousin Phyllis Neilson Terry, I was assistant stage manager. For a tour she did of a play called The Wheel, which she had done in London. by JB Fagan, who afterwards was my boss at the Oxford Repertory Playhouse. And I had a tiny part and uh did assistant stage manager and general dog's body. We did a long twelve weeks' tour. She was a great star in those days, and she was very kind to me and she really started me off.
Presenter asks
28:56How did you get on with Hitchcock [on The Secret Agent]?
Very, very well. It was quite fun in a way, but it was awfully exhausting because I was playing at night. I was playing Romeo and Juliet at night, which I had directed and which I was alternating Romeo and McCutcheon with Olivier. So I don't know how I did the work really. I got up and you know, went to Lime Grove at about seven in the morning and then rushed off to the theatre about half past five and slept for half an hour and went on. It wasn't much fun.
Presenter asks
35:31How good would you be at looking after yourself [on the island]? Are you a practical person?
I can't buy the kettle or an egg. I'm quite helpless. Always have been.
“I did about sixteen parts in Shakespeare, including Hamlet, Lear and Macbeth.”
“Hamlet and Richard II... seem to be nearer to my own private nature, and yet they have stretched and made me find things in myself that I didn't know I had, which seem to have touched the public and have satisfied me to some extent, if one can ever be satisfied with one's work.”
“I think that my sense of comedy... has stood me in very good stead in the tragic parts also and I have always felt that in a part like Hamlet, or even Lear, which has a touch of humour, I can carry it out more successfully than in parts like Othello and Macbeth, which not only are very powerful but are also very humorless.”
“In listening to the best singers of Schubert and Schumann one discovers so well not only the composer's wonderful arch of shape in a song, but also the way that the singer can put in varieties and cadenzas and colors and tones which decorate this piece of music in its own shape without losing the arc which makes the complete song. And this has taught me a great deal in speaking verse, I think.”
“it took me ten or fifteen years to find how difficult acting was and to calm myself down and not show off so much.”
“I'm rather good at prigs and bores and I'm rather proud of the fact that I can play rather dull men and make them seem rather more amusing perhaps.”
“I make the most terrible mistakes and gaffes sometimes.”