What a performance at the Critics Circle awards
Sunday, February 1st, 2009Although these are nervous times in critic-land, as they are in pretty much every other land you care to mention, including the one beginning with Ice, it’s always reassuring for those who fear the professional reviewer is a dying or doomed breed, to see luminaries from the world of British theatre turning out in force to attend the annual Critics Circle Awards.
These are held, in some style, at the Prince of Wales theatre - and what you might expect to be a dry, sober and rather dull occasion, full of recondite word-play and references to obscure productions of yore, is usually characterised by wit, mutual appreciation and surprising quantities of self-deprecation. There to puncture any groundswell of pretension was, once again, that rowdily unreformed compere Arthur Smith, who entertained the troupes in part by delivering his speech as though acting as a conduit for Kate Winslet. Unfortunately, I was so busy sweating away at the prospect of delivering a few words in honour of David Tennant - who, much to my kids’ disappointment, was too busy filming the Dr Who specials to make an appearance - that I didn’t scribble any proper notes during the speech-giving - but everyone seemed to acquit themselves well, waspishly so in Terry Johnson’s case and sweetly, in the read-aloud letter from Kenneth Branagh, who argued that even critics have their uses - and there’s a reasonably good resume of who said what at whatsonstage.com .
For those who haven’t caught up with the news, the full list of winners are:
Best New Play
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts - National Theatre Lyttelton
The Peter Hepple Award for Best Musical
La Cage aux Folles - Menier Chocolate Factory & Playhouse
Best Actor
Kenneth Branagh for Ivanov - Donmar at Wyndham’s Theatre
Best Actress
Margaret Tyzack for The Chalk Garden - Donmar Warehouse
The John and Wendy Trewin Award for Best Shakespearean Performance
Derek Jacobi for Twelfth Night - Donmar West End at Wyndham’s
David Tennant for Hamlet - Royal Shakespeare Company
Best Director
Michael Grandage for The Chalk Garden & Ivanov - Donmar Warehouse & Donmar at Wyndham’s
Best Designer
Neil Murray for Brief Encounter - The Cinema, Haymarket
Most Promising Playwright
Alexi Kaye Campbell for The Pride - Royal Court
The Jack Tinker Award for Most Promising Newcomer
Ella Smith for Fat Pig - Trafalgar Studios & Comedy Theatre
And here, for what it’s worth, is the speech I gave in praise of the non-materialising David Tennant, whose (joint) award was picked up, on his behalf, by Penny Downie:
“Words, words, words. What on earth, what in the known universe, can anyone add to the piles of appraisals, the mountains of reportage, the column inches, yards and acres of newsprint that have placed one performance under the weight of critical scrutiny and popular fascination like no other this past year?
Type the names David Tennant and Hamlet into Google and, in well under a second, you’ll get a match of about 142,000 web-pages. You want adjectives? There are dozens of them, all trying to map the essence of Tennant’s high-velocity, high-voltage Dane: funny, intelligent, vulnerable, restless, mocking, sardonic, handsome, mercurial.
Yes, he was all these things and more. Those of us who had followed his career before it went into hyper-drive thanks to a certain well-known sci-fi programme knew he could rise to the challenge of the part’s rich contradictions. But it’s only now all the hype and the hoopla has melted away, and after the media storm surrounding his missed performances in London has abated, that we can, I think, begin to pay proper tribute to his achievement.
It was no small thing that Tennant made Hamlet lithe, youthful, fresh, accessible, lucid. But alongside creating rich surface complexity he also delved deep – increasingly so as the run progressed by all accounts. He could do the rapier repartee standing on his head, but he could also locate the hidden hollows in the part’s rampant articulacy. Before the production opened in Stratford, director Gregory Doran promised me that ‘there are points when he makes you realise that all the wit is a front - an attempt to prevent Hamlet from seeing into the abyss into which he’s staring.’ That’s a double-quality that’s incredibly hard to pin down on paper – but in performance, you absolutely felt it. Tennant spoke his speeches trippingly on the tongue – but he also suggested an inconsolable silence. When we think of a great Shakespearean performance we tend to think of an actor beautifully blasting out the verse; for all his clarity and fluency, though, David Tennant reminded us that the best Shakespearean performances hit home at the subtle volume of a heart-beat - and for that reason, he thoroughly deserves to be joint-winner of the John and Wendy Trewin Award this year.”
February 3rd, 2009 at 10:21 am
This describes what I felt when I watched David Tennant in Hamlet. He touched the highest highs then switched to the loewest lows in an instant and made you feel uncomfortable you had laughed before and not understood the pain the humour was covering up. It was absolutely superb.