Caroline Fevrier - Maggie Smith: A View From The Stalls

Maggie Smith

A View from the Stalls

Caroline Fevrier

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

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Copyright 2018 Caroline Fevrier

The right of Caroline Fevrier to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 9781912575329

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Illustrations by the author

Cover Image Credit: Photograph by Laura Hynd, Camera Press London

To my master, Jean-Laurent Cochet,

versatile actor and incomparable stage director.

Players are the only honest hypocrites

Today kings, tomorrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.

William Hazlitt, On Actors and Acting (1817)

For their help and efficient assistance in the course of my research for this book, I owe thanks to the staff of several libraries: the Archive and Library Study Room at Blythe House ( Victoria & Alberts National Theatre and Performance Collections), the BFI Reuben Library at the British Film Institute Southbank, as well as the former BFI National Library on Stephen Street, the British Library (especially the British Library Sound Archive), the National Theatre Archive and, in Paris, the Bibliothque Gaston Baty and the Bibliothque du Film (Cinmathque Franaise).

I owe an especial thanks to Nick Hern, from Nick Hern Books, Wendy Lesser, editor of The Threepenny Review , and Cambridge University Press from permission to quote from copyrighted material. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders but, should there be any omissions, I apologise and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future editions.

I am greatly indebted to Jeremy Thompson, Jack Wedgbury, Hannah Virk, and all the team at The Book Guild Ltd for their efficiency, their kindness and the interest they showed in my project. A special thanks goes to Lauren Lewis, who submitted my work to my publishers. I am also deeply grateful to Dennis Tredy (University of Paris, Sorbonne Nouvelle), Hlne Valmary (University of Caen), Professor Axel Nissen (University of Oslo) and Professor Christian Viviani (University of Caen) for their kind support.

My heartfelt thanks to Sarah Smithers for her assistance, and Professor Jacqueline Champeaux (University of Paris Sorbonne) for her encouragements and pertinent suggestions.

The reader shall not find here an account of Maggie Smiths life, or a chronological survey of her career. When the well-established critic Michael Coveney started writing his biography of the actress, he was acknowledged by her husband, the screenwriter and playwright Beverley Cross, and he even had access to the press cuttings that Nathan Smith, Maggies father, had carefully and lovingly kept since the very first success of his actress daughter. Published in 1992, this biography was the result of a thorough work based on testimonies of Smiths colleagues and also on the authors experience as a stage critic and it remains an exceptional document on the history of British theatre from the mid-1950s to the early 1990s. Although the present study refers to Coveneys book every so often, it adopts quite a different perspective. The idea to research and write it came as early as 2006, and, during this extensive lapse of time, new entries have been added to the initial corpus. Its aim was to analyse through the prism of typecasting and its exact opposite, characterisation the roles and types the actress has played from the early 1990s to the present day. Since then, Michael Coveney has updated and completed his work, but it seemed that a study on the typology of characters was not redundant with a biography and thus, that its publication was still pertinent.

To follow the biographical path would have appeared unnecessary and inappropriate. One biography is quite enough for such a private person. this would not make sense. Smith has no age. She has the age of the characters she plays and therefore, this is the most inconstant thing about her.

Furthermore, this study will neither aim at exploring the arcane process of acting, nor use psychoanalysis to apprehend her subliminal idea of characterisation. Journalists often ask her to talk about her work and their requests always meet with a flat refusal. In 2010, in a rare interview with The Times , she declared that using words to describe the acting process made no sense.

To concur with her, it seems impossible and pointless to think and write about the internal mechanism of the actor. The performer is not an engine, but a human being of flesh and blood. He lends his body and his voice to a character distinct from him, whom he brings alive through the power of thoughts when he has to act and react in a given situation. The process of acting, in its elaboration, is a strange, mysterious and impalpable operation which cannot be comprehended and described in scientific terms. We are only allowed to appreciate its result. The talent of a performer can only be measured in terms of credibility in portraying the character on screen or on stage. John Gielgud himself asserted that an actors work has life and interest only in its execution. It seems to wither away in discussion and become emptily theoretical and insubstantial. To observe a great actor in performance is the only way to capture and appreciate his amazing craft. Exceptional acting cannot be explained in scientific terms, it can only be described.

With regard to Maggie Smith, it is impossible to delve into the inner nature of her talent. The actor and screenwriter Bob Balaban co-producer of Gosford Park summarised this idea metaphorically, comparing the actress to a kind of magician whose mysterious tricks and technique, hidden under a cloak, have not to be seen or revealed. This study will not aim at pulling the rabbit out. It will examine the subject that is, an extraordinarily gifted performer at work from an exterior point of view. The only one which allows us to consider the way the dramatic artist creates emotion, entertainment and, as the cleverest magician, illusion. That unrestricted point of view is that of the audience.

From the stalls.

To dedicate a monograph to Maggie Smith can be considered as ambitious as superfluous. It certainly appears ambitious, insofar as she is one of the best actresses of our time, not to say the greatest ever. As much as it is difficult to embrace a very large subject, it cannot be easy, for the researcher, to write objectively on someone whose craft and talent necessarily impress many of us at the utmost degree. Moreover, it seems superfluous for the reason that the actresss fame is such that spectators from all over the world, if they do not always remember her name, at least recognise her face which has been immortalised in some of the biggest box-office hits ( Sister Act in 1992, The Secret Garden in 1993 and, of course, the Harry Potter saga) and in the very popular TV show Downton Abbey .