回复：The Jeremy Brett Archive

At first, there was great confusion over how the "women" were to be played. The first rehearsal was disastrous. Lord Olivier showed up for the next rehearsal.
Callan quotes Pickup: "He [Olivier] came in splashing his usual energy all over the place and galvanizing everyone. He wasn't happy with what I was doing. Larry himself always wanted to play drag, and that's what he wanted from us: high-camp elements. During the interval he came to me and said, 'Here, give me that lipstick, let's draw a real mouth on you! Give me those eyelashes...!' He made me look like an absolute tart, but it was his way of saying: Give us more, more, more."
Hopkins had his own ideas about Audrey. He wore a simple canvas gown that basically made him look...well, like a man wearing a simple canvas gown. Callan writes: "Clifford Williams, keen for camp but keener to keep this dodgy production on the rails, enthused, 'That's it, Tony. Perfect. You have it. That's exactly what I want. Moo-cowish.'"
Although he was very much a male in the play, Jeremy had anxieties of his own.
At 34, he realized he was a might "old" to be playing juveniles such as Orlando.
Then, he had a revelation about himself and his career:
"'I suddenly accepted myself one night. I discovered I was an actor and not just a Black Country boy who'd come up to town. I was a very old twenty [when I started] and a very insecure one. I felt like mutton dressed up as lamb until then, truly. I'd heard about matinee idols and Ainley and Du Maurier and Anton Walbrook.'
"'And suddenly it dawned on me, playing Orlando when I was deep in my thirties, that juvenile parts were character parts. I thought, 'I'll accept that I've got something to offer and I'll try to put the right price on my own head.' Before that, I tried too hard, and that meant I wasn't sure. I felt inadequate--I used to say to myself, 'I fooled them.''"
Not surprisingly, this As You Like It opened to extremely mixed reviews.
However, Irving Wardle of The London Times enjoyed the interaction between Pickup's Rosalind and Jeremy's Orlando: "Mr. Pickup's Rosalind, a beaky long-legged figure in a yachting suit, does conform to Kott's specification of the boy-girl--except that it is completely non-erotic. It begins demurely with a few well observed feminine gestures, and takes on character only during the Gangmede scenes. It is a blank that comes to life under the stress of intense platonic feeling; and there is real excitement in seeing this Rosalind and Jeremy Brett's very masculine Orlando being taking unawares by serious emotion in the midst of their game."
Jeremy said that As You Like It "was a joy to do" and after that, he was
"allowed to go on and develop."
Although the NT's list of Jeremy's performances inexplicably omits the role, and
his name doesn't appear in their cast list for the show, Jeremy also portrayed
"Claudio" in Much Ado About Nothing with the National Theatre in 1967.   He is
shown below with Sheila Reid as "Hero".
The National's production of Love's Labour's Lost toured to The King's Theatre


Plus, according to a 1971 review of the play, the director had an unorthodox rehearsal schedule:
"...[Bergman] came to London for initial discussions and blocking. He returned home for several weeks, coming back for polishing for a week or so before the premiere, leaving the cast in the meantime to work things out for themselves under the watchful eye of Sir Laurence Olivier."
Despite all the pressure behind the scenes, Jeremy ended up with good reviews.
As The Daily Telegraph noted in its obituary for Jeremy in 1995, "One of Brett's best performances was his masterly portrayal of feeble devotion to Maggie Smith's Hedda Gabler under Ingmar Bergman's direction. He created a wholly credible character, not the usual bungling fool but a very presentable, handsome young man who just happens to be too dull, too scholarly and too conventional for his wife."


Hedda Gabler was the last play Jeremy did with the 国家 Theatre.
Jeremy would remember his time at the 国家剧院 as "about the happiest period in my career, because [Olivier] has a tremendous amount to offer any actor."
When Laurence Olivier died in 1989, Jeremy told the Associated Press, "However many times you'd seen him, it was probably the most dangerously thrilling moment you'd seen on any stage." 

This production of Design for Living also played an important role in the story of Jeremy Brett. In the audience one evening was Joan Wilson, the PBS producer destined to become Jeremy's second wife. It was said that Joan saw Jeremy here for the first time and made up her mind to marry him.
Design for Living would also be Jeremy's last British stage appearance for nearly a decade. He set his sights across the sea, in search of new challenges.


References
   Laurence Olivier by Anthony Holden.
   "The Huggins Family of Berkswell," Berkswell Miscellany, Berkswell Local
History Research Group, Volume V, 1989.
   "A 'Survivor' Turns Vampire," by Judy Stone, San Francisco Chronicle, 1/10/79.
  

The Representative (review), Theatre World, 11/63.
   "The Fireside Companion to the Theatre," by Ethan Mordden, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1988.
   "Theater: Hochhuth's Deputy Opens," by Howard Taubman, The New York Times, 2/27/64.
   "Deputy Opening Picketed by 150," The New York Times, 2/27/64.
   "Homage and Hate for The Deputy," by Tom Prideaux, Life Magazine, 3/13/64.
   "Christian Morality and Race Issues," Life Magazine, 3/27/64.
   "Lyons Den", by Leonard Lyons, San Mateo (CA) Times and Daily News Leader, 3/28/64
   "'Deputy is Grind," by William Glover. Washington (DC) Post, 5/17/64.
   "Wendy Hiller in A Strong Role," The Times of London, 2/9/65.
   "A Sure-Footed Classic," The Times of London, 9/24/65.
   A Month in the Country, review by John Higgins, The Financial Times, c. 9/24/65.
   A Month in the Country, review by Claudia Cassidy, The Chicago Tribune, 10/31/65.  
  

LATER STAGES
As the 70's continued, so did Jeremy Brett's career. He stepped down from the British stage, but found steady work on British radio and television.
The stage still beckoned, though, and in June 1976, Jeremy appeared at the prestigious Stratford Shakespeare Festival (where Robin Phillips had become Artistic Director) in Ontario, Canada. He played "Mirabell" in William Congreve's Restoration comedy Way of the World, co-starring with Maggie Smith and Jessica Tandy.  
The Toronto Star's coverage of the play was dominated by Maggie Smith, and reviewer Gina Mallet felt Jeremy was "sadly" miscast: "Jeremy Brett has a beautiful voice which he uses to great effect but little meaning in a far too sombre portrayal of the mischievous Mirabell." 

Star reviewer David McCaughna had a better opinion of   Jeremy:   "Brett is 技巧纯熟的 as a wise, compassionate and resolute monarch as both Theseus and Oberon."
An article in the journal Theatre Research in Canada provides an exhaustive overview of the Stratford production of Dream, stating, "Robin Phillips' 1976-77 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Stratford Festival has been one of the few since Peter Brook's 1970 production to carve out its own vision of the play. By mounting the production as a dream vision in the mind of Elizabeth I, Phillips discovered an extraordinary unity among the worlds of court and forest, and found analogies with the court of Elizabeth that brought out often neglected aspects of the play in a highly theatrical way."
The article also mentions that Jeremy's dual performance as Theseus/Oberon "reminded reviewers of Essex" and reveals that Robin Phillips dispensed with the traditional curtain call at the end of the play and had the cast--still in costume--greet the audience in the lobby as they departed. (To read the entire article, please click here.)
Although most of the critics' attention was fixed on Maggie Smith during the run of these plays, Jeremy was definitely noticed, both on-stage and off.
Stratford actress Gale Garnett warmly remembered years later, "I was 26 when
Robin Phillips brought Jeremy Brett to Stratford. He was to play Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream (in which my then-boyfriend was playing Lysander), and Mirabel to Maggie Smith's Millamount in Congreve's The Way of the World . As with many of us, of varying ages, sexes and sexual predispositions, I was thunderstruck by his beauty: his face, voice, hands, hair, classical profile.
Esthetically, when people insisted that someday one's prince would come, Jeremy Brett was surely what they had in mind.
"For much of that season, a group of us younger actors would sit in the pub of the Queen's Hotel while Jeremy, eyes twinkling, elegant fingers flying, Borsalino hat titled rakishly atop his movie-star head, held court."
Also in 1976, Jeremy hosted a Public Broadcasting System anthology series called Piccadilly Circus. This monthly U.S. series was produced by one Joan Sullivan, a.k.a. Joan Wilson. Joan (who also produced Masterpiece Theatre, Classic Theatre, and Mystery!) reportedly first glimpsed Jeremy in London, where she saw him act in Design for Living.
"She said she liked the way I changed weight from one leg to the other," Jeremy later told TV Guide.
Jeremy and Joan also worked together in London on Classic Theatre (where Jeremy filmed a preview for The Rivals). As Joan remembered, it was love at first take: "My audio man put together a video cassette and you could see the chemistry."
Jeremy and Joan's working and romantic chemistry culminated in their marriage on November 22, 1977.
Jeremy acted principally in British and American television and films in the late 1970's, but he did manage to fit more stage work into his busy schedule. In late 1976, he began touring the UK and Canada in the musical (!) Robert and Elizabeth, in which he played poet Robert Browning.
Some of the venues on the tour included the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, UK, the Theatre Royal in Brighton, UK, and the O'Keefe Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Sally Ann Howes co-starred as "Elizabeth Barrett" in this very old-school musical that wasn't afraid to rhyme "moon" with "June."  
Jeremy was familiar with his role, having played Browning in an audio
presentation of The Barretts of Wimpole Street in the early 1960's. (In 1982 he would reprise the role on British television.)
Gina Mallet slammed Robert and Elizabeth as "a shoddy import" and "a bloated parlor musicale" in her review for the Toronto Star, but had somewhat gentler words for Jeremy's performance:   "...Jeremy Brett is the only actor in recent memory to even try and dominate the draughty acres of the O'Keefe. Although his performance is unashamedly overblown, he gets nearer to putting across the story than anyone else on stage."
In late 1978, Jeremy slipped into fangs and a cape to star in a national touring production of the spooky, kooky Broadway hit, Dracula. The play stopped in Denver, Los Angeles (where it earned $1,104,704 in just seven weeks at the Ahmanson Theatre, an all-time house record), San Diego, San Francisco, and Chicago. 

"What's A Little Blood Between Friends"
Jeremy obviously had a ball portraying the corpuscle-craving Count. It took him 20 minutes to apply his minimal makeup and don his multi-layered costume, and, according to Ann Bloom of Applause magazine, "...Brett luxuriates in every layer: crepe blouse with 'bat wing' collar; black velvet vest with watch fob of teeth; black velvet trousers with patch covering hole incurred during a split second, onstage vanishing act; voluminous cape with 'ingenious collar you can peer around, like this' (he demonstrates).
"The cape is a show in itself. He swirls it, flutters it, flaps it like giant wings. On the first day of rehearsal for the show, Dennis Rosa, the director, explained the significance of the cape to Brett. 'Rosa has this wonderful fantasy life. He told me, 'When I was a child, I expected a whole mess of swallows to fly out of the cape like that...you must use it as a sort of bat wing.'"
(Jeremy's es-CAPE-ades had a downside: he developed "Dracula elbow" in his left arm from flinging the 30-pound cape around.)


There are several interesting parallels between Jeremy's portrayal of Dracula and his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes:
   In order to get a "handle" on Dracula--and to help set his interpretation apart from scores of others (most notably Bela Lugosi's) --Jeremy created a "back story" for the Count (as he would later do for Holmes): "I thought I'd play it for the first time as if Count Dracula were in love. He says, 'I'll set my Lucy above all else.' My god, he's fallen in love. So I play a man who's gone out of control, who becomes terribly careless and makes mistakes because he's got this girl under his skin. He's 500 years old and he's become a love-sick child.
   "He's a very sad creature, actually...I think he's very lonely and very old. He's deeply sexually corrupted. Sex is obviously his main preoccupation. Also, he's hooked. He's an addict. It's terrible to be hooked on anything, and he's hooked on blood."


Jeremy explained to the Milwaukee Sentinel's Joseph Boyd, "My count comes out to be pitied...I'm not sure that's right. But, he's been doing it--turning women into slave brides and men into jackals--for 500 years, and he's lonely.
   One person told me, 'I was so happy to see him smile, to see him in peace at last at the end.'"
   Jeremy walked with pointed shoes and cat-like grace as Dracula--tricks he later borrowed when he played Holmes.
   The Dracula set was decorated with stylishly spooky drawings by the aptly named Edward Gorey, who also created the animated titles for Mystery! (the PBS home of Sherlock Holmes)  

As he did with Holmes, Jeremy noticed how children felt about Dracula:   "Children just trip into Dracula. They have no preconceived ideas. One young boy came back, punched me in the belly and said, 'You were neat!'
   Jeremy expressed a certain wariness toward the role of Dracula. "You have to give the character up when you leave the theater...Dracula是个不可能与之天天生活在一起的人." He would make similar pronouncements when he played Sherlock Holmes.
However, Jeremy had a bit more fun with Dracula, and with Chicago. Jeff Lyon revealed, "Brett...did admit, though, that at a recent cocktail party a woman begged him to bite her neck and he consented, repeating the gesture several times over the evening. And the other morning he bit the hostess on A.M. Chicago."


But, the ladies of Chicago really had no need to fear. Jeremy loved 'em:"I love the look of girls in Chicago," he told the Tribune's Maggie Daly. "The high heels, the jeans, short furs and shades."
One thing Jeremy didn't love about Chicago, though, was its blood-chilling February weather (PETA members may want to stop reading here):
"But, I hate the cold. In L.A. they say, 'How could you shoot a seal?' In this climate, if a skunk ran across the road, I might shoot it and use it for a muff.
"The lobby of the Shubert is heated, but the theater itself isn't for this play...you have to depend on body heat. I haven't been outdoors much, but I did walk up Michigan Avenue one day and spent $500 within 25 minutes. The salesperson had everything I asked for...the cashmere scarf, the alarm clock, etc. Then, I rushed back to the Ambassador [Hotel] and hid."
The critics had fun with Dracula, too. Some samples of their "biting" wit:
"THIS DRACULA HAS FUNNY, SPOOKY BITE"   
(The San Francisco Chronicle)
"DRACULA NEEDS MORE BITE
Dracula, that mobile unit for box office transfusions, opened Thursday with Edward Gorey's award-winning decor and a style-show of broad, melodramatic hotdog theatre. This is endearingly silly kids-show culture, but Jeremy Brett's vampire is a debonair, been-around aristocrat. He chews the scenery. Gorey's witty scenery chews back...Still, the cast is better than the current Broadway version, and the style is more consistent..." (The Chicago Tribune).
"Hey, Weesie, George put too much starch in my cape!"
(JB clowns with Isabel Sanford of The Jeffersonsat an Actors' Fund blood drive held during the L.A. run of Dracula)
"Much More Like Me"
The lid closed on the Dracula tour in early 1979, and Jeremy returned to doing television guest shots. However, in late 1980, he took on a role at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles which later proved very helpful to him when he played Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Watson, in the Sherlockian pastiche, The Crucifer of Blood.
Jeremy once said that "[Playing Watson] was tremendous fun, and it taught me a lot about how to approach Holmes when the Granada series got under way. I learned a great deal about the inter-relation between the two men."
He also admitted, "Watson is much more my kind of person...Watson is a warm, loving, sunny person who's very enthusiastic--and hurt and slightly upset when his friend is rude to people or him. This is much more like me."
(Jeremy also cited a most unusual inspiration for his portrayal of Dr.
Watson--Snoopy!)
Holmes was played by Charlton Heston, whom one reviewer dismissed as
"Audio-Animatronic." The same reviewer described Jeremy as "a rather junior Watson." Indeed, this was not the same old Watson--he was young, tall and handsome, with a raffish moustache. He was still a bit dense, though--he fell in love with a beautiful woman who turned out to be the villainess of the piece!
Incidentally, a small mystery surrounds this play, aside from the plot.  


Critic Herbert Whittaker had seen a rehearsal of the play:
"The Tempest is to have a setting by its director and star, the British actor Jeremy Brett (whom we saw doubling Theseus and Oberon at Stratford a few seasons back). Sharon Purdy does the costumes to match Brett's vision, or revision, of Shakespeare's masque for five speakers.
"Toronto will see it May 14 at Toronto Workshop Productions, before Brett takes it on to launch a new theatre in the Bahamas, and later film it there. His last such venture was a Macbeth made for Home Box Office, with Piper Laurie as his Lady M.
"Here Brett plays Prospero - 'Why should he always be old?' - with two young Canadians, Peggy Coffey and Geraint-Wyn Davies, as his Miranda and Ferdinand, and the Barbadian actor, Iain Deane, doing the remarkable double of Ariel and Caliban."
Jeremy also produced The Tempest. Unfortunately, his highly individual vision of the play didn't sit well with other reviewers. Ray Conlogue, writing in The Globe and Mail, called this heavily edited, minimalist staging of The Tempest "a vanity production" and described Jeremy's Prospero as "bombastic" and   "wild-eyed" in his scathing review of the play.
Conlogue coldly added, "There is no question that Brett, who was directed in Hedda Gabler by Ingmar Bergman and in Troilus and Cressida by Tyrone Guthrie, is a confident and powerful actor. What this soggy Tempest teaches is that even such an actor, in the absence of a director, can lose perspective on his work.
One example: The noisy speech that leads Miranda to make her 'cure deafness' remark is delivered noisily enough, but with odd, intermittent bellows that are even louder than the rest. This bellowing is pure technique. There is no feeling whatever behind it.
"This, and most of Brett's performance, is in fact a hollow recitation of technique. He makes no sustained eye contact, either with us or his fellow performers; his emotions spin themselves in a void, a vacant room. I have rarely seen such an opaque and unrevealing performance. No director worth his salt would have tolerated it."
[LLO--Ouch!]
But, Jeremy learned something even from the stormy experience of The Tempest. As he told Canadian interviewer Sue Lerner in 1983, "It taught me to be grateful to anyone who offers me a job, because it means all the money has been raised, all the casting and costumes have been done and it is ready to go. One realizes how lucky one is because it is an incredible tunnel of work from inception to delivery. I appreciate the other side [of acting] much, much more."
Strangely enough, The Tempest indirectly led to Jeremy's role as Sherlock Holmes. He had been offered the part of Holmes, but was actually more interested in trying to raise money to film The Tempest. He wasn't having much luck. Aside from the drubbing the play received in Toronto, the fact that a big screen adaptation of The Tempest starring John Cassavetes was about to be released didn't help Jeremy's cause, either.
He realized the timing on Tempest was all wrong. He admitted to Sue Lerner, "I'm first and foremost an actor. But, if I have an absolutely bright idea, I'll do it. I thought The Tempest was one, but now three films and 60,000 productions have been done. But, that is the luck of the draw, because who is to know so many people would be doing it at once."
So, he decided to reconsider Holmes. Jeremy took the entire Holmes canon with him to Barbados. The Tempest was blown away as "Prospero" fell under the spell of Doyle's stories. Jeremy accepted the part of Holms, and the rest is history.