Though it's full of enjoyable anecdotes from legends like Judi Dench and Anthony Hopkins, Freddie Fox's Telluride-premiered history of 20th-century British theater only skims the surface. The self-professed “story of a theatrical revolution and how it shaped a nation,” Freddie Fox’s documentary “Into the Breach” attempts to chronicle the impact that British theater has exerted on art, culture and politics over the last century. Assembling a roundtable of acting legends that includes Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman and co-producer Kenneth Branagh, Fox injects anecdotes and insights into a history lesson written by Richard Fullerton that, for better or worse, invites more curiosity than it satisfies.
Suffice it to say that these are performers who are not only full of great stories but know how to tell one. Yet the film’s obligation to historical detail renders slightly bland what could have been a tasty trip through 20th-century theater. Backtracking to the beginning of the 1900s, Fox catalogues the major players who defined, and in many cases changed, British theater: Lilian Baylis, Derek Jacobi, John Gielgud, Paul Robeson, Claire Bloom, Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, Richard Burton — the list is considerable.
Baylis, a producer and manager, pioneered Shakespeare at the Old Vic theatre in Waterloo, the eventual site of London’s storied National Theatre. Among the performers who became famous on its stage were Gielgud (an eventual EGOT winner) and Olivier, as well as Michael Redgrave and Ralph Richardson. Later came theater director Peter Hall, impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber and performers such as Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren and Stephen Rea.
As Fox charts their accomplishments, the panel looks back at their professional and personal intersections with them, from compliments to rebuffs. As necessary as the broader context may be, it’s the personal stories, big and small, that resonate and reveal the most. Gielgud was arrested in 1953 for homosexuality at a time when it was illegal in Britain, and he feared that it would ruin his career; his transgression was reported by the press, and it took the support of his costar Sybil Thorndike to help him go out on stage that night.
Rather than a rebuke, Gielgud received a standing ovation, highlighting the almost transcendent affection that some of these performers generated from their fans. Meanwhile, despite treating Hopkins with cheeky kindness early in the future Oscar winner’s stage career, Olivier earned a reputation for cruelty. Further, rivalries like the one between the British theater community’s two pillars, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, could probably provide enough material for a film on its own.
While the National Theatre Company, founded by Olivier, focused heavily on classic material, the RSC, created by Peter Hall, took chances on a wide variety of challenging contemporary and even avant-garde material. Hall being named director of the National Theatre in 1973 was a devasting blow to Olivier, but the film moves on fairly quickly in order to ensure it covers what is, admittedly, a lot of material. Plowright’s adulation of her husband Olivier is sweetly affecting, but let’s hear more about the many young actors, themselves now household names, whom he dismissed or dressed down in their nascent years.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
