1.
During the first intermission of an outdoor performance of Othello, Sir Laurence Olivier was stopped at his portable dressing room by an anxious lady who wanted directions to the New Haven bound bus.
“But why,” Laurence asked, “ aren’t you staying for the reminder of the performance?”
“Frankly,” explained the lady, I saw it years ago in Brooklyn in Yiddish-and it hurts me to see what it loses in translation.”
2.
It was a well known fact in the Theater circles that Sir.Herbert Beerbohm Tree was always recognizable behind his ornate make ups. Naturally his personality was such he scarcely wanted to conceal it even while he emoted such roles as Cardinal Wolsey or Shylock. Of the latter the drama critic from the Saturday Review commented thus: Shylock as Mr. Tree.
3.
There is a feline stroke usually ascribed to Wilde the one which said that Tree’s Hamlet was funny without being vulgar. On another occasion, after seeing an unidentified actor mangling Hamlet, he is reputed to have remarked that it would have been a fine time to settle that great controversy as to who wrote the play; one need merely have watched besides the graves of Shakespeare and Bacon to see which one turned over.
4.
Another time while Beerbohm Tree was to play Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII he had to rush from California to New York where already rehearsals were going on. He heard cheerfully the progress the cast was making in his absence and then his representative presented to him the bevy of girls brought in as ladies- in- waiting to the Queen. Visibly agitated he said, “Ladies, a little more virginity, if you don’t mind.”
5.
Of one performance of Hamlet the drama critic of the Denver Post, Eugene Field summed up thus: “so and so played Hamlet last night at the Tabor Grand. He played till one o’clock.”
Eugene Field had to say thus of the unregal performance of Creston Clarke as King Lear,” Mr. Clarke played the king all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was to play the ace.”
compiler:benny
