I always say that my life started in 1985. My work had taken off : I was both designing clothes for my own collection, and for others; I had just met my future husband, and I started to really appreciate and enjoy the cultural delights of London which was now my home.
One of the queer genes I had developed was a great love of the theatre and London always have the very best. So my bf and I decided we really had to take advantage of this great city of ours and came up with a plan that every-time one of the great English acting *Dames was in a new stage production we should go see them
This is how we got to be up front and centre in London’s West End to watch the some of the greatest actresses of our generation. They included Dames Judi Dench, Diana Rigg, Joan Plowright, Helen Mirren, Peggy Ashcroft, Eileen Atkins and of course Dame Maggie Smith.
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Our paths first crossed in 1987 (although the Dame was totally unaware of this ) when she was performing in LETTICE & LOVAGE a new play that Peter Shaffer had written especially for her. She played a flamboyant tour guide who loves to embellish the history behind an English country house and who butts heads with a fact-conscious official at the house. Three years later, she and co-star Margaret Tyzack reprised the roles on Broadway with both of them winning Tonys …as did the play too
When it was announced that Dame Maggie would star as Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s controversial The Importance of Being Earnest there were loud gasps heard around the West End. How could she possibly top Dame Edith Evans (very camp) performance making this very much made her own…. A Handbag indeed!
I had the good fortune of seeing Dame Maggie in four other okays after this : each playing some sort of eccentric woman: Alan Bennett’s TALKInG HEADS, and also his THE LADY IN THE VAN (which they would also make into a movie) Edward Albee’s THREE TALL WOMEN and also his A DELICATE BALANCE.
On her rare chat show performances Dame Maggie used to comment that the world never really really notice her work….. as she was very prolific and extremely successful not just in the Theatre , but also Films and TV. It was the latter …. and particularly DOWNTON ABBEY that made the world ‘discover her as if she had just started out. And as much as I loved her as the acid-tongue snobby Lady Grantham (“what”s a weekend?”) however my all time favorite performance of her is in 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, For this she won her first Academy Award, and our undying love. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life
That would be me …. and most of my friends
PS To find out where/how to stream https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-prime-of-miss-jean-brodie
Labels: 2024, an appreciation, Dame Maggie Smith
