Judi Dench

0:07Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which the world's leading creative people reveal the formative influences and experiences that inspired their own artistic work. I'm John Wilson, and my guest in this episode is Dame Judi Dench, a star of stage and screen for nearly seven decades now, and a multiple BAFTA and Oscar winner. She's spent her career bringing to life a hugely diverse array of characters. But she is, first and foremost, one of the greatest classical actors of our times, and it's her love of Shakespeare that we'll focus on in this filmed edition of This Cultural Life. We went to Judi Dencher's house in Surrey to discuss the Bard, or, as she calls him in the title of her new book on Shakespeare, the man who pays the rent.

0:50We'd better switch the phone off. Thanks, darling. Are these going to make too much noise? We could do a duet. We could do a duet. How does that sound? Everyone happy? Thanks.

1:12Judy Dench, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you, John. You were born in 1934 and grew up in York. Set the scene for us. What was family life like? I was born, yes, in York as you were at 1934. My father was a doctor. And I think at one time he had the largest practice in the north of England with Dr Kelly and Dr Atteridge, I remember. And I had two brothers older than me. and, of course, at that time, no television, nothing like that, so we all had bikes and we made our own entertainment. My ma used to play the piano beautifully and they were very keen on the theatre. My second brother, Geoff, only ever wanted to be an actor.

1:56My oldest brother wanted to be a doctor like Daddy and I wanted to be a designer, a cynic designer. That's what I set out to be. From a young age? From quite a young age, because we were taken to the theatre a lot. You know, we were taken to... I remember once going to see Cuckoo in the Nest, and I laughed so... This couple was in bed, and suddenly a chest at the end of the bed opened and a man stood up in vest and pants, and I was sick. I laughed so much. I was sick. My mother had to take me home. But the wonderful thing is that I was taken back a couple of nights later to see what happened. That's my family, actually.

2:37Would this have been Theatre Royal? Yes, Theatre Royal in York. My pa used to be able to. He could recite the whole of Hiawatha. And Geoff, my brother, as I said, who wanted me an actor, he suddenly would launch into a huge, for once upon a raw and gusty day, the troubled time of chafing with her shores, Caesar says to me, darest thou now Cassius and I leap in with me into this angry flood and swim to yonder point? And we'd go, oh, Geoff. would be going... But it would go on for five minutes. Geoff actually went to the RSC, didn't he? He certainly did. In fact, he went to drama school, the same drama school you went to.

3:09He went to Central, and he went to the... In fact, I think he's still the actor who was in more seasons consecutively than probably anybody else has been. Did he lead the way for you in that way? I expect he certainly did. But I only ever wanted to be a designer, and I went to York Art School. So your father, medical man, interested in theatre, were your parents involved in Amdram as well? Yes, they were. The settlement players they were part of. My ma used to make costumes and things. And then, of course, E. Martin Brown and Canon Purvis, they decided to resurrect the miracle players, the mystery players in York.

3:52Yes. So we were cast as angels. six of us, I think, were angels in the first lot of mystery plays. My pa played Annas, the high priest, and my ma made a lot of costumes. It was wonderful. So the return of the York mystery plays, so that's... After all those years. Yeah, that's quite a big event. It was a big event. It was simply glorious. Was that your first time on stage, then? No, cos I played a snail. I played a snail. That's in my prep school. Do you know that? Is it four in 20 tailors? I never know if it's sailors or tailors. I think it's tailors. Went to kill a snail. Yeah. The best man amongst them dares not touch her tail.

4:37She's something, I don't know. Anyway, I had an enormous shell which I was under. And when all our parents came, I stood up. And that was not part of the piece. I can just remember this teacher at the side saying, get down, Judith, she said, in the middle of it. You see, my first notice. Improvising, though. Yes, yeah, yes. Extemporising the role of the snail. Not behaving properly. When was the first time you ever saw Shakespeare performed? I saw it performed at Peter's school, York. I saw Macbeth with my brother Peter playing Duncan. And he walked in and said, what bloody man is that? And I thought, this is for me, this is absolutely for me.

5:25And then we went to Stratford in 1953, when I was still bent on being a designer, and saw Michael Redgrave as Lear. She's gone forever. I know when one is dead and when one lives. She's dead, does her? And it was the most incredible set, which was a great, huge, flat circle. and in the middle was a pile of stones which turned so they could be a cave or a throne or anything else. So nobody had to come in with anything, and the action was completely continuous. And that's when something about designing shut down in me. I just remember looking at this set and thinking, never in my wildest dreams would I be able to think of something like that.

6:17I'm not going to be good enough at this. And you thought from that moment that acting, rather than designing, that's the... I don't know. I suppose it was an overnight thing. I suppose it was a gradual thing. I thought, well, I'll try and get to the central school, like Jeff. And I did. I remember we had to do a written exam for central. It's funny, isn't it? I think I remember drawing a Roman amphitheatre. I'm not sure. But anyway, by a miracle, I got in. And an audition, I presume. And an... Well, I don't remember that. Really? I must have done, mustn't I? You would have thought so. I don't remember that at all.

6:55What did I do? It must have gone pretty well. You made your professional debut soon after leaving drama school. What a professional debut to make as Ophelia in Hamlet in 1957 at the Old Vic, which was in effect the National Theatre at the time, before the National Theatre was built on the South Bank. Do you have memories of your first night, of opening night in Hamlet? Fear, fear. No. I remember memories of my second night because the critics weren't kind to me. But, I mean, I suspect that I'd be more nervous now about getting ready for a play for a first night than I was then because I don't suppose I was aware of it, really.

7:45But what was so wonderful is that Michael Bentall, who ran the bit, said to me, I'm going to keep you in the company, he said. And he said, you'll play other parts and you'll understudy all the time, and that way you'll learn. And so that was 57, and I did stay there. So he was offering a proper job rather than just a role. Yes. Quite a responsibility to take on, isn't it, playing Ophelia? You say you weren't that... Well, it was taken away from me after we'd done one season at the Rick. we went to America with Hamlet and Twelfth Night, Henry V. I didn't play Ophelia. Barbara Jefford played Ophelia.

8:27I played Mariah in Twelfth Night, which we'd done at the VEC, and I played the Princess of France in Henry V.

8:50So you'd played Ophelia at the Old Vic for that whole run, but then you were told you were going to lose the part, in effect. Yes, and Barbara Jefford played it. That must have been tough, wasn't it? Yes, it was tough, but, you know, it's a tough job. And what was so wonderful is that I was playing Mariah in Twelfth Night. I mean, how wonderful was that? And then the extraordinary thing was that after we were six months in America with the Vic, touring all over the place, we were asked to go somewhere with Hamlet, by which time Barbara Jefford was in the Chenshi at the Vic and I got to play Ophelia.

9:26Oh, right, so you reclaimed the role? Yes, just for a short time. And I'd watched Barbara Jefford, so I copied her. Oh, really? I mean, there must be different interpretations of that role. Well, you know, I saw how to do it properly. What did you get wrong first time? Oh, I think everything. My honoured Lord, you know right well you did And with them words of so sweet breath composed Has made these things more rich Their perfume lost, take these again For to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor When givers prove unkind Because Michael Bentall had that faith And believed that I would learn by just, you know He said, just watch other people and learn and learn.

10:11And that is, I think, how you manage it. That's fantastic. I never remember going to my dressing room at the Vic ever. I only ever stood, would come off and then stand and watch the play from the wings. What did you learn from that experience of losing the role? And also you said that the critics were pretty harsh as well. Because they were very cross that, you know, the National had chosen somebody who wasn't known and a newcomer to play Ophelia. It's a difficult part. But I learnt because I was there, you know, it wasn't just six weeks, it was a year. So if you don't learn something in that time, you've had it, really.

10:48Give up. There's a key scene, isn't there, with Ophelia when she's descending into madness and she's singing to herself. You've never been known primarily as a singer, but you did take on the role of Sally Bowles in the first production of Cabaret on London stage. Yeah. Not long after that, with Hal Prince directing. Oh, yes. I do like the challenge of something new. I've always wanted to do a musical and that's why I want to do it. And everyone kind of says, oh, get you when they say musical. But I want to have a go. I want to have a, you know, great orchestra and everything and a bit of dancing, a bit of singing, a bit of acting and a chorus and all.

11:29I long for that. Ha-shah, don't tell Mama, shah-shah, don't tell Mama, don't tell Mama, whatever you do. If you had a secret, you bet I could keep it, I would never tell of you. I'm breaking every promise that I gave her. So won't you kindly do her, girl, a great, a big favor. And please, my sweet day... Good memories of that production. What did you learn from Hell Prince? Oh, absolutely everything about how to kind of present myself in that musical. It was glorious, all that, I must say, doing Cabaret. Very unexpected and thrilling. If you see my mummy, mum's a word!

12:26After Cabaret, you rejoined the RSC, you took on many roles throughout the 1970s, and I think one of the greatest roles would have been in Macbeth with Ian McKellen. The Other Place, which is just a shed then. It's a theatre now, but it was just a shed. And on the first night, I always said that, you know, the set... Well, it wasn't a set. It was just a lot of orange boxes and things like that. But the sound was by God, because there was an enormous gust of wind under the door during the sleepwalking, and all I had was a candle. And the candle kind of was very, very helpful. Candle did a lot of the acting for me during the sleepwalking.

13:13It was so exciting there, because people were as near, you know, the audience was as near as you are. So you had to be on the ball a bit. This is regarded as a landmark production now, directed by Trevor Nunn and Ian McKellen as Macbeth. What's the biggest challenge of playing Lady Macbeth? They're all challenging, I think. They all present you... I mean, you've got to keep within that production. It's entirely to do with the working process of working with people. And I knew Ian very, very well, indeed. So that's a help. Of course you have to do your own performance, but it's very much a responsibility, I think, a play to everybody else in it.

13:53And you say you have to work within the production and within the psychological map that has been laid out by Trevor Nunn in this case as the director. But how much, when you take on a role like that, are you setting out to give a new, fresh interpretation of Lady Macbeth? No, I think that would be fatal. I think you have to just think, I'm going to play this to the best of my ability with the best of my understanding. And, of course, with Trevor and with Ian and with everybody else in the cast, it's like a recipe. You're not out on your own. How were the rehearsals for that? Very, very funny.

14:29And Trevor would tell you this, but I remember once walking back with him from the other place and we were very down about it. And I said, well, I don't know that it's going to work. At that minute, I fell off the pavement. and then I used to challenge him to, this has nothing to do with anything, but I used to challenge him to doing handstands against the wall all the way back. I don't know what that was to do with, a kind of nervous energy, I expect, but it did come together. Why did you bring the daggers from the place? They must lie there. Go carry them and smear the sleepy grooms with blood.

15:11I'll go no more. I am feared to think what I have done. Look on it again, I dare not. In firm of purpose, give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures. Tis the eye of childhood which fears a painted devil. We used to have an adorable man, a vicar called Neville Boundy, and he used to come, he came two or three times, and he used to sit there with a crucifix, and used to hold it up towards us. He thought real evil was going on. Sorry, in rehearsals or in the performance? In performance. Oh, in the performance, right. Oh, certainly not. Get out. No, but the reason I asked you about the rehearsals is, I wonder at what point, given that that is now regarded as one of the great productions and an amazing performance by you, at what point do you know?

16:01Does it come together in rehearsals? You don't know that. Until the run starts? Oh, until the run finishes. Really? You don't know it. There are people I expect who came to that. You didn't like it very much. I mean, there might have been some people who came and said, I couldn't see a thing. Couldn't see a thing? Yes, because it was so dark. Oh, I see, right. If I went to that, I wouldn't be able to see at all. I'm hopeless because I can't see anything now anyway. Are you responding also to the audience when you say you're at the other place? Because it's such an intimate space. So you must be really very vividly aware of reactions.

16:34You are. Reactions to a very... And they're sitting where you are. Right, yeah. Because one night I was sitting, kneeling at Ian's feet, and he said, you know that line, light thickens and the crow makes wing to the rookie wood. He said, light thickens and the crow makes wing to the rookie nook. And I'm never very much in control of myself. But I laughed and laughed, and I thought, I have to turn the... Why not? I thought, I can remember thinking, why not? She's having hysteria at this time. She's gone to pieces. So I had a bit of a laugh and fell over a bit. Did you cover it then? Shouldn't it go full pussy?

17:14I don't know. But that must be very difficult, though. I mean, having that reaction and knowing that people are seeing every twitch of your face to playing at the Olivier or somewhere, a big space, it must change. Changes all the time. The performance. Changes all the time. Because if you have a good night, it's completely fatal to think the next night. to think, oh, I must do it like that. No, no, no, that never works like that. You've got to rethink it, I think. I have to. Maybe other people know. But I have to kind of rethink it each night. The raven himself is horse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements.

17:58What's so extraordinary about Macbeth is that up till the moment we come in, the tension is so great that, I mean, I haven't heard so many jokes cracked in a short amount of time for a long time, and if that stopped, I would hate it. You know, we've all been dressing together at the other place, and I think it's going to be like it. Somebody said to me the other day, you know at the Donmar, don't you, that you're all dressing behind a black curtain? They said, we knew you'd be delighted. I do like that thing of all being together beforehand. I don't like to feel lonely. Make thick my blood. stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my failed purpose, nor keep peace between the effect and it.

18:45You'd already played Lady Macbeth, hadn't you, I think 10, 12 years earlier, in a tour of West African countries. Yes. We did... Ghana, Sierra Leone. Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. And we were the very, very first lot to go. And that was what? British Council? British Council. Right. It was an experience I'll never, ever, ever forget. Ever. Why? Because these were set books for them and they had never seen a production of them before. And it was our responsibility to bring those books to life. So where were you performing? In village hall? Just open... No, no, just open. In the open, in villages.

19:28Paint the scene. What's happening when you make your entrance as Lady Macbeth? Well, everything that rhymed made everybody laugh a lot. So the Thane of Five had a wife, used to bring the house down. Absolutely. Oh, God. And one night, Polly Adams was playing one of the witches. One of her tooth blew up. And so a lady from the British Council said, Oh, I know the part. I know. I played the witch. So we said, Oh, how absolutely wonderful. So she came in. But what she put into the cauldron that night, I can't quite remember, but I think a pork chop was one of the things. She did indeed fill in for us, but goodness knows what went into the cauldron.

20:14I don't know. Because as a witch, she is describing what she is putting in to the pot of spells. Yes, yes. Frogs legs or whatever. I have mutant, toe, frog. You know, it wasn't that that night. It wasn't. There was a lot of other things. It was a pork chop. Yes, one pork chop. I don't know. what else went in, but she did, she filled in for us. It was very, very exciting indeed. But that sort of tour, I mean, must give you a different insight into the power and the... Of Shakespeare. ..the potential of Shakespeare. You bet, you bet. Because James Cancross, who was also in the company, and I went back to Africa to just go round and...

20:56Lecture is too boring a word. I hope it wasn't lecture, but try and explain what the plays were for them. And they used to say, when you're manifesting yourself on the stage, what are you thinking to stop yourself from laughing? That used to be a question. And I can remember James saying, sometimes, darling, not very much. She said it was absolutely outrageous. But God, it taught you a lot. The discipline of it was really hard because it was amazingly hot. and, you know, it was very, very good for us. We played... Nkrumah was a political prisoner at the time. We played in the grounds of the palace to him.

21:39In Ghana? Yeah. So did that give that political undercurrent that was happening at the time... It was. Did that play a different kind of meaning? Well, it must have done to the people... Oh, well, must. It may have done to the people watching. Yeah, the sense of threat, of regime change, of violence impending, all of those things. All of those things. Is that something that's important for you, in whichever decade that you're performing Shakespeare, that it does, that it is malleable in a way, that it can be adapted for the times to reflect... Well, I don't think it should be adapted. It's what it does to the person watching, isn't it?

22:17It's a reference, perhaps. He knew absolutely everything, as far as I'm concerned, and Shakespeare about every condition. And therefore, that's why the plays have gone on for so long. And he was able to somehow say it in a way that we use today, colloquially. We don't know that we do it so often, I think. It just occurred to me, I've said the word Macbeth several times in your house. That's OK with you? Oh, yes, it's not a theatre. No, so you wouldn't say Macbeth in the theatre? If this is a theatre and I was doing The Importance of Being Ernest, you would say Macbeth as much as you like. If I was playing Macbeth in Macbeth tonight, then you shouldn't...

22:58Well, you shouldn't know. What am I saying? You shouldn't mention it in the theatre at all. At all? I was going to say... It's rubbish, just what I've said. It's complete rubbish. Take no notice. You nearly got yourself into trouble, didn't you? No, no, no. That's really important. We need to know what the rules are. I got once sent out of a theatre by Simon Russell Beale for saying Macbeth. Macbeth wasn't playing in that theatre. If you say it in a dressing room and you're not playing it, you have to go out and shut the door and then you have to turn round and knock at the door and be asked to come in again.

23:30I don't know if people do that any more. Simon Russell Beale does. And me. That's two of us. Is it just Macbeth or any other theatrical superstitions? Just? Oh, there are lots of theatrical... For you? I mean, actors are particularly superstitious people, aren't they? Are we? I think so.

23:57The next role that I'd like to talk about is another powerful, tragic woman, Cleopatra, in Antony and Cleopatra. He played opposite Anthony Hopkins in a Peter Hall-directed production at the National Theatre in 1987. I've read that you questioned Peter Hall's judgement when he cast you as Cleopatra. What was your worry? I said, well, you get a lot of laughs. She's meant to be a very, very tall girl, I said.

24:25So it was just height, that's the only worry? And everything, you know. It's a hard part to act, and if you don't look like it, you can't. There's nothing you can... I mean, of course, you throw yourself on designers. What about her character? We're talking about Lady Macbeth, very dark role there. She's a woman possessed. But Cleopatra is deeply in love as well and driven by a great sense of sexual passion with Antony. Yeah, I still remember Peter saying to us, he said, you get this great build-up about the two of them at the very beginning of the play, which you do. I mean, they talk about them and talk about them.

24:59And then in come two shits, he said, I remember him saying to us, who behave very, very badly. And we used to roll all over the stage and be all over each other and behave extremely badly. Well, because that's the irresponsibility of the middle-aged lovers who are just turning their backs on their... On responsibility. ...responsibility, their political responsibilities. She's a comic and playful character in a way as well. Can be. We did 100 performances, and I knew that there was a laugh in a line that Cleopatra said, and I tried for 99 performances to get the laugh. and on the hundreds, I got that off.

25:43How much sympathy do you have to have for her? Oh, you ask some very hard questions. I've suddenly remembered that you do. Now, do you... No, you just have to understand it and be able to make the audience understand either the dilemma or the... Or whatever it is, you know. It's not a question of me having sympathy with it. It's a question of me showing the audience that that is the person. And even when she can be appalling, there's a scene when Antony has left, he's gone back to Rome, he's gone back to his wife, a messenger is sent from Rome. She says, what's she like? Well, how feminine is that?

26:29What's she like? What's she look like? Is she tall as me, is she? Bad breath, has she got? You know, she's dying to hear. There's the Hyde reference, of course, isn't it? She asks, is she as tall as me? I think she does. Perhaps I was wearing big shoes, or by then I'd acted very, very tall in the scene before. Yes, it are years, I presume. Madam, she was a widow. Widow, charming and hock! And I do think she's 30. There's now her face in mind. It's long or round. Round, even to faultiness. For the most part, too, they are foolish that are so. Her hair. What colour? Brown, madam, and her forehead as low as she would wish it.