The 1997 Golden Quill AwardWashington Times
“I know Ken plans to do some more Shakespeare films, and I hope I’m a
part of them,” Mr. Jacobi said of Mr. Branagh.
“I’d love to have another go at Prospero.
‘The Tempest’ is a wonderful play, and I think I’ve matured
comfortably into the part. Ken
might be hankering after ‘Macbeth,’ and I’d like to get him for a
production of that at the Chichester Festival.
He turned the tide with ‘Henry V.’
I’m happy to fly on his coattails.”
The impression is deceptive. Mr.
Jacobi, who directed Mr. Branagh in the latter’s first theatrical “Hamlet”
in 1988, needs no one’s coattails. He’ll
be flying very much on his own when he returns to Washington this weekend for
several days of official adulation.
On Monday evening, he will be the guest of honor at the Folger
Shakespeare Library’s 65th anniversary gala.
The Shakespeare Guild will present Mr. Jacobi its 1997 Sir John Gielgud
Award for Excellence in the Dramatic Arts, an honor inaugurated in 1994, when
Mr. Gielgud’s 90th birthday coincided with the 430th
anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. A
“Gold Quill” statuette, sculptured by John Safer, symbolizes this award. Mr. Gielgud has taped a congratulatory message for the
occasion.
Mr. Jacobi, knighted in 1994 (he was named a commander of the British
Empire by Queen Elizabeth a decade earlier), will also be honored at a private
reception tonight. He will appear tomorrow at the Folger Shakespeare Library,
commenting on excerpts from his movie and television appearances in a program
called, impeccably, “An Evening With Sir Derek Jacobi.”
The Monday gala, chaired by Mrs. A. Huda Farouki and organized under the
chairmanship of British Ambassador Sir John Kerr and Lady Kerr, will be enhanced
by several notable performers. Dame
Diana Rigg has agreed to be the master of ceremonies, and Marvin Hamlisch will
conduct a new “Shakespearean Overture.”
Franklin Gamero and Illiana Lopez, principal dancers of the Miami City
Ballet, will perform a “Romeo and Juliet” pas de deux.
The ceremonies will conclude Tuesday when President and Mrs. Clinton host
a White House reception for Mr. Jacobi, who will then address a luncheon forum
at the National Press Club. His
Press Club appearance will be telecast by C-SPAN and broadcast by National
Public Radio. *
* * Reflecting on a professional acting career that began in 1960, soon after his graduation from St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he majored in history, Mr. Jacobi says, “I must be a throwback to something. My parents were not theatrical. Not remotely. But I recall vividly the first show they took me to: a children’s pantomime at the London Palladium. I was one of the kiddies brought up on stage by the cast members when they scooped up a few of us. That experience was certainly intoxicating. Maybe it had a lasting effect.”
Born in the London borough of Leyton in 1938, Mr. Jacobi attended a boys
grammar school and recalls being a fixture of school plays from the outset.
“I loved acting even then,” he says.
“Since it was a boys’ school, I also did my Macduff and a Pinero
heroine and a few others before my voice broke, when I was about 16.
My second big part after that turning point was Hamlet.”
An enterprising English master made it possible for Mr. Jacobi and his
classmates to upstage the professionals at the 1957 Edinburgh Festival with
their amateur “Hamlet.” Modestly, the actor points out, “The festival wasn’t the
big thing then that it is today. We
got a lot of compliments, especially when compared with the main professional
play that was being staged. The
critics borrowed us as little sticks with which to beat upon the real actors:
“ ‘Look at these kids on the fringe, doing a wonderful “Hamlet”
while the professionals muck about in the main house!’”
That was the first of six productions of “Hamlet” that featured Derek
Jacobi as man or boy. Affiliated with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre during the
first three years of his professional career, Mr. Jacobi was recruited by the
late Laurence Olivier at the National Theatre Company and played Laertes in an
uncut “Hamlet” in 1963 at the Old Vic, directed by Olivier and starring
Peter O’Toole in the title role.
Mr. Jacobi returned to the Birmingham Rep in 1971 and maintained a dual
allegiance there and with the Prospect Theatre Company during the 1970s.
His most admired performances as Hamlet emerged in a 1979 theatrical
production and a follow-up BBC Television version a year later.
Through the years, his Shakespearean triumphs grew to include Richard II,
Richard III, Macbeth, Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” and Prospero in
“The Tempest.”
Patrons of the Folger Library and the Shakespeare Guild may find it
interesting to quiz Mr. Jacobi about his skepticism on the subject of the Bard
of Avon. While acknowledging that
disputes about the factual identity of William Shakespeare “are almost certain
to remain debatable and unanswerable,” he admits to being “very beguiled by
the Earl of Oxford theory.”
“I agreed to put my name to a school of thought that maintains that the
earl, Edward de Vere, was the author of the plays,” he says.
Mr. Jacobi explains his heresy by asking rhetorically, “Where did this
Shakespeare come from? Where did all that knowledge and eloquence and truth come
from?”
In his estimation, de Vere seems the plausible candidate.
“I am highly suspicious of that gentleman from Stratford on Avon,” he
says. “I’m pretty convinced our playwright wasn’t that
fellow. This opinion is very
unpopular with the good burghers of Stratford, I realize, but they also make
their living on the legend of Shakespeare’s local origins.
I don’t think it was him.” *
* * Mr. Jacobi built a formidable reputation on stage and television in England before emerging as a “star” with a singular performance in a costume role: as the Emperor Claudius in “I, Claudius,” the 1977 BBC miniseries derived from Robert Graves’ historical novels about Rome’s most fascinating and degenerate royal family. It amuses him to recall what a close call that breakthrough was—in several respects.
“At one point, they preferred Charlton Heston as the Claudius,” he
remembers. “Then serious
consideration was given to casting two Claudii, a young and an old. Then
combining them seemed more practical, and someone thought of me . . .I had done
a lot of television, and I could reasonably age.”
Mr. Jacobi recalls “I, Claudius” as a very tough six months.
The episodes were taped in sequence, with 10 days of rehearsals
culminating in two days of performance before BBC cameras.
“It was very hard, and it got harder,” he says. “Remember, I had to
find the old man before doing the young man, then retrieve the old man in
Episode 10 in a guise that at least resembled Episode 1.
In addition to mastering an arduous speech pattern, it was a slow-burn
part until about numbers 5 and 6. Claudius
was a late bloomer. But it was so beautifully structured that the cumulative
effect was overwhelming. Claudius
had endured so much that people were rooting for him enormously by the time he
was a figure of authority.”
Mr. Jacobi also recalls a cautious, lukewarm press in England when “I,
Claudius” first appeared—but eventual success.
“There were a lot of suspicious, sniffy notices, but thank goodness,
everyone came around before long. It
was a surprise to all of us that we had become a cult sensation,” he says.
“The ultimate tribute may have come a few years later, when I happened
to meet some of the people who were responsible for the ‘Dynasty’ series.
They couldn’t have been more complimentary:
They admitted stealing the entire plot of ‘Dynasty’ from ‘I,
Claudius.’” Gary Arnold is the movie critic of The Washington Times |