ELLEN TERRY WITH EILEEN ATKINS

ELLEN TERRY WITH EILEEN ATKINS

Shakespeare's Globe at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

23.02.2014

It was Lynne Truss who first suggested to Eileen Atkins that Ellen Terry's Lectures on Shakespeare might make a one-woman show.

Now that show comes to its spiritual home, the intimate candlelit auditorium of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, with just a table and an antique Complete Works for company.

It's a magical seventy-five minutes. Not an impersonation, but one legendary actress sharing the insights of another a hundred years on. Both of them looking back over a lifetime “not all beer and skittles”; both of them “of the old school”. There are priceless anecdotes: the tussle over Ophelia's black dress, Puck's toe broken in the floor trap – did Terry manage a double laugh in the punchline here, I wonder.

But mostly it's Shakespeare's women, introduced, discussed with a perceptive wit, and brought to life in some wonderful extracts. Here's Portia – the vaguely academic blue gown and the velvet trews particularly apposite – and the Quality of Mercy, Rosalind, the part Terry never got to play, Desdemona, who “has the courage to be unconventional”, Beatrice, Lady Macbeth “a delicate little creature, with hyper-sensitive nerves”, and with those “Terry tears” that Gielgud claimed to have inherited, a superb scene where she plays both Lear and Cordelia.

Finally, a beautifully judged Ophelia [“Shakespeare's only timid character”], lunatic to her twisted finger tips, to wish us Good Night.