Billie Whitelaw, the British actress, is well known for her work with Samuel Beckett, yet shes always been keen to emphasise her other achievements.
My work with Beckett is a very small but very important part of my career.
A brief resume of her career testifies to her diversity. During her stint with Sir Laurence Olivier's National Theatre between 1964 and 1966, her roles included Maggie in Hobson's Choice, Avonia Bunn in Trelawny of the Wells, as well as her more famous Desdemona in Othello, which she originally turned down.
I said no. He walked me up and down outside the Old Vic, put his arm around me and said Meet me in my dressing room just before five o'clock. When I got to his dressing-room he'd laid out all Jocelyn Herbert's designs for the costumes for Desdemona and said, Look at those. When you know you're going to look like that, you're 75% there. Now don't be a silly girl; go home and learn your lines. And I did... I went home and learned the lines.
Desdemona proved to be a great milestone in Whitelaw's stage career. She went on to work with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych. There she was in The Greeks, a 12 hour epic, adapted by John Barton, which chronicled the house of Aetrius. It included a dozen plays, among them The Trojan Wars and The Agamemnon, going right the way through the incredible saga.
We worked on that for months and months. During the week we played the first part Monday, the second on Tuesday, the third on Wednesday ... but each Saturday at 10 o'clock in the morning the curtain went up and we went through the whole lot and the curtain didn't come down until 11 o'clock at night. It was the most exhilarating thing to do. You would see a bunch of actors dragging themselves through the stage door of the Aldwych at 8:30 in the morning looking like nothing on God's earth -- ashen faces and black rings under the eyes -- and by about 11 o'clock we were all flying high on our own adrenaline.
This incredible tour de force ran for 18 months in London and is seen as one of the company's most innovative productions.
Billie Whitelaw's career went from strength to strength. Her final work with Samuel Beckett was Rockaby, presented in America as part of a triple bill with two of his other works Enough and Footfalls. In seemingly complete contrast, she also created the voice for Aubra, one of the central characters in the film The Dark Crystal. This was produced by the creators of the Muppets, Jim Henson and Frank Oz. Shell be reprising that role in The Power of the Dark Crystal which is due for release in 2008.
In the mid-1980s Billie worked on three films made for television. One of these, Camille, also stars Sir John Gielgud, Denholm Elliott, and Rachel Kempson, and was shown on American television. The others, made by English companies, were The Chain by Jack Rosenthal (best-known here for his work on the screenplay Yentl) and a comedy, Shady, about which she was a little reticent.
... a sort of bizarre lunatic comedy, which is either going to be a total disaster or a great cult movie. I don't know, I play a doctor who is also a psychiatrist, who is also a member of the Secret Service, who is also a lesbian. Now, how about that for a role?
You can read more of Tuppy Glossop's thoughts on music and popular culture at his Web site, AtTheFamilyPlace.com
Author:: Tuppy Glossop
Keywords:: bille whitelaw,samuel beckett,dark crystal,jim henson
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