Anomalous appearances

pp. 62-68

in: Simon Bayly, A pathognomy of performance, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

The tradition of the British Christmas pantomime has thrived on appearances in the flesh by innumerable TV soap opera actors, presenters, comedians and sports personalities. Yet these performances were — and to a great extent still are — strictly local, low-brow, tongue-in-cheek events. However, internationally known actors, whose celebrity has been entirely manufactured by the industry of cinema, have "returned" to the stage, notably in London's West End, for serious roles in more or less serious drama. Older luminaries such as Donald Sutherland and Kathleen Turner through Kevin Spacey, Nicole Kidman, Juliette Binoche to younger actors such as Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Keira Knightley are among dozens who have appeared on London's stages in recent years, many of them in productions at the Almeida or Donmar Warehouse theatres, regarded as the jewels in the crown of sophisticated production houses in London. Regardless of the confessions of the celebrities themselves to the excitement, fear and trembling that they feel at the honourable idea of performing "live" after so many years of so many cinematic takes, a cynical view might assess this phenomenon as a somewhat tawdry but successful attempt by companies facing financial difficulties and rapidly ageing audiences to attract a wider public, usurping the integrity of the drama itself. Such a view might consider that any new audience drawn into the theatre by the name of a Hollywood star, possibly with the promise that he or she will be delivered in a state of undress, will merely have reflected back to them the image of celebrity that has already been formed in their minds by the ideology of commercial cinema.