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There's
no one quite like Elaine Stritch on the planet. In Britain,
she's probably still best remembered for her long-running 70s BBC
sitcom, Two's Company, starring opposite Donald Sinden.
But
it was on the Broadway stage that she began her career and where,
now aged 76 and still going strong, she returned in triumph earlier
this year in an amazing retrospective of her life and career.
This
week, she brings that highly personal show to London's Old Vic,
but meeting her face-to-face at the Savoy Hotel is to have one's
suspicions at once confirmed - and confounded.
Telling
it like it is
She's
not easy company, either for the hotel staff trying to attend to
her or for me in the interviewing chair, but then she's not easy
on herself, either:
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Our theatre critic Mark Shenton |
"You
see, it's all bull," she says. "I try very hard to be civil,
but I've gotten to the point where I have to just tell it like it
is, because otherwise it's not worth the trouble."
Her
one-woman show is all about telling it like it is, and then some:
her candid comments on co-stars and directors, her battle with the
bottle, songs and stories and much else.
Difficult
profession
It's
hard, she says, "when you're performing the truth to be
surrounded by lies," adding, "Oh God, I hate this business,
I do. I hate the chicanery of it all. In the theatre, the only thing
that everybody agrees on is what time it is, and sometimes not even
that...
"I
just think that showbusiness is one of the most difficult professions
in the world, aside from the work. The first line in my show says
it all..." But she won't share it now: you'll have to see the
show to find out what it is!
Canny
Here's
the canny, commercial Stritch: setting up your curiosity but not
satisfying it, unless you buy a ticket.
All
she will say is: "You draw from life for every good and bad thing
that happens on the stage", and says that one night, after a
particularly rough day, she arrived onstage and the entrance applause
she received fed her to preface this line with a long "Yeeah!"
Not
just that day, of course, but the experience of every day of her
76 years so far that arrives onstage with her: "My
husband had a great quote - everybody has a sack of rocks."
The
show is partly about Stritch's own sack of rocks; there's a haunting
moment near the end when she says of her career, "My God, it
almost all happened without me."
Sure,
she tells me now, "I was there and I was successful when I was
drinking - look at the artists who have been successful and who
lifted more than a few in their time and were equally successful.
But I was looking for something finer than that."
And
right now, you won't find anything finer or more moving on the London
stage.
Elaine
Stritch at Liberty runs at the Old Vic until 16 November. Box office:
020 7369 1722
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