“It was so dreadful”: the play Judi Dench called “the most terrible” known to man
It feels like less and less that actors are getting their start in the theatre these days, not like the older generation of stars who cut their teeth on the stage, meticulously rehearsing their lines before performing to an audience, over and over again.
There was no room for error: you had to be put together and effortless in your delivery, and with such requirements, it’s no surprise that actors like Judi Dench have become so established in the film industry. Theatre experience is the ultimate preparation, and for the likes of Dench and her contemporaries, like Helen Mirren and Anthony Hopkins, it was William Shakespeare who really prepared them for stardom, his soliloquies and range of tragic and comedic scripts enough to get an actor ready for anything, while speaking in iambic pentameter.
Dench has played some of the most iconic Shakespearean women during her time as a veteran of the stage, like the tragic, grief-stricken Ophelia in Hamlet, and the power-mad yet ultimately guilt-ridden Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. These roles showed her capability to portray demanding and layered characters, allowing her to emerge as one of Britain’s finest stars.
Sometimes, though, the actor took on roles that were quite the opposite, finding herself regretting her decision when it was too late: that’s the curse of being an actor. Not every role is going to be on the level of Shakespeare, and in the case of Content to Whisper, Dench soon realised she was dealing with one of the most awful plays she had ever stumbled across; at least she had her husband, actor Michael Williams, by her side.
Prolific throughout the 1960s, by the early 1970s, Dench slowed down to have a child (who would even end up becoming the voice of Angelina Ballerina decades later), and following the birth of her daughter in 1972, she quickly got back to starring in Content to Whisper in 1973.
Discussing the production in her book And Furthermore, the actor wrote, “My return to the stage was far from auspicious, and Michael and I only did it really because it was in York, at the Theatre Royal”. This was clearly the first mistake, because she only came to hate what she was now signed up for, and having a one-year-old baby didn’t make it any easier.
“The director, Richard Digby Day, had tried before to get us to go there, but the play he chose was Content to Whisper, adapted by Alan Melville from a French stage adaptation of a novel, La Lumiere Noire. It has to be the most terrible play known to man, and very soon Richard knew it too. Sydney Tafler was the worst laugher with whom I have ever shared a stage. Sometimes it was so dreadful he just could not get the words out,” she continued.
A job is a job, though, and sometimes you’ve got no choice other than to suck it up. Dench performed her role as Aurelia, but that would be the last time she’d perform in York; it seems that the failure of Content to Whisper caused her to be put off starring in a play there ever again, but sometimes you have to do a pretty bad one to appreciate the good fortune.
