Tyrone Guthrie
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Tyrone Guthrie
eddie Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:59 am
G is for Tyrone Guthrie
He may be relatively little-known, but this giant of a director changed theatre for good – not least in his campaign to break down the proscenium arch
Michael Billington
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 January 2012 14.33 GMT
Giant of the theatre ... Tyrone Guthrie. Photograph: ITV/Rex Features
Who is the most influential British director of modern times? Peter Brook revolutionised our notion of the empty space. Peter Hall has shown what permanent institutions can achieve. But arguably the greatest legacy comes from Tyrone Guthrie (1900-71) – even if his name is scarcely known to a younger generation. Even to label Guthrie as "British" is slightly misleading, since he once dubbed himself "a very Irish sort of Anglo-Scot". But this six-foot-five giant of a man was not only a great director: his unceasing campaign for the open stage has left its mark on theatres all over the world.
Although he worked at London's Old Vic from 1933 to 1939, Guthrie wanted to get away from traditional proscenium theatres. His first great adventure in open stages came in 1948 when he directed Lyndsay's Satire of the Three Estates at Edinburgh's Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland, as part of the newly formed Edinburgh festival: those lucky enough to have seen it still talk of the production's flamboyant pageantry. In 1952 Guthrie was invited to create a Shakespeare festival in a tent in Stratford, Ontario, which led to the building of a magnificent thrust theatre when the festival became a permanent fixture. A TV programme about the Canadian Stratford inspired an eye specialist thousands of miles away in Chichester to set about creating a similar structure in Sussex. And so the story rolls on: the Sheffield Crucible, the aptly-named Guthrie theatre in Minneapolis and the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon – all owe their shape and style to the vision of this peripatetic missionary.
But Guthrie wasn't simply a pioneer. He was also a fantastically exciting director. The first show of his I saw was an All's Well That Ends Well at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959: a problematic play on which most directors seek to impose unity. Instead Guthrie gave us three distinct worlds: Chekhovian-autumnal for the scenes in Roussillon (with Edith Evans as the Countess), Lehar-like operetta for the French court and then pure Army Game farce for the Florentine wars. Magically all the ingredients came together; it was a production of the play I have rarely seen bettered. And although it was always said Guthrie was brilliant at handling crowds but wary of personal emotion, I didn't find that to be true. He opened the new Nottingham Playhouse in 1963 with a stunning Coriolanus in which, at the play's climax, Ian McKellen's Aufidius swooped with homoerotic passion on to the dead body of John Neville's vainglorious hero. And I always remember a moment from Guthrie's Tartuffe for the National Theatre in 1967: one in which John Gielgud, playing the duped rich man Organ, gazed at the palms of Robert Stephens's Tartuffe, a spiritual conman, as if looking for signs of religious stigmata.
Sadly, although I heard Guthrie lecture on several occasions, I never met him. He was, by all counts, a truly inspirational figure whose great phrase, when faced by any disaster, was "Rise above it". Known in America because of an honorary academic degree as Dr Guthrie, he was also once mistakenly summoned in the middle of the night by a Brooklyn hotel clerk to attend a man having a heart attack in room 204. Asked by a friend what he had actually done, Guthrie said: "Made him a nice strong cup of tea and held his hand. Much better in the morning."
But, although Guthrie's legacy is to be found in open stages all over the world, few directors today can match his brand of visual bravura and reckless showmanship. In fact, I can think of only one who, on the opening night of his production of Turandot at English National Opera, suddenly asked me out of the blue: "Did you ever see much of Guthrie's work?" His name, as you may have guessed, is Rupert Goold.
Indispensable autobiography: A Life in the Theatre (Hamish Hamilton).
Not to be confused with: Woody Guthrie.
He may be relatively little-known, but this giant of a director changed theatre for good – not least in his campaign to break down the proscenium arch
Michael Billington
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 January 2012 14.33 GMT
Giant of the theatre ... Tyrone Guthrie. Photograph: ITV/Rex Features
Who is the most influential British director of modern times? Peter Brook revolutionised our notion of the empty space. Peter Hall has shown what permanent institutions can achieve. But arguably the greatest legacy comes from Tyrone Guthrie (1900-71) – even if his name is scarcely known to a younger generation. Even to label Guthrie as "British" is slightly misleading, since he once dubbed himself "a very Irish sort of Anglo-Scot". But this six-foot-five giant of a man was not only a great director: his unceasing campaign for the open stage has left its mark on theatres all over the world.
Although he worked at London's Old Vic from 1933 to 1939, Guthrie wanted to get away from traditional proscenium theatres. His first great adventure in open stages came in 1948 when he directed Lyndsay's Satire of the Three Estates at Edinburgh's Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland, as part of the newly formed Edinburgh festival: those lucky enough to have seen it still talk of the production's flamboyant pageantry. In 1952 Guthrie was invited to create a Shakespeare festival in a tent in Stratford, Ontario, which led to the building of a magnificent thrust theatre when the festival became a permanent fixture. A TV programme about the Canadian Stratford inspired an eye specialist thousands of miles away in Chichester to set about creating a similar structure in Sussex. And so the story rolls on: the Sheffield Crucible, the aptly-named Guthrie theatre in Minneapolis and the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon – all owe their shape and style to the vision of this peripatetic missionary.
But Guthrie wasn't simply a pioneer. He was also a fantastically exciting director. The first show of his I saw was an All's Well That Ends Well at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959: a problematic play on which most directors seek to impose unity. Instead Guthrie gave us three distinct worlds: Chekhovian-autumnal for the scenes in Roussillon (with Edith Evans as the Countess), Lehar-like operetta for the French court and then pure Army Game farce for the Florentine wars. Magically all the ingredients came together; it was a production of the play I have rarely seen bettered. And although it was always said Guthrie was brilliant at handling crowds but wary of personal emotion, I didn't find that to be true. He opened the new Nottingham Playhouse in 1963 with a stunning Coriolanus in which, at the play's climax, Ian McKellen's Aufidius swooped with homoerotic passion on to the dead body of John Neville's vainglorious hero. And I always remember a moment from Guthrie's Tartuffe for the National Theatre in 1967: one in which John Gielgud, playing the duped rich man Organ, gazed at the palms of Robert Stephens's Tartuffe, a spiritual conman, as if looking for signs of religious stigmata.
Sadly, although I heard Guthrie lecture on several occasions, I never met him. He was, by all counts, a truly inspirational figure whose great phrase, when faced by any disaster, was "Rise above it". Known in America because of an honorary academic degree as Dr Guthrie, he was also once mistakenly summoned in the middle of the night by a Brooklyn hotel clerk to attend a man having a heart attack in room 204. Asked by a friend what he had actually done, Guthrie said: "Made him a nice strong cup of tea and held his hand. Much better in the morning."
But, although Guthrie's legacy is to be found in open stages all over the world, few directors today can match his brand of visual bravura and reckless showmanship. In fact, I can think of only one who, on the opening night of his production of Turandot at English National Opera, suddenly asked me out of the blue: "Did you ever see much of Guthrie's work?" His name, as you may have guessed, is Rupert Goold.
Indispensable autobiography: A Life in the Theatre (Hamish Hamilton).
Not to be confused with: Woody Guthrie.
eddie- The Gap Minder
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