Canadian Theatre Great Remembered for his Generosity

thoughts on shakespeare: remembering William Hutt
Obituary
CanWest News Service

Friends, family and members of Canada's theatre royalty gathered in Stratford for the funeral of legendary actor William Hutt Monday, cramming into the pews to pay their respects.

The word on everybody's lips was "generosity". It cropped up equally in the speeches and tributes that formed part of the service itself, and in the informal reminiscences of the relatives, colleagues, admirers, friends and fellow Stratford citizens gathered outside the church waiting for the doors to open.

Stratford's St. James Anglican Church, which holds about 500, had 15 rows of pews designated for "friends of Hutt."

Hutt, who died last Wednesday at 87, was universally recognised as Canada's greatest actor, certainly the greatest to have devoted his life to the theatre of his native country. He was in the Stratford Festival's first season in 1953, and spent most of the rest of his career there.

Albert Schultz of Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre - who gained formative experience acting alongside Hutt at Stratford and went on to direct him in some of his finest performances - spoke of Hutt's grace and courage in his last days when greeting those who had come to his house to pay their last respects.

Reminiscing about Hutt's love of good food and drink, he said, "He taught me how to mix a Martini, he tried to teach me how to drink it."

Schultz also paid tribute to Hutt the actor: "He moved me to such deep delight and such deep tears. His legacy will never be matched."

Richard Monette, Stratford's outgoing artistic director, read from a sermon on the subject of death by George Herbert, the 17th-century poet and clergyman. It was one that Hutt himself had often read - a text almost forbidding mourning: "Speak to me in an easy way. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Let my name be ever the household word." And - in words that might have been coined for Hutt's contribution to Canadian theatre - "there is absolute continuity. All is well."

Peter Hutt, Hutt's nephew and an actor in his own right, paid emotional tribute to a 40-year friendship whose "beginning was the advent of my thinking life." Acting with the legend was "nothing less than sublime," he said. Voicing everybody's thoughts, he added that he had believed "Billy would outlive us all."

Martha Henry, who made her Stratford debut in 1962 as Hutt's daughter in The Tempest, quoted a speech from Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night in which, years later, she had played his wife. Referring to her first meeting with Hutt, she said, "that was 45 years ago and we've loved each other ever since."

As expected, Hutt's funeral was attended by Canadian, and especially Stratford, theatre royalty. Along with Monette and Henry, dozens paid their respects including Fiona Reid, Seana McKenna and Peter Donaldson.

---- The festival's general director, Antoni Cimolino attended. There were also representatives of Ontario's other major classical companies, including Jackie Maxwell, director of the Shaw Festival, and her predecessor, Christopher Newton.

Former Stratford artistic director Robin Phillips delivered the eulogy, speaking of how Hutt's miraculous voice had provided a conduit for Shakespeare's imagination.

He also insisted that Hutt devoted himself more than any other man to his country's cultural development. The phrase "the theatrical community" can be glibly overused, but on Monday's hot afternoon it genuinely existed, in memory of a man and and an actor whose legacy, as Schultz accurately said, "will never be matched."