'I'm Going For Broke': William Hutt Plays his Fourth Prospero at Stratford

thoughts on shakespeare: the tempest
The Stratford Festival
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In 1999 William Hutt played Prospero in The Tempest at the Stratford Festival for the third, and what was widely assumed to be the last, time. The assumption was a natural one. Hutt was 79, and Prospero, the magician who at the end of the play breaks his staff and drowns his books, is generally recognized as the greatest of all valedictory rules, maybe signifying Shakespeare's own farewell to the stage. According to rumour, this was not only going to be Hutt's last Prospero. It was going to be his last performance on stage.

"I don't know whether I should apologize to everyone," said Hutt, between rehearsals for this year's festival, at which he is playing Prospero again. "I don't think so. I never said I was going to retire. I did say, very pointedly, that I was going to take a year off, which in fact I almost did. Except I did some directing that next year." (The play was Oscar Remembered, a piece about Lord Alfred Douglas, and featured Michael Therriault, who had been Hutt's Ariel in 1999.) "But because of my age and my saying I was taking a year off, the media made a retirement thing out of it. That's how I viewed it."

To be fair, the festival's publicists never said Hutt was retiring. But they never denied it either. They knew a good angle when they saw one.

This time, though, the retirement is official, right? "Absolutely" says Hutt. Then he elaborates.

"It's my farewell performance on stage. I'll do films and televison if they come along, of course. And if somebody actually thinks 'Oh, maybe he'd like to direct a play, that's perfectly acceptable. I can just sit there and tell everybody what to do. Or just sit there, and hope they'll do it."

There seems little doubt that they would. Hutt is by almost universal consent our greatest actor. Few actors would argue with a man who is the object of so much respect and affection. And it's not just longevity or that he is part of the fabric of our major theatre, having been at Stratford virtually continuously since the first season in 1953. It's the risks he took after he became a legend. Following his failure to retire, he did things that no actor in his eighties is supposed to do. He went on playing leads at Stratford. Some were parts he had played: the King of France in All's Well That Ends Well and Feste, a performance of legendary repose and command, in Twelfth Night. But in 2001 he also took on a massive oratorical role as Clarence Darrow, defending the evolutionary cause in the American courthouse drama Inherit the Wind. (He and his creationist opponent spend much of the play in shirtsleeves and braces, inspiring the National Post headline "The Suspenders of Disbelief.") He then took a remarkable left-hand turn, returning to the Toronto stage for the first time in decades, to appear in two modern classics with Soulpepper.

"I loved working with Soulpepper. Without them I'd never have got the chance to play either one of those roles." The roles were Spooner in Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, in which he was astonishing, and Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, in which he was scarcely less so, despite being slowed down by arthritis and some initial memory problems. "If I'm going to go out, at least I'm going to go with a little panache, not fade away."

And so it's back to Prospero. And talk about coming full circle, this -- as far back as 1962 -- was the first unequivocal lead role he ever played at Stratford. He doesn't remember much about that performance, except the "distinct pleasure" of playing scenes with his Miranda, a brand-new Stratford ingenue named Martha Henry, and the Ariel of the late Bruno Gerussi. He does recall, though, that Michael Langham, then director of the festival, though not of that production, must have been impressed: "He said, 'This should lead to Richard II very soon.' And it did."

Langham is one of the three Stratford chiefs whom Hutt (who has worked with all eight of them) regards as having had the greatest influence on his work. "I learned more about acting from Michael than anyone else. He's a brilliant choreographer; he made us understand clearly the picture he was making with our bodies. We weren't just standing here because he'd told us to."

Robin Phillips "taught me the importance of stillness and thought. He told me I could bounce along perfectly well as I'd done in the past, I'd make money, but that there were more levels to my career than I thought there were." One of those unexpected levels has in fact become something of a legend. "People would come up to me over the years and say 'The part you've played that meant the most to me was ...' and I'd think 'Please, please, let it be Lear or James Tyrone.' But what invariably comes out is Lady Bracknell."

That towering dowager (six-foot plus, with Hutt playing her) in The Importance of Being Earnest occasioned one of Phillips's most celebrated directorial notes, when he remarked: "Lady Bracknell can walk through a room without disturbing one speck of dust." That, Hutt found, was a message he could apply to every role: "It's not just about standing still, but if you're going to do something, do it that deftly, with that much concentration, so it means something."

Richard Monette, the current Stratford director, "has kept me alive. When he took over, 13 years ago, I was over 70. Most directors would have said, 'We'll find whatever we can for you, of course we will,' and proceed to find very little. But Richard has really made a place for me in this organization. I think he thinks I'm very valuable to it." (He does.)

Monette directed Hutt's previous Prospero, and he's also directing this one. Hutt is still re-thinking the role, especially the famous "Our revels now are ended" speech, which virtually prophesies the end of the world. "There's a temptation, because it's a famous aria, to soften it, but" -- and at this point in our conversation Hutt hammered out his words, savouring the meaning of each one -- "I think he's really angry, and sardonic and almost in despair. I hinted at it last time, but this time I said, 'I'm going to go for broke.' "

Then there is Prospero's renunciation speech, one that for the audience is likely to carry even greater emotional baggage this year than it did in 1999. For the actor it's a huge technical challenge, building up one detail after another. "You have to do it in such a way that it's not all one note. And what changes the music is a change in attitude. You start by admiring and invoking the spirits, then you say 'Let me tell you what I've done' -- and that includes the claim to have raised the dead, like Lazarus. He's snatching at equality with God, and he has to eventually forgive himself for that. The mood changes again. I wasn't able to do that in '62. My sense of music wasn't acute enough."

It certainly is now. "I was very fortunate. When my voice changed, it dropped in exactly the right place. Some people's drop in very odd places. Rod Stewart, God knows where his voice dropped to." It's a surprising comparison, but one knows what he means.

The Tempest turned out not to be Shakespeare's final play. And there are rumours Hutt might yet be seen again on a Stratford stage in something less demanding -- perhaps in a cameo role for Monette's own farewell season, two years down the road. ("If I'm still active - - and alive. Because I owe Richard a lot.") This season anyway we have that voice, and that stillness, and they are sovereign.