An ACTORS LIFE

In his catholic selection of poetry and prose Franks runs the whole gamut of thespian experiences, from wayward juvenile productions and amateur dramatics to acting at its most sublime.
We are given graphic accounts of early struggles in the profession from Isadora Duncan and John Osborne, fascinating insights into the craft of acting from Fiona Shaw and Juliet Stevenson, and some compelling memories of great performers: Kenneth Williams on Olivier's Othello, Michael MacLiammoir on the teenage but already formidable Orson Welles auditioning in Dublin in 1931, and Michael Redgrave on falling in love with Edith Evans, his Rosalind in As You Like It. Equally unforgettable are monsters such as the diminutive, demoniacal Edmund Kean; Hollywood's own Mommie Dearest, Joan Crawford; and Martita Hunt, affectionately described by Alec Guinness as utterly impossible but easy to forgive.
There are memorable fictional accounts of mounting or attending plays from the novels of Henry Fielding and Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf, and extracts from Shakespeare's Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and from plays by Chekhov and Pinero, Coward and Stoppard. Songs include Stephen Sondheim's 'Broadway Baby' and Noel Coward's hilariously dire warning to Mrs Worthington regarding her daughter. The work of poets ranging from Tennyson to Roger McGough completes this multi-faceted celebration of the routine, the rigours and the rapture of an actor's life.