Peter Brook RIP

What an absolute legend? Only saw a couple of his productions but they both really stand out

Eileen Atkins lost out to you(Glenda Jackson) in an audition for [theatre director] Peter Brook. She tells the story in her 2021 autobiography Will She Do? of Brook asking you both to take your clothes off, your doing so immediately and Atkins thinking she’d misheard, and Brook then saying: “That is why I’m taking Glenda instead of you. You tend to question things and I want obedience.” Should student actors today be trained for obedience?

Glenda:I have no recollection of that happening. But I was always obedient to instructions. I accept that totally. If it was a director you trusted or you really needed the job, you’d do whatever was asked of you – up to a limit 

www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jun/16/glenda-jackson-answers-your-questions-i-think-thats-a-gross-insult-about-politicians-and-actors-frankly

Here are two entries from Peter Hall's Diaries about that Peter Brook production of A&C.

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There's something funny about Peter's Antony and Cleopatra at Stratford. John Goodwin and John Bury both went to the opening and both independently have told me how bad, slow and heavy it was. Yet they are not destructive, and they both adore Brook. John Bury observed, 'I have never been so glad to see an asp.' The press is distinctly disappointed, though deeply respectful. So they bloody well should be.

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Antony is a terrible disappointment. I was looking forward to it so much. It's handsome and chic but by no means a revelation, more a clear, hard-edged
interpretation constantly let down by its actors. And there are no broad strands of emotion to sustain you. But some things I shall remember always, and Peter has shown that, though the play is about big passions and big events, it can be done as a chamber production. Dinner with him afterwards. He spoke of his unhappiness during rehearsals, adding that once actors begin to think that working is doing the director a favour, they are finished.

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I imagine the Dream would look good but unremarkable today, just as Citizen Kane does, because it was so new and radical at the time that it influenced everything that came afterwards.