{"id":1044250,"date":"2026-09-05T04:31:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T04:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1044250\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T04:31:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T04:31:18","slug":"kenneth-branagh-spins-theater-gold-with-into-the-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1044250\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenneth Branagh Spins Theater Gold With ‘Into The Breach’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t
Judi Dench tells firsthand how stage stars such as Richard Burton, John Neville and later Anthony Hopkins<\/a>, were the rock stars of the theater in the postwar years in the UK.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe likes of Burton and\u00a0Neville, in particular, were treated like gods. \u201cThat was before the Beatles,\u201d Dame Judi remarks in\u00a0Into the Breach<\/a>, the enthralling\u00a0documentary co-created by Freddie Fox<\/a> with Richard\u00a0Fullerton and produced\u00a0by Kenneth Branagh<\/a> and his Kenneth Branagh Company. The movie has its world premiere\u00a0screenings at the Telluride<\/a> Film Festival beginning Sunday with showings at the Sheridan Opera House and the Backlot.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was, as Dame Judi puts it, a \u201cpre-Beatles fever that the two of them [Burton and Neville] created at the Vic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor her part, she got to perform opposite John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft in\u00a0The Cherry Orchard,\u00a0which led to her being cast as Juliet in\u00a0director Franco Zeffirelli\u2019s 1960 Old Vic production of Shakespeare\u2019s\u00a0Romeo and Juliet. Dench says winning the role was all down to Gielgud choosing her for\u00a0The Cherry Orchard.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was like putting a stake in a wilting plant,\u201d Dame Judi says during a moment\u00a0in\u00a0Into the Breach, adding that she was the plant while Gielgud was the stake.<\/p>\n

\n\tForever after, she was \u201cat his feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat idolatry also was down to the fact that Gielgud \u201cobeyed the verse and lines, and he did everything that I believe should be done in Shakespeare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHopkins, another member of the Old Vic company, says in the film that he was lucky to have acted alongside Gielgud and Laurence Olivier on stage.<\/p>\n

\n\tHopkins and Gielgud also appeared in David Lynch\u2019s\u00a0The Elephant Man\u00a0starring John Hurt.<\/p>\n

\n\tImpishly, Hopkins recalls that Gielgud was growing weary after doing \u201ctake after take\u201d of one scene. \u201cSir John said, \u2018\u201d\u2019When do we finish? I haven\u2019t got long to live.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever,\u00a0Into the Breach\u00a0does speak of the theater\u2019s importance to cinema. After all, Hopkins was cast as Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs\u00a0after director Jonathan Demme saw him in landmark play\u00a0Pravda\u00a0at the National Theatre in 1985.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn\u00a0Pravda, Hopkins plays a reptilian-like newspaper magnate modeled by playwrights David Hare and Howard Brenton on Rupert Murdoch. (Go see Danny Boyle\u2019s searing movie\u00a0Ink<\/a>, based on James Graham\u2019s stage play, which is also playing up in the Colorado mountains this weekend.)<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: \u2018Ink\u2019 Review: Danny Boyle\u2019s Sensational Look At The Origins Of Rupert Murdoch\u2019s The Sun Is Also A Warning For Now \u2013 Venice Film Festival<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tHare relishes telling the documentary\u2019s filmmakers that it was Demme \u201ccoming to see Tony playing Lambert Le Roux that made him cast him as Hannibal Lector.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI remember seeing Hopkins as La Roux, unfurling his tongue and flicking it at other characters on the Olivier stage. Gary Oldman<\/a> rightly hails Hopkins\u2019 performance in Pravda\u00a0as \u201cone of the greatest of the 20th century.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Into the Breach, Oldman is assembled with Dame Judi, Hopkins, director Richard Eyre\u00a0and\u00a0National Theatre artistic chief Indhu Rubasingham on a roundtable panel, hosted by Branagh, set up on the Old Vic\u2019s stage where Dame Judi and Hopkins forged their careers. It\u2019s marvelous watching their faces; it\u2019s as if both are seeing ghosts of performances from decades ago.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe anecdotes certainly are fun, but\u00a0I was struck by the meat at the heart of it with its discussions of the politics \u2014 past and present \u2014 and on sexuality and race, and on the sometimes ruthless nature of building a national theater.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are particularly deeply moving scenes involving a quite magnificent Ian McKellen where he recounts how he rallied the most powerful politicians in the land in the name of gay rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor his part, when Fox reached out to Branagh suggesting that he collaborate on the documentary along with Fullerton, Branagh says he was struck by their vision for the film particularly about \u201cwhy the theater sometimes creates profound change. Why it sometimes is that change that it expresses, either in political areas away from the theater, like gay rights ,and the political situation in difficult parts of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBranagh, speaking to Deadline recently, adds that sometimes theater is the \u201creflection of the volatility itself,\u201c\u00a0and this comes through in the story the film tells of the formation of the National Theatre,\u00a0where\u00a0Laurence Olivier and later Peter Hall had to battle political and artistic headwinds to get the National on its feet on London\u2019s Southbank.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: Kenneth Branagh On Moving From Shakespeare To Action-Comedy In \u2018Mayday\u2019: \u201cI Thought Zach Galifianakis Should Play The Part, But I Was Very Pleased They Asked Me\u201d \u2013 Edinburgh Film Festival<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tFox, speaking on behalf of himself and Fullerton, says that the period in the 1950s and early 1960s with the formation of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court \u201cis such a great kind of touchstone moment that exemplifies\u201d their vision.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a moment, Fox observes, \u201cwhere the theater is leading the conversation on social change. It gets there before the Beatles. You know, while Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are still dressed up in their nice little blazers, you know, doing stuff that other people want them to sing. You\u2019ve got Richard Burton, you\u2019ve got John Neville, you\u2019ve got John Osborne, you\u2019ve got Albert Finney, you\u2019ve got Tom Courtenay, Peter O\u2019Toole doing things that were so countercultural that and so not, I think, what most people think of the theater as being.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTheater, says Fox, was now \u201cat an inflection point\u201d where\u00a0the future of human creativity \u201cis in the hands of who knows what, whether it be AI or social media. We\u2019ve got an opportunity now to reflect on the real work done in the past and have a moment to say to ourselves, \u201cWell, what can we do next, and what comes next\u201d and how can the theater be an ignition key, if you like, to to something bold like that again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBranagh has known Fox for years, having directed him opposite Lily James in a production of Romeo & Juliet\u00a0a decade ago. Fox arrived on the production at the eleventh hour after the production\u2019s original Romeo, Richard Madden, and then his understudy were indisposed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, Branagh had\u00a0gotten\u00a0to know the Fox family well\u00a0when Freddie\u2019s uncle, Robert Fox, was the producer of Branagh\u2019s first foray into the West End in Another Country in 1982 \u2014 which was, I should note, five years before before\u00a0Freddie, son of Edward Fox, was born.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring our conversation, Branagh says that he was impressed how Fox and Fullerton already had acquired a vast amount of\u00a0eye-popping\u00a0archive footage that features the likes of Olivier, Burton and Gielgud along with Dench, Maggie Smith, Claire Bloom, Eileen Atkins, Helen Mirren, Joan Plowright, Derek Jacobi and many others.\u00a0The archival videos are dynamite, a visual experience that Branagh rightfully describes as being charged with \u201cmagnetism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe magic of the film is that it goes back further to the 1930s empathized,\u00a0in Branagh\u2019s words,\u00a0\u201cmagnificently and magnetically\u201d by Paul Robeson, the great bass-baritone and thespian artist \u201cand to hear him talking about his stellar appearance as Othello with Dame Peggy Ashoff and Dame Sybil Thorndike\u201d and seeing film of one of his many trips to perform for coal miners in South Wales and in Yorkshire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Lucy Prebble, Gary Oldman, Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins, Richard Eyre, Indhu Rubasingham and Kenneth Branagh from \u2018Into the Breach\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJenni Carvell<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also a sense, Branagh observes, of \u201cthe wary and you might say wounded or at least complex attitude to what he did, and when he talks about playing Othello in the South for the first time in America, \u2014 and although he is as at all times brilliant and dignified and respectful and polite \u2014 you sense the danger that he put himself in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film takes us through the permissive nature of the late \u201950s and into the \u201960s and the vital importance of the work\u00a0with Lilian Baylis \u201creally creating the possibility of populist theater,\u201d says Branagh. But they also were \u201cexploding the possibilities of what theater could do, and frankly, in those individuals and in those movements, they often made it sexy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFox tells us that it was important the three key collaborators \u2014 Fox, Branagh and Fullerton \u2014 \u201cto have a roundtable at the center of this, where you\u2019ve got the head of the National Theatre, you\u2019ve got previous heads of the National Theatre. We interview the heads of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the head of the Royal Court Theatre \u2014 the people who are responsible for making those social decisions about where theater is going next \u2014 and hearing what they have to say,\u201d Fox explains as he spoke with Deadline ahead of Telluride.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough, like many others, Fox is \u201cnervous and trepidatious about what the theater is going to do and where it\u2019s going to go. Is it going to become more important to us than it ever has been before, or is it going to vanish \u2026 I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any chance of it vanishing. I think it\u2019s only going to become more important as the digital age grows on us, you know, like a rash.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut is the \u201cfever\u201d still there? You know, the pre-Beatles fever that Dame Judi\u00a0describes in the film.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhere is the current iteration of how we make the world listen to legitimate shouts for attention that we think the theater deserves?\u201d Branagh muses.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOn one level,\u201d he continues, \u201cI think that a recognition from all of us who do it that the unusual nature of being in a room, small or large, with people at a communal event. As Helen Mirren puts it very simply in our film, someone walks on, and the equivalent of, you know, an ancient storyteller in a cave, not unlike Mr. [Christopher] Nolan\u2019s\u00a0Odyssey, and a stick is banged on the floor \u2014 \u2018Attend!\u2019 \u2014 and a tale is told. That necessity seems to compel human beings. The way in which we want to do it has changed, but at the moment, each time I\u2019m in a production, each time I watch one, I\u2019m aware of the audience in a way that you can tangibly feel. It was certainly the case at the beginning of\u00a0The Tempest\u00a0[for the RSC at Stratford]. Here, I came on, the lights were up, and you saw every one of the\u00a01,000 people. They saw it was me. I saw it was them. We could all see the whites of our eyes. And the beginning of Richard Eyre\u2019s\u00a0brilliant production involved me simply taking an inhalation of breath. And I found that a quarter of the way through that inhalation, the other 1,000 people were doing it with me. And they all knew there was nothing planned.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBranagh adds: \u201cIf we feel as though we can get their attention in that way, and they feel it\u2019s an appropriate way to spend their hard-earned cash and away from their devices, then we have an opportunity, and this film sort of starts to just bang the drum for. OK, well, we\u2019re here now. Look at the heroes that went before. Look what we\u2019ve got. Look where the future, scary though it is, may be leading. What can we do with this crazy, volatile,medium?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a coda, Fox adds that \u201cthe title is\u00a0Into the Breach. Theater has always finally pushed itself forward into the breach at times of crisis, national crisis, times of national social change. I don\u2019t know what that next moment, that next great 1950s moment at the Royal Court, is going to be. All I know is is that it happens, and that we as theater people have to have the scale of ambition that Laurence Olivier had, that Peter Hall had, that Joan Littlewood had, to be able to go when that moment comes, \u201cWe\u2019re there and we\u2019re ready, and we\u2019re going to lead the conversation in the way that the Royal Court people did, that Joan Littlewood did. We\u2019re not just going to react to it. Reacting is fine. Reacting is important, but it\u2019s also about leading.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tInto the Breach\u00a0is mouthwatering, whether or not you\u2019re a theater fan. It\u2019s jam-packed with interviews with the great and the good of British theater.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve tried not to give too much away, but Oldman is priceless in this film. We sort of grew up together in the sense that I covered him from the beginning of his career, although I\u2019m sad to have missed his debut season when he played the Theatre Royal in York way back in the day where he was cast as the cat in a\u00a0Dick Whittington\u00a0pantomime. He still remembers the little ditty that he and his castmates sang,\u00a0and he performs it once more for our pleasure:<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re all at sea, we\u2019re all at seas and kicking up a rumpus. <\/p>\n

\n\tYesterday we lost our way and now we\u2019ve lost the compass! Yo-ho-ho\u2026\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBranagh and Fox are in Telluride\u00a0and will be participating in Q&As on Sunday and Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tGive yourselves a treat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judi Dench tells firsthand how stage stars such as Richard Burton, John Neville and later Anthony Hopkins, were…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1044251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[32707,185,418072,171,418073,32730,418074,246292,104192,104193,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1044250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-anthony-hopkins","tag-celebrities","tag-dame-judi-dench","tag-entertainment","tag-freddie-fox","tag-gary-oldman","tag-into-the-breach","tag-kenneth-branagh","tag-telluride","tag-telluride-film-festival","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117216562833855449","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1044251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1044250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1044250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}