By Ray Bennett

They used to call him the Guitar Man when his twangy rock’n’roll music sold gold records along with Elvis, Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers.

Duane Eddy.

With his group The Rebels, the well-scrubbed, fresh-faced young Arizonian was the supreme instrumentalist of the early rock’n’roll revolution. His driving twanging guitar made hits of tunes such as “Rebel Rouser”, “Ramford” and “Forty Miles of Bad Road”. He was on top.

Today, Duane Eddy at 32 is backing singer Al Martino at the Elmwood Supper Club. No solo spot, no limelight. He’s there as an expert and professional musician.

Duane Eddy 1970 is very different – at least in appearance – from the man who helped lead pop music into a whole new era back in the fifties. A quiet, soft-spoken man, now with longer hair and a beard, he gives the appearance of being a little weary, perhaps a trifle ravaged by the cruel business he is in.

But there’s no bitterness, not even the slightest suggestion of being defeated or down. The man is a fountain of quiet energies and enthusiasms that he reveals gingerly as if he’s been let down by people in the past. But his smile is warm and genuine.

If you didn’t mention it, he wouldn’t talk about the big days, the fame and subsequent decline. “They were good days”, he will agree. “It really was a time of revolution in pop music. For the first time, it began to be a youthful thing. Before Haley and Presley and those people came along there was the Top 10 but soon it became the Top 100.

“It’d be fun to think of a group of those guys playing together like the ‘supergroups’ – it would be difficult, though – Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry. All good people. That was one of the aspects of pop music in those days, the guys in it really were nice guys. It was all new to them and many of them got taken for a ride. Now, it seams to have gone the other way with some of the rock people – they look after themselves.”

Eddy has little tolerance for the myths of show business. He doesn’t react with indignation, though, just a knowing smile. “There are pressures in the business but you find the people who cannot handle it are those who aren’t really stable. The ones who do all the complaining about being harassed by fans and other things are the first ones to complain if it all disappears. But don’t believe that story about helping people on the way up because they’ll help you on the way down, either. When you’re on the way down, you never see those people.”

The Rebels’ last big hit was in 1963-64. “The guys reached a stage where it was tiresome doing endless one-nighters, constant touring. They wanted to get married and stay home. I got married too and felt the same way.

“Well, that’s all over with now. I have a little girl 6-years-old. When the marriage ended, I went to Europe – I’d still been recording and doing session work. I lived in London and formed a group called the Quotations – mnost guys from the old Merseybeats rock group. We toured all over Europe.”

The guys from the Rebels – pianist Larry Knechtel, sax and flautist Jim Horn and guitarist Al Casey – are the top session men in Los Angeles today, Eddy says, “When I returned from Europe, I was doing more recording work, then in March this year I was working with Al Martino and he asked me if I’d like to play for him in Las Vegas. It seemed like a good idea and we’ve worked together several times since.

“I’d like to get back into recording. I’ve just got a single out – a soft, gentle version of George Harrison’s ‘Something’. I don’t think I’ll get into the heavy rock sounds, though. In the fall, I’m going to get a group together and tour the Orient and see what comes out of that.”

Duane Eddy will be back. As his buddy, drummer Wayne Hudson, said: “Don’t worry, he’ll be there; he’ll get it together when he’s ready.”

The Windsor Star, Aug. 25 1970

By Ray Bennett

For all I know, the late London land baron Paul Raymond might have been the “porn king” of Soho but what I recall is that he published innocuous nudie magazines and ran a strip club called Raymond’s Revue Bar that was pretty good fun.

Soho strip clubs in those days (so I’m told) were shabby and sleazy, compared to which, the Revue Bar was pretty classy. In the 1960s, the mogul’s then wife Jean (pictured) styled the place on such iconic Paris venues as the Folies Bergere and the Crazy Horse.

Anna Friel plays Jean Raymond, a dancer and choreographer, opposite Steve Coogan in Michael Winterbottom’s biopic “The Look of Love”, which just opened in the UK.

Raymond’s Revue Bar at the time was a well-appointed nightclub with top-flight ecdysiasts from France and the international circuit.

I interviewed Jean Raymond in 1967 for Where To Go In London Magazine, a forerunner of Time Out, and as result my wife Anne and I went to the club several times, drank vodka gimlets and had a great time.

Best of all was to know where the music came from. Jean Raymond told me that once a year the great Hollywood film composer Henry Mancini would provide a selection of cues and tracks he’d written that for one reason or another were not used in the movies he’d scored.

It was a giggle to watch beautiful and stylish performers do their best to dazzle with the knowledge that the splendid accompaniment might have been made up of rather wonderful scraps from films such as “Arabesque”, “Two For the Road” and “The Party”.

Photos: Ben Jones

Rory Kinnear as Iago and Adrian Lester as Othello.

By Ray Bennett

Nicholas Hytner’s production of “Othello” at the National Theatre has drawn rave reviews from UK critics and in the theatre it was easy to be consumed by the power of the play and the great acting, but it has diminished a bit upon reflection.

Adrian Lester is terrific in the title role of a warrior naive in the ways of romance and too trusting in the honesty of his senior officers. Lester can appear a bit glossy on television, due largely to his starring role in the slick confidence trickery of “Hustle”, but on stage he has both power and vulnerability.

Rory Kinnear also gives a fine performance as the devious Iago and there is good supporting work from Jonathan Bailey as Cassio, Vincent Chubb as Desdemona’s racist father and Nick Sampson as a horrified senator.

Concerns about the production start with Hytner’s decision to set events in modern times with the British army in Cyprus. Vicki Mortimer’s box-of-tricks design – with walls that slide away to reveal crummy accommodations in a barracks – is impressive but the modernity undoes the key Shakespearian ploy of a maguffin that sets off the tragedy of jealousy.

Othello is shown as a commanding officer of much repute and there are laptop computers, helicopters and machine guns. He would be familiar with all kinds of intelligence gathering and so it becomes entirely implausible that he would base his murderous anguish on a missing handkerchief.

Olivia Vinall as Desdemona and Adrian Lester as Othello

Body language also appears less than credible. Lester captures vividly Othello’s authority, his surprise and delight that he has won the love of a delightful bride, and the pain that comes from betrayal. Sadly, newcomer Olivia Vinall appears miscast as Desdemona, who should show clearly why a powerful soldier would fall in love with her and why another man should envy and resent him so much. This bride lacks verve and you wonder why Othello would be so enchanted.

Kinnear is thoroughly plausible as the envious and conniving Iago but in my experience weasels tend to comport themselves differently when they are with someone who holds power over them. Here, Iago is the same louche fellow whether he’s with Othello or his fellow soldiers. It makes it hard to see why Othello would be convinced of his honesty.

Also, the many early speeches in which Iago makes clear his hatred of “the Moor” and what he plans to do should fly with sinister foreboding, but here they make everything a bit obvious. Iago says he’s going to ruin Othello, and so he does.

Othello

Venue: Olivier Stage, National Theatre; runs to Aug. 18. The production will be broadcast live to 250 UK cinemas and many more around the world on Sept. 26. See here for details.

Cast: Adrian Lester, Rory Kinnear, Olivia Vinall, Jonathan Bailey, Tom Robertson, Lyndsey Marshal. Playwright: William Shakespeare; Director: Nicholas Hytner; Designer: Vicki Mortimer; Lighting designer: Jon Clark, Music: Nick Powell; Sound designer: Gareth Fry. Running time: 3 hours, 15 minutes including a 20-minute interval.

By Ray Bennett

Dudley Sutton (pictured above) says that although he has done a few, he prefers not to record his poetry and songs, which is a great shame for posterity but makes his performance at the Idler Academy, along with actor Timothy Ackroyd, as precious as it was entertaining.

Both gifted raconteurs, they took it in turn to spin yarns, weave images and in Sutton’s case sing songs for 90 minutes in the tiny bookshop, cafe and meeting place on Westbourne Park Road in Notting Hill.

Sutton’s inimical physiognomy is known well from many films and his years on the telly in shows from “Z-Cars” to “Porridge” to “The Sweeney” and the role of Tinker Bell with Ian McShane in the long-running “Lovejoy”. He made a startling debut on stage and in movies in 1964 with Rita Tushingham in Sidney J. Furie’s film “The Leather Boys” and in the title role of Joe Orton’s “Entertaining Mr. Sloan” when it debuted in the West End and went to Broadway.

At the Idler, he cursed genially at the absence of his friends who had said they would be there and told long-time friend Ackroyd that he would have to borrow his. With great energy ahead of his 80th birthday on April 6, Sutton told droll and illuminating stories about his days with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in the 1960s and trips to Paris and Russia.

He recited some long, intricate, and salacious poems with very funny gags and devilish rhymes, and sang songs including “The Talking Existentialist Blues”, a wry reflection on an affection for Jean-Paul Sartre that ended after he read Ludwig Wittgenstein, brother, as he points out, to the more famous Frank.

His collaborator on the night, as well as an actor, is a viscount, and so strictly he is Sir Timothy Ackroyd (pictured above). We don’t use honourifics here, but he came by his title the honest way – he inherited it – and over the last few years we have been companions frequently round our local for what he likes to call a stirrup cup (real ale for me, red wine for him) and lively conversation, so it’s impossible not to think of him as Sir Tim.

He and Sutton first appeared together on stage in Brian Forbes’s notorious 1980 production of “Macbeth” with Peter O’Toole at the Old Vic. Sir Tim has appeared a great deal over the years in the West End and on tour in the United States but he devotes much of his time to charitable work with the African conservation charity Tusk Trust, which he established in 1989, and as Chairman of the Ackroyd Trust, which helps drama students as they enter their final year of training.

Sir Tim knows everybody, and equally important, everybody knows Sir Tim so the anecdotes pour from him like good bubbly. At the Idler (pictured below) he related tales with wicked impressions of a rich assortment of characters from a US president to a World War II driver to Field Marshal Montgomery. You could say it was a luvvy evening, but it was certainly a lovely evening with two masterful storytellers whose magic for a while transported a rapt and laughing audience, which included filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, far away from a bitterly cold London evening in March.

Here’s “Talking Existentialist Blues” on YouTube:

By Ray Bennett

Restructuring specialist Gordon Brothers Europe has acquired Blockbuster UK for an undisclosed sum and will retain 264 outlets under license from the US firm with around 2,000 jobs saved.

The private equity and investment firm said the outlets will continue to operate on a “business as usual” basis and it plans to make “substantial investment” and “intends to fully utilise the existing trading platform, powerhouse brand and extensive customer database”.

Gordon Brothers, which also has offices in Germany, said, “The company will focus on enhancing the customer experience through the use of new product offerings, new technologies and better basic retailing helping Blockbuster become a viable business once again.”

Former HMV UK and Ireland Commercial Director Gary Warren, was named Blockbuster Managing Director. He has worked in retail for more than 20 years including a stint from 2001 to 2005 as HMV North America and Canada Operations and Product VP.

Gordon Brothers CEO Frank Morton said, “We acknowledge the industry is in transition; we know that we have a challenge ahead but there is still a market to be served.”

Morton noted that  Blockbuster has a strong brand affinity and said, “We believe that with the right mix of new product offering, new technologies, strategic management and marketing, we can bring new life to this high street staple. We look forward to working with employees, suppliers, landlords and other stakeholders to make this happen.”

Joint Administrator Lee Manning said, “Having identified a profitable core portfolio of stores we are pleased to have achieved this sale for creditors. Together with the previously announced store sales, more than half of the original estate has been secured for ongoing use. This transaction provides Blockbuster a future in the UK and we owe a special vote of thanks to all the company’s employees, suppliers and customers for helping us rescue the business.”

Gordon Brothers was attracted to Blockbuster UK, insiders said, because Blockbuster UK’s US-based parent Dish Network had become much more flexible about what would be included in the deal such as rights to use the brand in the digital arena.

The firm has worked with DIY chain Focus in the past and previously with Deloitte on Entertainment UK, which was owned by Woolworths before its collapse in 2008. It also was successful in its rescue of Irish retail group Clerys.

In its statement about the Blockbuster purchase, the firm said that last month its global expertise had “improved the trading position” of the ailing Republic fashion chain and driven “a 2.5 times increase in sales whilst maintaining a stable margin that facilitated a going concern trade sale”.

Formally, the Gordon Brothers subsidiary TS 1973 Investment Holdings Ltd. acquired the business and assets of Blockbuster Entertainment Ltd. and Blockbuster GB Ltd. for an undisclosed sum.

Lee Manning, Matthew David Smith and Neville Kahn, partners at  advisory firm Deloitte, were appointed Blockbuster Joint Administrators on Jan. 16.

This story appears in Cue Entertainment 

By Ray Bennett

Anticipation of this year’s Academy Awards was a pleasure with many great films and terrific performances but then came the nominations the prizes that lead up to the Oscars and it all went pear-shaped.

Inexplicable awards have been given to films such as “Argo”, “Les Misérables” and “Django Unchained” while prizes for splendid films such as “Life of Pi”, “Lincoln”, and “Silver Linings Playbook” have been hit and miss. Wonderful productions such as “The Master” and “Moonrise Kingdom” have found honours limited while the excellent “Killing Them Softly” was ignored entirely.

It means that tonight’s Oscar show might well turn out to be a major disappointment so many of these selections are made in hope that Academy Awards voters will prove smarter than the others, but history suggests they won’t be.

BEST PICTURE

Will win: Lincoln

Could win: Silver Linings Playbook

Should win: Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook

Should have been nominated: The Master, Killing Them Softly

BEST DIRECTOR

Will win: Steven Spielberg, Lincoln

Could win: David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Should win: Steven Spielberg, David O. Russell

Should have been nominated: Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master

BEST ACTOR

Will win: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Could win: Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Should win: Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix

Should have been nominated: Brad Pitt, Killing Them Softly

BEST ACTRESS

Will win: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Could win: Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Should win: Jennifer Lawrence

Should have been nominated: Rachel Weisz, Deep Blue Sea

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Will win: Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Could win: Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

Should win: Philip Seymour Hoffman

Should have been nominated: James Spader, The Master

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Will win: Anne Hathaway, Les Miséreables

Could win: Sally Field, Lincoln; Amy Adams, The Master

Should win: Sally Field, Amy Adams

Should have been nominated: Samantha Barks, Les Misérables

BEST SCORE

Will win: Life of Pi (Mychael Danna)

Could win: Anna Karenina (Dario Marianelli)

Should win: Life of Pi

Should have been nominated: Jonny Greenwood, The Master

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

Will win: ‘Skyfall’, Adele and Paul Epworth, Skyfall

Could win: ‘Pi’s Lullaby’, Life of Pi

Should win: ‘Pi’s Lullaby’

Should have been nominated: ‘Ancora Qui’ by Ennio Morricone & Elisa, Django Unchained

BEST EDITING

Will win: Argo

Could win: Zero Dark Thirty

Should win: Life of Pi

Should have been nominated: The Master

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Will win: Life of Pi

Could win: Skyfall

Should win: Life of Pi

Should have been nominated: The Master

BEST FOREIGN FILM

Will Win: Amour (Austria)

Could Win: Kon-Tiki (Norway)

Should win: No (Chile)

Should have been nominated: Intouchables (France)

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Will Win: Searching for Sugarman

Could Win: The Gatekeepers

Should Win: Searching for Sugarman

Should have been nominated: The Imposter, Marley

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Will win: Moonrise Kingdom

Could win: Zero Dark Thirty

Should win: Moonrise Kingdom

Should have been nominated: The Master

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Will win: Silver Linings Playbook

Could win: Lincoln

Should win: Silver Linings Playbook

Should have been nominated: Killing Them Softly

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Will win: Anna Karenina

Could win: Lincoln

Should win: Anna Karenina

Should have been nominated: The Master

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIR

Will win: The Hobbit

Could win: Les Misérables

Should win: Snow White and the Huntsman

Should have been nominated: Cloud Atlas

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Will win: Anna Karenina

Could win: Lincoln

Should win: Anna Karenina

Should have been nominated: The Master

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Will win: Life of Pi

Could win: Lif of Pi

Should win: Life of Pi

Should have been nominated: The Dark Knight Rises

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Will Win: Wreck-it Ralph

Could Win: Brave

Should Win: The Pirates: Band of Misfits

BEST SOUND EDITING

Will Win: Life of Pi

Could Win: Skyfall

Should Win: Zero Dark Thirty

BEST SOUND MIXING

Will Win: Zero Dark Thirty

Could Win: Skyfall

Should Win: Zero Dark Thirty

By Ray Bennett

When the BBC’s new Director General, Tony Hall, takes up the job in April, the broadcaster will get not only a former BBC News Chief Executive but also the man who has brought financial stability to one of the UK’s most complex arts institutions, the Royal Opera House.

His term since 2001 has included the ROH’s successful move into live cinema screenings of its opera and ballet productions across the country and around the world including the first opera screenings in 3D. In 2007, Hall oversaw the acquisition of DVD production and distribution company Opus Arte. As a result, it has produced a series of DVDs of its productions and those of other arts organizations using high definition technology.

The current season continues with new opera director Kasper Holten’s Covent Garden directorial debut, a new production of Tchaikovsky’s poignant opera “Eugene Onegin” (pictured, in cinemas Feb. 20); Verdi’s “Nabucco” with Placido Domingo (April 29), Rossini’s “La Donna del Lago” (May 27) and Britten’s “Gloriana” (June 24). Ballets include “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (March 28).

The season was given a big launch event in London and Hall says the live cinema season has become increasingly important to the arts organisation: “Cinema in the last 18 months has been absolutely core to what we want to do at the Royal Opera House, we want to take great artists, great art to as many people as we can.”

In a bid to drive awareness of the season, the ROH held similar launch events at other UK cities, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Cardiff, Nottingham, Newcastle, Birmingham, Plymouth, Brighton and Cambridge. Hall says, “We want to make sure the message gets across that, wherever you live, this is absolutely for you. Not just at the opera house but around the country and around the world. That is really important.”

ROH Enterprises Managing Director Alastair Roberts says the departing CEO has masterminded most of the innovations at the Opera House: “That’s been a really cool part of Hall’s strategy, to open it up and to build audiences and to get an international profile. Within that, cinema and DVD are really powerful ways to reach audiences. Also, in the current climate it is important to generate new revenue streams and both the cinema and video bring lots of audiences and added revenue. Tony was the architect of all that.”

The ROH stages about 30 productions each year and films about 12 of them with opera slightly ahead of ballet although close to 50/50. It shoots three more for free distribution across its chain of big screens around the nation. Cinemas in countries such as France, Germany, Brazil and Japan carry the films and the DVDs are distributed internationally with four titles now available as digital downloads on iTunes.

Roberts won’t discuss budgets or sales but he says the most obvious titles such as “La Boheme”, “La Traviata” sell “really well” as did Puccini’s “Il Trittico” from last year. “Swan Lake” was the biggest ever in audience figures with well over 20,000 tickets sold for the one night and the “The Nutcracker” in December was right up there. “La Fille Mal Gardee” placed at No. 3 on the UK box office and it remained in the Top 10 in the week it screened while “Romeo and Juliet” was watched by 16,000 people in more than 150 cinemas in the UK.

“When you total it up, it’s a major investment, but we think it’s vital to win new audiences. We want to make people feel more comfortable with opera and ballet. We know some might find them difficult to engage with or they will be intimidated so we put it on a big screen for free and at the local cinema for £10 to break that down,” Roberts says.

The ROH also is very active on Facebook and Twitter with more than 50,000 followers, he says: “At the interval, we encourage audience members to tweet to a hashtag and we put their tweets up on the screens so people see messages from all over the world from Brazil to Spain.”

The 2011 cinema season, which comprised three ballets and seven operas, was broadcast to 700 cinemas in 22 countries, Hall says: “And 40% of our audience is under 45 — that is not a statistic you would expect from the Royal Opera House and the more we reach out the more audiences we will attract and that is good for the Royal Opera.”

Roberts says the 2012/13 season will extend the company’s reach beyond Britain even further: “Our international footprint is expanding more or less on a monthly basis. By the beginning of this season we are in about 32 countries, which takes us to a total of 900 sites around the world, so very close to the magic thousand mark.”

This expansion is hugely important to the future of the Royal Opera House, according to Hall, who notes that while the Opera House is full every night, that is still just three-quarters of a million people each year: “Last year, we got a further 300,000 people watching us in cinemas; we got tens of thousands of people watching us for nothing through our BP Big Screens; we had over a million people watching us live and then recorded on playback when the Royal Ballet decided to throw open the Royal Ballet for a day; we had 4.5 million watching us on ‘Maestro at the Opera‘ — in total around 7.5 million watching us in various forms of broadcast in this country and around the world. That is one hell of an impact from an opera house in the middle of Covent Garden.”

In addition to the commercial aspect, Hall says the cinema screenings have transformed the way people view opera, “The other thing that people love is that you go back stage, you learn a little bit about the artist you are going to see, you learn a little bit more about the characters, you learn something about the background to the piece, and all these things add, I think, to the enjoyment that I see when I go to watch what we are doing in the cinema.”

ROH Music Director Antonio Pappano says the cinema offers something the theatre does not: “It offers you the close-up and it offers you a complexity of experience that is quite wonderful and I think it is very rich and very, very compelling.”

Royal Ballet Principal Edward Watson says the cinema provides a more animated audience experience: “In the theatre people are quieter, in the cinema they are laughing and chatting and they can talk to the person next to them.”

ROH Director Holten notes that close-ups show the extremes of performance: “When a singer sings a high C it is not beautiful, it is extreme. I love that because it reminds me about how opera is an extreme art form that gives us a language to talk about all the extreme things of life, love death, fear, jealousy.”

Royal Ballet Principal Federico Bonelli agrees: “It is almost as if you were sitting high up in the ‘gods’ and in the stalls at the same time, so you can see both perspectives. You can see the whole company altogether in the ensemble scenes and then you are really close up in the ‘Pas de Deux’. It is the best seat in the house.”

Sam Andrews contributed to this story, which appeared in Cue Entertainment Read more about Royal Opera House Cinema

By Ray Bennett

In 1982, Gregory Peck achieved a lifetime ambition to portray his idol Abraham Lincoln onscreen. It was a cameo appearance in the CBS miniseries “The Blue and the Gray”, which became the subject of a special issue in TV Guide Canada. I traveled from Toronto to Southern California to interview director Andrew V. McLaglen and members of the cast such as Stacy Keach, John Hammond and, of course, Peck.

In our lengthy interview at Peck’s lovely home in the Holmby Hills in L.A., he spoke at length – unhesitating and in great detail with no resort to a book or notes – about Lincoln and his admiration for the man . I asked him if TV Guide Canada could run his comments under his name, to which he agreed. He later sent me a note of thanks for giving him his first byline. With the UK release this weekend of Steven Spielberg’s wonderful “Lincoln” starring Daniel Day Lewis, I thought I would revisit what Peck had to say. This is what he told me: ©

I have admired Abraham Lincoln since I was a boy. I learned the Gettysburg Address when I was 12, and recited it in school. I first read Carl Sandburg’s “Lincoln” in university, at Berkeley, and I was totally absorbed by it.

Over the years, I’ve accumulated something like 200 books about Lincoln. That doesn’t make me a top-of-the-line collector of Lincolniana; I’m somewhere in the middle. But often, when I have a moment at any time of the day or night, I’ll reach for one of my Lincoln books, open it anywhere and have a visit with him. He is my ideal.

I have always wanted to play him, but until now nobody asked me. There haven’t been very many plays or films about him in recent years. I can’t think of one that amounted to anything in the 40-odd years since Raymond Massey did “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” and Henry Fonda did “Young Mr. Lincoln.”

He’s a difficult subject to dramatize because he’s a secular saint. You can’t praise him any more than he’s been praised; you can’t heap any more adulation on him. Nothing is more boring than a play that simply rediscovers that a man is good. You have to find a bone of contention, a source of conflict, and with Lincoln that’s not easy to do.

It seemed that I would never have the chance to play him until “The Blue and the Gray” came along. It was for television, which I had never done before, and it was a cameo appearance, not a lead. But it was a good script. I went over Lincoln’s five scenes a few times, and I thought: This would be nice to do; at least once in my life I’ll be on film somewhere as Lincoln.

It was exciting for me to try to give a decent representation of a man I revere, and to put 50 years of research to work. Naturally, I would have liked it if the whole thing had been about him – eight hours of Lincoln would be just fine with me – but it wasn’t to be, and there’s nothing wrong with a good cameo role.

I didn’t commit myself until we had done a couple of makeup tests. I knew that I would have to wear a false nose and pieces of latex on my cheeks to give my face the Lincoln furrows; the beard, of course, and contact lenses to change my hazel-brown eyes to Lincoln’s blue-grey.

All of those things had to be perfect in my mind; otherwise, I felt I just shouldn’t do it. I wanted the whole thing to be as perfect as we could have it, because that was really the point of my doing it. It wasn’t just a job; it was a chance to play Lincoln, if only for a few scenes.

The drama in “The Blue and the Gray” has to do with other characters, but Lincoln is woven in naturally because he knows these people. I think that what we do with him that might be a little fresh and new is to show his humorous side. It’s the traditional Lincoln, but there’s more warmth and humour than you may have seen before.

Most people seem to think Lincoln was rather dour and glum, and his appearance certainly gives that impression, but the man was full of humour. He liked nothing better than a good old story-telling session; telling jokes and yarns about his rustic days on the frontier and his experiences as a young lawyer on the Illinois circuit.

We have our serious moments, too. He delivers the Gettysburg Address and grapples with the Emancipation Proclamation; and, of course, he’s killed in the end. It’s not all quips and jokes, but we do show the human, lighter side of the man. We may cause people to think, hey, he was a pretty lively fellow; he must have been good company.

Delivering the Gettysburg Address was hard work for me. Just to get back to a state of innocence about it was the difficult thing. Because I knew it so well, it was hard to put myself in the position of a man who was saying it in public for the first time; perhaps even saying it aloud for the first time.

Lincoln worked on the address for a couple of weeks before he went to Gettysburg. It’s a myth that he scribbled it on the back of an envelope on the train. He had worked on it several times at the White House, knowing he had that engagement. In fact, he went to Gettysburg that day, Nov. 19, 1863, with a purpose in mind: not merely to dedicate the cemetery where men from the terrible battle of the previous July were buried, but to restate for the North and for the South what the war was all about.

The issue was not slavery, although morally Lincoln was against it. He often said that if he could preserve the Union all-free, he’d preserve it; if he could preserve it all-slave, he’d preserve it; if he could preserve it half-free and half-slave, he’d preserve it. Preserving the Union was the primary objective of his administration, and of his life.

So the speech at Gettysburg was important in that sense, in addition to being a tribute to the men who had died there. It was well thought out, but Lincoln had not delivered it aloud. For me to speak it out of the mind and the heart, as it were, was hard work.

I had to go over it hundreds of times to find the meanings fresh, and to get out of my head the rhythms of something I had learned by rote more than 50 years ago. Once in a while now I have a crack at it, in the shower, or just walking in the garden, and I think of something entirely fresh and new, and I think, “Oh, God, I didn’t do that. It’s on film, and I didn’t do it that way!”

Still, acting has always been play to me. I’ve always felt damned lucky to be paid for what I would do for nothing if I had another means of livelihood. If you’re playing Abe Lincoln, you certainly feel inadequate to it. You feel that no matter how deep you dig into your psyche, you cannot find the moral strength or the vision of this man.

You could torment yourself about it, but after all, it’s still play-acting. I feel lucky to have had the opportunity. It’s not a major thing. It’s not a tremendous performance. It’s not King Lear. It’s a cameo of Lincoln, and I hope it reflects something of what I feel about him.

The Civil War was the most critical event in U.S. history, and the most tragic. The casualties of 618,000 equalled the number of casualties in all of our other wars including the Revolutionary War, up to the time of Vietnam. It was a horrific slaughter of young men at a time when the total U.S. population was 34 million.

It was a terrible sacrifice, and Lincoln bore the responsibility for it. We’ll never know, but in my mind, it was Lincoln – with his intuition, his talent, his logic, his character and his vision – who took on the full responsibility for that conflict, because he was able to see ahead that if he did not, if someone did not, then the United States might split into two or four or six countries. We might have had the equivalent of the Balkan states on this continent.

Abraham Lincoln is the American hero. He is what we think we are, or would like to be, in terms of character, shrewdness, intelligence, compassion and humour. He is the greatest American of all time. ©

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Samuel Becket’s ‘Waiting for Godot’

Broadway is in for a treat this fall as Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are scheduled to repeat their West End and worldwide success in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”.

The pair also will perform together in Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” with both plays, to run in repertory, directed by Sean Mathias, who worked with the actors on “Waiting for Godot” during its 2009 West End run.

The two productions are scheduled to open in the autumn but no details on the venue were disclosed. Here is my review from their London run.

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – So much portentous meaning has been read into Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” that it’s pleasure to be reminded by Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart what an entertaining show it is.

The two “X-Men” adversaries are sublime stage actors and they are simply wonderful in Sean Mathias’ new production of “Godot” at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket, where their Hollywood star power has helped bring in a record box office advance of £2.4 million.

McKellen is Estragon, or Gogo, and Stewart is Vladimir, or Didi, in the tale of two aged ragamuffins who fill their idle days with conversation that ranges from oblique philosophy to music hall banter.

The play’s puzzles and profundity do not require the pigeonholes of religion, homosexuality or existential despair to which it has been consigned since it was first performed in English in 1955. Beckett wrote it in French, doing his own translation for the play that debuted in New York in 1956.

Ian McKellen, Ronald Pickup, Patrick Stewart, Simon Callow in ‘Waiting for Godot’

The two principles spend their time in a wasteland of rubble beside a crumbling brick wall and a dying willow tree waiting for the arrival of a savior who never comes named Godot, which they pronounce “God-o” with the emphasis on the first syllable.

Beckett said he did not mean Godot to represent God but it smacks of his typical sense of mischief that he would use that name. He states clearly the characters’ central dilemma: “What are we doing here? That is the question.”

The pessimistic Gogo concludes there is “Nothing to be done” while the slightly more sanguine Didi believes that answers will come along if they just “wait for Godot.”

McKellen plays Gogo as a doleful English northerner who laments that “We all are born mad, some remain so,” while Stewart gives the ailing Didi a jaunty optimism: “Habit is a great deadener.”

Together they make a terrific double act in the manner of Laurel & Hardy, as Beckett intended. Simon Callow is a colorful Pozzo, the pitiless entrepreneur who keeps his slave Lucky (Ronald Pickup) at the end of a rope.

The cast makes the most of the play’s wide-ranging musings on the fate of mankind and while Beckett offers plenty of fuel for the imagination, it’s also true that thanks to the splendid performers the audience leaves with a smile.

Waiting for Godot – Venue: Theatre Royal Haymarket, London (through July 28, 2009); Cast: Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Simon Callow, Ronald; Pickup, Tom Barker; Playwright: Samuel Beckett; Director: Sean Mathias; Set designer: Stephen Brimson Lewis; Lighting designer: Paul Pyant; Sound designer: Paul Groothius

PHOTOS: Sasha Gusov

By Ray Bennett

Kathryn Bigelow’s taut and exciting “Zero Dark Thirty” tells how a single-minded CIA officer drove the decade-long hunt for Osama Bin Laden and does not stop for politics or personal lives. Unlike Ben Affleck’s CIA film “Argo”, it does not cater to the audience with anything crowd-pleasing, it simply tells the gripping and thoroughly scary story of how a super-power goes about the elimination of its declared No. 1 enemy.

Jessica Chastain is terrific as agent Maya, who is propelled into the hunt for the Al Qaeda leader following the events known as 9/11 and becomes convinced that only she has the will to sort through a maze of intelligence to find her target. Writer Mark Boal, who won Academy Awards for original screenplay and as a producer of fellow double Oscar-winner winner Bigelow’s 2008 picture “The Hurt Locker”, has turned his in-depth reporting into a story remarkable for its cool detachment.

There is only one point of view, and that is Maya’s. If she captures and kills Bin Laden, that can only be a good thing. She watches coolly as the victims of extreme rendition are tortured extensively by another CIA agent, Dan (Jason Clarke), who goes blithely from his cruel work to have a jocular cigarette outside, then gets back to work.

Maya must follow endless leads over many years with sources good, bad and irresponsible and suffer condescending, rude and unhelpful superior officers as she follows her own instincts. As time passes, there are more horrible bombings in Saudi Arabia, London and Karachi, and one that takes out unwary CIA agents.

Maya perseveres and the film follows her as permission is given at last for the well-known stealth raid by a squad of Navy SEALS on Bin Laden’s hideaway in Pakistan.

There is a sense of dread throughout as the film depicts the shadowy and fearful paths Maya must take on her slow but dedicated path. The climax, filmed at length, is harrowing in the extreme because the likable and thoroughly professional men on the raid are equipped with an astonishing array of weaponry and approach their duty, with good reason, as if they will fly into the teeth of hell.

There’s no suggestion in the film that torture leads directly to the information Maya needs, Bigelow and Boal show simply that it took place. They also show that torturer Dan later is promoted to a desk job in Washington and presumably on track for promotion. They leave to the imagination what sensibility he might bring to future decision-making.

Maya is depicted as a workaholic loner with no home life who finds it difficult even to warm up to another dedicated but friendly operative played by the always excellent Jennifer Ehle. The film shows the toll that her singular quest takes on Maya and Chastain leaves no doubt that the agent is so fixated that when the deed is done, she is left bereft and without direction.

The cast of men play a resolute mix of those who salute and those who are saluted and Edgar Ramirez (“Carlos”) stands out as an agent prepared to back Maya’s gambles. Cinematography and production design keep the film rooted in plausible documentary mode and composer Alexander Desplat adds the right ethnic touches to his score.

The true merit of the film is in the way that writer and director create and sustain incredible suspense for a story in which everyone knows the outcome. They do that by staying fixed on the view that Bin Laden is a dangerous monster surrounded by fanatics and for even skilled and well-armed warriors, the raid would be a nightmare. As we know, they ended up killing an old man and some family members, which the film’s cold eye observes without comment.

Opens: UK: Jan. 25, Universal Pictures International / US Dec. 19, Sony Pictures; Cast: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler, Edgar Ramirez, James Gandolfini, Chris Pratt, Joel Edgerton, Reda Kateb; Director: Kathryn Bigelow; Screenwriter: Mark Boal; Producers: Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Megan Ellison; Director of photography: Greig Fraser; Production designer: Jeremy Hindle; Music: Alexander Desplat; Costumes: George L. Little; Editors: William Goldenberg, Dylan Tichenor; Executive producers: Colin Wilson, Greg Shapiro, Ted Schipper; Production: Mark Boal, First Light, Annapurna Pictures; Rating: UK 15 / US R; 157 minutes.