Posted by Bonnie at
12.00am
A script-in-hand performance of Christopher Hampton's adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' scandalous novel with a cast including Clare Higgins and Una Stubbs.
Premiered by the RSC in 1985 in The Other Place, it went on to be a hit in the West End and on Broadway. The play is a masterclass in novel adaptation: concise, dramatic, heart-rending, exuberant.
The performance was followed by an on-stage Q&A with Director Gérald Garutti, Christopher Hampton and West End producer Kim Poster, hosted by Company Dramaturg Jeanie O'Hare.
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Posted by Bonnie at
7.34am
The charity auction for Breakthrough Breast Cancer ends tomorrow evening at 7.30pm GMT. (Please note that individual auction items may end up to 15 minutes later than this due to eBay's unfortunate delays on scheduled listings.)
If you haven't already done so, please check out http://www.rachael-stirling.com/charity/ to see all of the items available for bidding: the gold phallus and harness from Tipping the Velvet, the name plate saying "Miss Nan King" from Nan's dressing room door, the original scripts (complete with handwritten notes) for all three episodes of Tipping the Velvet, a signed and personalised copy of the Tipping the Velvet DVD, various signed photos, and other items too… plus the opportunity to meet and have tea with Rachael Stirling herself at the Savoy Hotel in London.
If there is nothing you wish to bid on, then please consider making a donation at our donations page: http://www.justgiving.com/rachael-stirling/ — even if it's only £1. Every penny counts and it's all for a good cause.
Huge thanks from myself and Rachael.
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Posted by Bonnie at
12.00am
Tipping the Velvet star Rachael Stirling is using her notoriety to benefit the fight against breast cancer. Stirling has joined forces with website owner Bonnie Gough, and together, launched a charity auction to raise funds for the "Too Many Women" campaign for "Breakthrough Breast Cancer."
The actress has donated dozens of show props and memorabilia from her personal collection to the auction. Some items up for fans to bid on include an autographed photograph of Stirling, an afternoon tea date, or your very own gold-painted replica Victorian phallus and harness used as a prop in the 2002 BBC film Tipping the Velvet that was based on the Sarah Waters novel.
Bidders are also welcome to donate via the JustGiving fundraising page in lieu of bidding.
Stirling's goal is to raise £5,000 before 31st July 2011, but this particular auction come to a close Saturday, May 28 at 7:30 pm.
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Posted by Bonnie at
12.00am
"No one dared to query her superior exterior," it was said of Diana Rigg's character in the song that Stephen Sondheim wrote especially for her to sing in the London premiere of his classic musical Follies in 1987, and it's true.
Dame Diana has an air of superiority but she was also once accused of having an inferior posterior: when she appeared naked in a play on Broadway in 1971, the New York critic John Simon wrote of her that she was "built like a brick basilica with insufficient flying buttresses".
It's testament to her sense of grit and wit, however, that she turned this to her own advantage; it inspired her to compile and publish a collection of the worst theatrical reviews called No Turn Unstoned.
Meeting me in a modest basement dressing room at the West End's Garrick Theatre, where she is appearing in a new production of Shaw's Pygmalion, she tells me that she still can't resist asking other actors to tell her what their worst reviews are.
When she asked Simon Ward (who has had to withdraw from this production of Pygmalion due to illness) he told her that when he starred in a production of The Madness Of George III recently, someone described him as playing it "like a perplexed Ann Widdecombe". At this point I gulped inwardly as those were my own words, but she goes on: "The laughter is endless with bad notices and it's very cathartic."
It takes the sting out of bad reviews to be able to laugh about them so how does she feel about critics? "It's a BTDT: been there, done that. I mean, what else can they say about me? They have said just about everything, good, bad or indifferent so where else can you go, really?"
So is it an actor's natural resilience that has them coming back for more? "It's not the more I am coming back for, it's the people who buy tickets, the company I am doing it with and the play and because it is familiar to me. The theatre is home. I absolutely love it."
The theatre, and in particular Pygmalion, has long been a part of her life. She first starred in the play in 1974, when she played Eliza Doolittle. Now she is playing Mrs Higgins, the mother of the man who transforms Eliza from flower-seller to Duchess.
Yorkshire-born Rigg has also come a long way to become a Dame. What drew her back to the play? "Well, it's a lovely part for a woman of my age [she is 72] and also it subscribes to theatrical tradition; not that all Elizas become Mrs Higgins but my Mrs Higgins was Ellen Pollock, who played her too and actually played for George Bernard Shaw himself."
Returning to the play is like passing a torch but she's not protective over her former role, now being played by former EastEnders star and Strictly Come Dancing winner Kara Tointon. "I did it such a long time ago I can't remember a thing but it gives me huge delight to watch Kara getting her laughs. God, it's glorious."
While Diana may have been the Eliza of her generation, she says: "Each generation has the right to redefine a role and must, according to their time. That's what keeps the theatre alive."
Dame Diana, whose career has included creating roles in the premieres of two plays by Tom Stoppard, says that by doing new plays, actors don't have "that horrible spectre of other people's performances to worry about". A few years ago, her actress daughter Rachael Stirling had to compete with the memory of one of her mother's performances when she did a stage version of Theatre of Blood. Diana had played the same role in the film version. "I don't know why they turned it into a play," she says.
She speaks fondly of her daughter's acting achievements. Rachael was nominated for an Olivier Award this year for her West End appearance as Lady Chiltern in An Ideal Husband. "It's usually a part that is dreary beyond belief but she brought this wonderful heart and warmth to it. I was so proud of her."
Was it inevitable that Rachael would follow in her mother's footsteps? "She says so and she should know but she did go to university and get a degree, which her dad and I more or less made a requirement."
Diana missed out on that herself, until she spent 10 years as Chancellor of the University of Stirling. "I work on the principle that a little gets rubbed off if you move among academics. my joy in life is to keep learning."
Life has taught her many lessons. In the late Sixties, she became a major sex symbol for her starring role as Emma Peel in TV's The Avengers. Given how much she's achieved since, does it annoy her that it's still mentioned? "Not at all. When I first left it I did get tetchy, and justifiably so, because I was being forced back into that box and I hate being categorised but in later years one relaxes a bit more and I'm deeply grateful to The Avengers."
She is also proud of the character's sense of independence: "She was a woman who could shift for herself." That's what Dame Diana has always done and is still doing today.
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Posted by Bonnie at
12.00am
Love "Tipping the Velvet"? Now is your chance to win some swag from the series.
Actor Rachael Stirling and website creator Bonnie Gough are launching a charity auction to raise money for the Too Many Women campaign for Breakthrough Breast Cancer. Fans will remember Rachel Stirling as Nancy Astley in the BBC series Tipping the Velvet adapted from the famous novel by Sarah Waters.
The auction is your chance to get your hands on some TV props, memorabilia, DVDs and signed photos from Tipping the Velvet and Lip Service, as well as the opportunity to have high tea in London with Rachael Stirling herself. The auction will run from this Wednesday, May 18, 2011 until Saturday May 28, 2011.
The pieces to be auctioned off are memorable props from the series, including the gold painted phallus which the character Nan wears in the second episode, when she is spray-painted with gold paint for Lady Diana Lethaby's pleasure at a party. The other is the "Nan King" nameplate from Stirling's dressing room door. To see the full catalog of available items and to hear more about the project, visit rachael-stirling.com/charity.
The aim is to raise £5,000 ($8,809) before July 31, 2011, so the race is on!
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