'Macready! Dickens’ Theatrical Friend’ is a one man show about the actor manager from the 1800s, written and performed by Mark Stratford. I saw it at the Grove Theatre, Eastbourne on 3rd May 2025.
It was both entertaining and fascinating, everything you could want from such a show. Mr Stratford displayed an intimate knowledge of his subject and an understanding of the period, he played alternative characters with a variety of accents, and he even solicited a number of spontaneous laughs. There was a warm round of applause at the end of the performance.
The only hitch was that on a couple of occasions the sound effects of an audience clapping and cheering competed with his voice so that I struggled to hear all the words. As my old drama teacher used to say: if the audience miss something you said they will assume it was critical to the plot even if it was only ‘pass the marmalade’.
It was a great evening. I was particularly interested in how Macready introduced development into the theatre. He learned his craft from his father and from Mrs Sarah Siddons; in the early part of his career he was the great rival of Edmund Kean and on an American tour there was such competition between him and Edwin Forrest that a riot broke out in Astor Place, New York, and up to 31 people died. Mr Stratford claimed that:
I have just read Booth by Karen Joy Fowler which is a novel about the family of John Wilkes Booth, the actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. His father, Junius Brutus Booth, was a leading actor who had also been a great rival of Edmund Kean before emigrating to America to become their foremost actor manager. JBB had been a tragedian of the old declamatory school but his son, Edwin, who specialised in Hamlet, is credited in the book as having started the change to ‘naturalistic’ acting.
It was both entertaining and fascinating, everything you could want from such a show. Mr Stratford displayed an intimate knowledge of his subject and an understanding of the period, he played alternative characters with a variety of accents, and he even solicited a number of spontaneous laughs. There was a warm round of applause at the end of the performance.
The only hitch was that on a couple of occasions the sound effects of an audience clapping and cheering competed with his voice so that I struggled to hear all the words. As my old drama teacher used to say: if the audience miss something you said they will assume it was critical to the plot even if it was only ‘pass the marmalade’.
It was a great evening. I was particularly interested in how Macready introduced development into the theatre. He learned his craft from his father and from Mrs Sarah Siddons; in the early part of his career he was the great rival of Edmund Kean and on an American tour there was such competition between him and Edwin Forrest that a riot broke out in Astor Place, New York, and up to 31 people died. Mr Stratford claimed that:
- It was Macready who initiated the break from the old hammy tradition of declaiming speeches while assuming attitudes to a more naturalistic style of acting and the Macready’s influenced led to Stanislawski’s method acting;
- He also insisted that his actors delivered their speeches to one another rather than to the audience;
- It was Macready who insisted on playing Shakespeare from the original text as opposed to the ‘improved’ versions written by Colly Cibber;
- It was Macready who insisted that his company, when rehearsing, did more than merely learn their lines but explored the characters, thus becoming the first modern director.
I have just read Booth by Karen Joy Fowler which is a novel about the family of John Wilkes Booth, the actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. His father, Junius Brutus Booth, was a leading actor who had also been a great rival of Edmund Kean before emigrating to America to become their foremost actor manager. JBB had been a tragedian of the old declamatory school but his son, Edwin, who specialised in Hamlet, is credited in the book as having started the change to ‘naturalistic’ acting.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening's entertainment. As we were leaving I heard other audience members using words such as 'fantastic'.
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