Michael Gambon has not achieved the international celebrity status of such late London acting knights as Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Alec Guinness. The films in which he has appeared (“Sleepy Hollow,” “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover”) have not been big at the U.S. box office, and his television appearances here have been relatively rare.
But on the London stage, where he is known as “The Great Gambon,” he is absolutely one of the masters of the moment. Over the past few years, he has appeared with great acclaim in everything from Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” to Ben Jonson’s “Volpone,” and a Gambon appearance in any London season makes it a special one.
His most recent work was a revival of Harold Pinter’s 1964 masterpiece, “The Caretaker,” in which he appeared as the ragged, mysterious tramp who unsettles the lives of two strange brothers who inhabit a junk-littered London attic. Directed by Patrick Marber, himself a playwright (“Closer”), in a naturalistic style that does not play up to the famous Pinter pauses in the dialogue, the production at the Comedy Theatre was an instant critical and popular success.
Gambon is a big, burly man, not at all the small, skittering type that is often identified with the role of the tramp Davies. He lumbers onto the stage like an ambulatory garbage dump, scratching his crotch, poking his nose into every corner and pointing his long, spidery fingers into the air as he tests the atmosphere.
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It’s a performance full of actor’s tricks, many of them comic, whether he’s gingerly trying on a new pair of shoes or sinking like a dead weight onto the bed he has been offered for the night.
For all his calculated effects, however, Gambon knows when to be still on the stage. When Rupert Graves and Douglas Hodge, as the brothers with whom he plays sinister power games, launch into the mesmerizing monologues Pinter has written for them, Gambon sits back and lets these two fine actors take the stage with their own bright talents.
Now closed, the production may come to New York next season — with, one hopes, the entire three-man cast intact.
Already scheduled for New York this spring is the performance of another, quite different star, Macaulay Culkin, in “Madame Melville,” in which he has been playing in London.
Written and directed by Richard Nelson (“Goodnight Children Everywhere”), the 90-minute play concerns a sensitive 15-year-old American boy in Paris who has a brief, intense affair with a sympathetic female teacher.
Culkin is 20, but he easily passes for 15, and, in voice and appearance, he still appears eerily like the little boy he portrayed most famously in the film “Home Alone.” He can convey emotion on cue, as if he’s ready for his closeup, but he’s not a skilled stage actor. Irene Jacob, who plays the teacher with whom he beds down for one exciting night, is a gifted actress of the theater, however, and her totally sympathetic portrayal of the alluring, lonely woman is the chief reason for seeing “Madame Melville” in London. Unfortunately, she will not be making the trip to New York with the play.
An American star who has made a smashing impression in London theater is Jessica Lange, who is acting her heart out as the doomed, drug-addicted mother in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night” at the Lyric Theatre.
The production, directed by Robin Phillips, has a strong cast of male actors, including the American Paul Rudd as the older, dissolute son Jamie, and it has received generally good notices. But it is Lange, 51, who has captured the most attention for her portrayal of a fragile, beautiful woman gradually sinking into a drug-induced fog of memory.
She is a famous film star who has become a fine stage actor.