At age twelve, Jeremy Brett had bicycled to the Cameo Cinema in Balsall Common to see Laurence Olivier's Henry V. He was so impressed by the film that he decided to become an actor. At last, Jeremy was working with Olivier, the man who had inspired him so many years before. Jeremy appeared in Saint Joan and The Workhouse Donkey during Chichester's second season. He recalled that one day, during rehearsals of Saint Joan, Laurence Olivier shouted to him, "I want your trumpet!"
Jeremy meekly replied, "I don't think I've got a trumpet."
Olivier ordered, "Get a trumpet--I expect every actor to have a full orchestra!"
Olivier was gathering a stable of actors for the National's first season. He recruited stars (including Michael Redgrave, Tom Courtenay, and Maggie Smith) and future stars (such as Derek Jacobi, Robert Stephens, and Lynn Redgrave). Jeremy Brett neatly fit into the latter category and almost joined his contemporaries under the National banner. However, there was a lady waiting for him in Hollywood--My Fair Lady, that is.
Lord Olivier was not amused when Jeremy announced that he was going off to play "Eliza Doolittle's" smitten suitor, "Freddie Eynsford-Hill," in the big budget film version of the Broadway smash. Olivier did his best to talk Jeremy into staying.
"Why do you want to go to Hollywood?" Olivier demanded.
Jeremy thought a moment, and replied, "Money." Also, he wanted to see America's west coast.
Olivier offered Jeremy the supporting roles of "Cassio" in "Othello" and "Laertes" in Hamlet. But, Jeremy had recently played Hamlet himself, so these parts must have seemed like a step backwards to him.
Olivier's arguments were so unconvincing that even his wife, Joan Plowright, said, "Darling, you've sold this to Jeremy so badly that if Eliza Doolittle had a sister, I'd go with him."
Olivier conceded, but he was by no means the loser. Jeremy was contracted to the National, so Warner Brothers, the studio producing My Fair Lady, had to "buy" him away so he could act in the film. Olivier was reportedly given approximately $10,000, which he used to pay off some of the debts from the National's unsteady infancy.
Jeremy recalled that Lord Olivier got down on his knees in the lobby of the Chichester Theatre to thank him. However, Jeremy added that he subsequently learned that Olivier's extravagant gesture of thanks was merely an act: "I found out later that he was very angry with me for not taking my responsibility to the repertory company seriously enough. I was a bit flibberty-gibberty then."
Jeremy jetted off to play Freddie, the young man who wistfully strolled and sang on the street where Audrey Hepburn's Eliza lived. However, he found the street was a dead-end as far as other acting roles for were concerned. Jeremy had to wait in Hollywood for months to play his scenes as Freddie, and had to turn down "interesting" offers in other productions while he waited.
The Deputy opened on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on February 26, 1964. It was an extremely controversial work. Set during World War II, The Deputy charged that Pope Pius XII knew about the Nazi's slaughter of innocent Jews, but didn't speak out against it.
The Broadway version of The Deputy was condensed by Jerome Rothenberg from Hochhuth's original play, which was five acts long and would have taken nearly eight hours to perform. (Another condensed production of the play titled The Representative ran in London in 1963, with Alec McCowen as Father Fontana.)
The Fireside Companion to the Theatre commented, "The Broadway mounting [of The Deputy] of 1964 may have discouraged the public from reading the script, for the universally denounced production was an inadequate staging of a butchered text, 'bare, crude, and shockingly listless in places,' as Alfred Kazin, saw it, 'Much of it is an anti-Nazi movie of the John Garfield period.'"
However, Howard Taubman, reviewing the play the day after it opened, said, "As a play, The Deputy is flawed. As a polemic, it is fierce and compelling. Since it wrestles with one of the most important moral issues of our time, it deserves to be seen, debated and taken to heart."
Jeremy's Father Fontana is an Italian Jesuit priest who learns of the Nazi's atrocities while serving in Berlin. At the Vatican, he urges Pope Pius to "...[proclaim] before the world a curse upon the man who slaughters Jews like cattle." When he is unable to convince the pontiff to break his silence, Father Fontana pins on a yellow star and returns to Germany. He is consigned with the Jews to Auschwitz.
Taubman noted, "Jeremy Brett brings fire and dedication to the role of Father Fontana."
In conclusion, Taubman wrote, "Now that The Deputy, which has stirred Europe for the past year, is here, the debate, already begun, will be intensified. Our theater rarely touches on moral issues of this magnitude. For this is a play about choice. Every man, no less than the Pope, must make choices, and the avoidance of choosing is an act of choice itself. The Deputy poses a universal problem in a sensational way."
The drama taking place outside the Brooks Atkinson on opening night was no less sensational. Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic laymen (as well as a group of neo-Nazis) picketed the theatre, chanting protest slogans so loudly they could be heard inside. Police blocked off traffic around the theatre for 20 minutes before the curtain rose. Jeremy said The Deputy cast had to show ID badges to be allowed past the police barricades. For safety's sake, the owner of the theatre asked the audience not to go outside during the play's intermission.
Despite the tension, no violence erupted, and the protesters left before
the play ended. (Thereafter, the theatre was searched daily for bombs as a
precaution.) In keeping with the The Deputy's serious tone, the cast
did not take the customary bows at the play's end.
However, even amidst the gravity of The Deputy, there was a streak of
Brettish mischief. In the opening scene of the play, Father Fontana is brought a
tray of food to eat. During rehearsals, Jeremy thought the Father should be
shown eating the food. But, the play's director, Herman Shumlin, decided Jeremy
shouldn't eat anything during the scene. To enforce his decision, Shumlin glued dog
biscuits to the tray on opening night. But, Jeremy simply pried off the
biscuits and ate them on stage! (He suffered no ill effects.)
Which is not to suggest that Jeremy didn't take his role seriously. In fact,
portraying Father Fontana took a serious toll on his life. Jeremy told reporter
William Glover in 1964 that had he trouble sleeping and had lost 14 pounds since
the play began. "Each performance is a personal experience," the actor
explained. "I'm in a state of total absorption. There are moments when I
get almost hysterical....A good many people have told me to be objective. Well,
try and do it."
Jeremy was greatly disturbed by the atrocities described in the play
("...perhaps the ghost of Auschwitz has appeared to me a little"), but
acknowledged that the subject needed to be dealt with: "I'm a rather
idealistic person who would rather not believe that human nature could sink so
low. I was most vulnerable to what the play recalls, and I can't get used to it.
At the same time, even though it may hurt like hell and be hard to do, if the
theater is to survive such topics must be aired."
Even so, Jeremy
also realized that The Deputy wasn't the last word on the subject. He
told Glover: "In the scene each night with the Pope, I sometimes feel as if
the roof of the theater was crashing in. I wish Pius was alive to speak for
himself. You can't blame one person for those things that happened just
yesterday almost. I only get frightened when I see 18 year-olds in the audience.
I just hope that they don't think that the play's viewpoint is the only one that
should be heard."
Still, Jeremy felt that if The Deputy reminded people about the
destructive power of hate, it could help stop such atrocities from occurring
again.
Unfortunately, some people didn't get the message. Jeremy claimed that he'd received threatening letters and phone calls while appearing in the play. He even faced physical danger:
"One day, I was walking along a street when a man came up and asked me if I was Jeremy Brett. Well, you're always glad to meet a fan, so I reached over to take his outstretched hand. Instead of a shake, however, he pulled me past him at the curb. It was unexpected, and I went sprawling in front of a car that stopped just in time."
The Deputy provoked strong emotions and sparked critical and theological debates around the world. In spite of the controversy (or perhaps because of it), The Deputy ran on Broadway for 316 performances. Jeremy left the play in May 1964 to return to England. (David Carradine took over the role of Father Fontana; the play closed on Broadway on November 28, 1964.)
Jeremy co-starred with Wendy Hiller as "Gilbert" in A Measure of Cruelty. The plot concerned a wealthy older woman who "buys" a young man's affections. The London Times noted, "Mr. Jeremy Brett especially puts a stylish gloss on the bought young man and his consequent marriage of hatred."
Jeremy then appeared opposite Ingrid Bergman in Turgenev's A Month in the Country. When the play arrived at London's Cambridge Theatre from the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guilford, Jeremy stepped into the role of "Beliaev," which had been played out-of-town by Daniel Massey, his former brother-in-law. Beliaev is a handsome tutor who comes between aristocratic "Natalia" (played by Ms. Bergman) and "Vera," her young ward. John Higgins, in The Financial Times, wrote glowingly of Jeremy's performance:
"But perhaps most impressive of the newcomers is Jeremy Brett as Beliaev. In a production notable for the way in which each of the actors slides into his role like a hand slipping into a well-fitting glove, Mr. Brett is still outstanding. His tutor is still basically a student, even a peasant, as the muzhik costume suggests; yet he, like Vera, becomes aware of his sexuality for the first time, his power to move others when they want to stand still. Here is Beliaev, gauche and shy, yet with the quick smile of those who are charming by nature rather than by adoption, and here was the perfect leave-taking--sad, surprised, yet totally courteous."
A reviewer in the Chicago Tribune also noted, "There's no mistaking the potent charm of Jeremy Brett as the young tutor whose shy smile blows the roof off a dull country house."
From the plains of Russia to Surrey: Jeremy's next stage role was "Ronnie," the eldest son in Any Just Cause, a domestic drama penned by George Pensotti, a prolific writer, director, teacher, and actor (among his many stage roles was a turn as Freddie Eynsford-Hill in a 1960 production of Pygmalion!) Phyllis Calvert played the mother, "Alice," in Any Just Cause and The London Times reviewer observed, "As her elder son, Ronnie, Jeremy Brett achieves an outstanding piece of characterization as he changes from a dull provincial drifter into a suburban miser."
In 1966, when his friend Robert Stephens was putting in twelve-and-a-half hour days at the National rehearsing three plays at once, Jeremy told a Plays and Players interviewer, "This is partly because the [National] Company is still in the process of formation and one actor very often has to do the work of three. It's all right, I suppose, being worked very hard, provided you can have six weeks holiday a year...I think one needs an awareness of life beyond the theatre, even if one doesn't have time to lead it. That's where doing films comes in useful--it gives one a chance to see places that one wouldn't get to otherwise."
But, Jeremy no doubt noticed that the hard work of Stephens, Albert Finney, Derek Jacobi, and other National stars was being rewarded with plaudits and prestige.
So, in 1967, the prodigal actor finally made his long-delayed debut with the National Theatre.
In a 1973 London Times article, Jeremy explained that after he'd refused the initial offer to join the company in 1963, he feared, "'They'll never employ me again.'
"'Then, one night in 1967, I was invited to see the dress rehearsal of Joan Plowright taking over for Maggie Smith in Much Ado [About Nothing]. It was only then I realized that there's a certain amount of gamesmanship. You have to take the opportunities as they come."
In the same 1973 article, he revealed how he came to play the part of "Orlando" in Shakespeare's As You Like It:
"'I knew the part of Orlando hadn't been cast yet...I remember standing in front of my mirror and I just took the scissors and cut a fringe [bangs]. I thought, 'That's more Orlando'...I was in Joan [Plowright's] dressing- room, and Larry [Olivier] suddenly said, 'Aaahhr. Come with me.' And he took me across to his dressing-room and said, 'Will you play Orlando for me?' I leapt at him and practically knocked him over with a bear hug.'"
The National's production of As You Like It was as almost as controversial as The Deputy, although for a very different reason: all the women in the play were portrayed by men.
And, the men weren't entirely happy about this "gender-bending." In his biography of Anthony Hopkins (the play's "Audrey"), Michael F. Callan writes: "Hopkins had never been comfortable in his casting of Audrey, the male depiction of Shakespeare's 'poor virgin' wooed by Touchstone. Indeed, few among the company were...None of the four 'female impersonators' [which, in addition to Hopkins, included Ronald Pickup as Rosalind, Charles Kay as Celia, and Richard Kay as Phoebe] were exactly ecstatic about the production, though Pickup faced it as 'a unique challenge which I decided to approach in a low-key and androgynous way.'"
The original director of the play, John Dexter, took his inspiration for this daring version of As You Like It from an essay called "Bitter Arcadia" by Polish critic and poet Jan Kott, who noted the seeming interchangibility of the men and the women in the play. Dexter later had a falling out with Laurence Olivier and was replaced by Clifford Williams, who set the play in a fabulously "mod" Forest of Arden, causing the cast to nickname the production "Freddie and the Freakouts."
At first, there was great confusion over how the "women" were to be played. The first rehearsal was disastrous. Lord Olivier showed up for the next rehearsal. Callan quotes Pickup: "He [Olivier] came in splashing his usual energy all over the place and galvanizing everyone. He wasn't happy with what I was doing. Larry himself always wanted to play drag, and that's what he wanted from us: high-camp elements. During the interval he came to me and said, 'Here, give me that lipstick, let's draw a real mouth on you! Give me those eyelashes...!' He made me look like an absolute tart, but it was his way of saying: Give us more, more, more."
Hopkins had his own ideas about Audrey. He wore a simple canvas gown that basically made him look...well, like a man wearing a simple canvas gown. Callan writes: "Clifford Williams, keen for camp but keener to keep this dodgy production on the rails, enthused, 'That's it, Tony. Perfect. You have it. That's exactly what I want. Moo-cowish.'"
Although he was very much a male in the play, Jeremy had anxieties of his own. At 34, he realized he was a might "old" to be playing juveniles such as Orlando. Then, he had a revelation about himself and his career:
"'I suddenly accepted myself one night. I discovered I was an actor and not just a Black Country boy who'd come up to town. I was a very old twenty [when I started] and a very insecure one. I felt like mutton dressed up as lamb until then, truly. I'd heard about matinee idols and Ainley and Du Maurier and Anton Walbrook.'
"'And suddenly it dawned on me, playing Orlando when I was deep in my thirties, that juvenile parts were character parts. I thought, 'I'll accept that I've got something to offer and I'll try to put the right price on my own head.' Before that, I tried too hard, and that meant I wasn't sure. I felt inadequate--I used to say to myself, 'I fooled them.''"
Not surprisingly, this As You Like It opened to extremely mixed reviews. However, Irving Wardle of The London Times enjoyed the interaction between Pickup's Rosalind and Jeremy's Orlando: "Mr. Pickup's Rosalind, a beaky long-legged figure in a yachting suit, does conform to Kott's specification of the boy-girl--except that it is completely non-erotic. It begins demurely with a few well observed feminine gestures, and takes on character only during the Gangmede scenes. It is a blank that comes to life under the stress of intense platonic feeling; and there is real excitement in seeing this Rosalind and Jeremy Brett's very masculine Orlando being taking unawares by serious emotion in the midst of their game."
Jeremy said that As You Like It "was a joy to do" and after that, he was "allowed to go on and develop."
Although the NT's list of Jeremy's performances inexplicably omits the role, and his name doesn't appear in their cast list for the show, Jeremy also portrayed "Claudio" in Much Ado About Nothing with the National Theatre in 1967. He is shown below with Sheila Reid as "Hero".
Directed
by Franco Zefferelli (who also designed the scenery), Much Ado began
its NT run in 1965 with Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith starring as "Benedick"
and "Beatrice." (Joan Plowright later took over the role of Beatrice;
strangely, this role isn't included in her list of NT performances,
either). Ian McKellen was originally cast as Claudio. (McKellen later said, "I think
[Jeremy Brett] replaced me
briefly as Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing.")
The play's programme notes that Shakespeare wrote 13 plays set in Italy,
including Much Ado: "...the setting is hot-blooded Sicily; Beatrice
is the niece, and Hero the daughter, of the Governor of Messina. By contrast,
Benedick and Claudio are Northerners, the former a Paduan and the latter a
Florentine."
According to Gradesaver.com, "Much Ado About Nothing conflates two separate stories into one plot: the baiting of Benedick and Beatrice into a declaration of love and the deception of Claudio into mistakenly thinking that Hero is unchaste."
JB appeared late in the play's run while he was also acting in As You Like It and Tartuffe. Much Ado About Nothing left the NT repertory on December 1, 1967.
Jeremy admitted that he "had to play my small parts" at the National. So, he appeared as "Valere" (pictured below) in Tyrone Guthrie's production of Tartuffe (with Robert Stephens in the title role and Sir John Gielgud as "Orgon"). Valere's fianceé, Mariane (Louise Purnell) is saved from a forced marriage to Tartuffe, the fiendish fraud. Martin Esslin raved about the National Theatre's "splendid" production in his review in Plays and Players, and noted that "Jeremy Brett and Louise Purnell turn the usually insipid lovers into delightfully observed comic portraits."
Then, in Brecht's Edward II,
Jeremy portrayed "Kent," the "small, weak, brother." Apparently,
Jeremy went a bit overboard trying to "become" Kent. He affected a
limp, a stutter, glasses and a sway. Laurence Olivier noticed this collection of
tics and asked him during a rehearsal, "Don't you think we could do with
just two?"
Then, it was back to Shakespearean
comedy for Jeremy as he portrayed "Berowne" in Love's
Labour's Lost. This was a sumptuous production, described by Mr. Wardle
of the Times as "a tapestry world of charming phantoms." Wardle saw a
lot of "schtick" going on--funny walks, funny voices--but he added, "Still,
the measured intelligence of the delivery gives the text a far better chance
than it usually gets; and the big comic scenes go with a great flourish,
especially when led by Jeremy Brett's Berowne."
Helen Dawson of Plays and Players raved, "Jeremy Brett (an actor whose talents have really blossomed at the National...) is quite splendid as Berowne. He brings to the part the almost mocking strength of the student court's most mature member, and delighted surprise at the depth of his love...Rosaline and Berowne, Joan Plowright and Jeremy Brett, are made for each other and, hopefully, it's a partnership which will be seen again soon."
Jeremy later told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter that he nearly didn't get to be Berowne because Lord Olivier, who directed the play, had never portrayed Berowne himself, and suddenly the part looked awfully good to him!
"As we began work, I could hardly get the script out of his hands," Jeremy remembered.
The young actor panicked when he learned Olivier had been reading an essay about the play which pointed out that Berowne was the first of Shakespeare's "big human beings."
"For two weeks, I could hardly get on the stage. I think if the truth were out, if Olivier could have broken my leg or had an excuse to get rid of me, he would have. Instead, Olivier gave me the most brilliant notes on the part."
(Of course, these notes to Jeremy included Olivier's famous acting "dos" and "don'ts," such as: Do "blaze, be frank and think, think, think;" Don't "be ingratiating, earnest or polite.")
Jeremy added, "After the play opened, Olivier said, 'Joanie [Joan Plowright] and I have decided that you've done it. How?' (A touch of acid, that!)"
Jeremy answered Olivier, "Because you !@%*&! well challenged me to within an inch of my life!"
Jeremy concluded, "Then, [Olivier] exploded. He went 'Hkloupp!' And he picked me up--and I'm not light.'"
Jeremy would repeat the role of Berowne in a 1975 BBC Play of the Month presentation of Love's Labour's Lost, with Sinead Cusack as Rosaline.
When one thinks of an actor born to play the scruffy revolutionist Che
Guevara, Jeremy Brett is hardly the first person who comes to mind. Yet,
in 1969, Jeremy did play Guevara, and, ever the "becomer," he spent
nearly six months hitchhiking around South America to get a sense of Guevara's
background.
In 1979, he told a British interviewer, "...I was very intrigued by
[Guevara's] exploits over there, so I decided to go and follow his route.
Actually, this was a rather sad thing to do because, of course, everything ended
for him in Bolivia.
"I then went into the Inca Kingdoms because they have always fascinated me, then into Chile, and Brazil, and back home.
"I went with very little money because I wanted to see if I could survive without any, make it on my own. I was away for nearly six months, and I hitch-hiked a lot.
"I worked there, too. At one point, I got some stones and polished and
set them and sold them on the spot, and in Chile I got lots and lots of shells
and with a pair of tweezers I made tiny little mice, which I sold for quite a
lot of money."
This astonishing effort to get under a character's skin was for the limited-run play MacRune's Guevara,
presented at the Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre by the National Theatre as
part of an experimental "workshop"--or, as Irving Wardle bluntly put it,
"...a gymnasium for new writers...to give small-part actors the chance
to carry a production."
In any case, Wardle pointed out, "This is not to disparage the plays, emphatically not in the case of John Spurling's MacRune's Guevara...by turns, we see Che as a Latin American Robin Hood, a Clyde of the Congo flooding bourgeois verandas with innocent blood, and as the inspired martyr of a noble cause. The MacRune of the title is a destitute old Scottish artist totally possessed by the Guevara legend."
A reviewer in the New York Times later described the NT production of MacRune's Guevara as "a truncated version ordered by Kenneth Tynan" and said "the play became a subject of political controversy; some thought of it as an attack on Guevara."
Incidentally, Jeremy's casting as Che may not have been as bizarre as it seems. Both Brett and Guevara had Irish grandparents. Che befriended actress Maureen O'Hara during the filming of Our Man in Havana in Cuba and told her, "My grandmother's last name was Lynch and I learned everything I know about Ireland at her knee." His trademark beret reportedly came from Ireland, as well.
Back in the Classics
As the new decade of the 1970's arrived, Jeremy was back in the classics,
portraying "Bassanio," the "caddish adventurer" of Shakespeare's The
Merchant of Venice. Director Jonathan Miller set his staging of Merchant
in the late nineteenth century. Although most of the actors (including Jeremy)
were favorably mentioned in reviews, this Merchant of Venice clearly
belonged to Laurence Olivier's "Shylock" ("We have not seen greater acting
since The Dance of Death," said The Times of London.)
A reviewer from the Toronto Star saw the play in London and wrote of
Jeremy's Bassanio: "Bassanio is an opportunist, referring first to Portia
as 'a lady richly left'; one feels that his friendship for Antonio is firmly
built upon a financial base, and only the horror of the trial is able to reveal
his own deeper instincts to himself."
This production of The Merchant of Venice was
later taped and broadcast on U.S. television in 1974.
Next, Jeremy portrayed "George Tesman" in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, directed by Sweden's renowned Ingmar Bergman. As Jeremy explained in 1979, Bergman gave him some rather unique instructions on playing Tesman: "We worked from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. without a break every day. It was total concentration. He [Bergman] said, 'I know exactly how you should play Tesman. As Winnie the Pooh.' It was impossible to know how he got that idea. He gets right at the root. It's not comforting to work under him. It's like being raw. You're under pressure all the time, but he's incredibly loving to his actors.
"Once I forgot my script. Maggie Smith ["Hedda"], who has a temper like lightning, snapped away. Bergman said, 'Jeremy, everybody's very angry with you, but I'm not. See how much you remember.' I remembered it all. That's the gentleness of the man."
Actually, Bergman himself had reservations
about this Hedda. Loathe to leave Sweden, he discovered in London that
the NT stable of actors worked at a much faster pace than he was accustomed to.
They quickly learned their lines and were off and running. They tried to slow
down for Bergman, but champed at the bit.
Plus, according to a 1971 review of the play, the director had an unorthodox
rehearsal schedule:
"...[Bergman] came to London for initial discussions and blocking. He
returned home for several weeks, coming back for polishing for a week or so
before the premiere, leaving the cast in the meantime to work things out for
themselves under the watchful eye of Sir Laurence Olivier."
Despite all the pressure behind the scenes, Jeremy ended up with good reviews. As The Daily Telegraph noted in its obituary for Jeremy in 1995, "One of Brett's best performances was his masterly portrayal of feeble devotion to Maggie Smith's Hedda Gabler under Ingmar Bergman's direction. He created a wholly credible character, not the usual bungling fool but a very presentable, handsome young man who just happens to be too dull, too scholarly and too conventional for his wife."
Hedda Gabler was the last play Jeremy did with the National Theatre.
Jeremy would remember his time at the National as "about the happiest period in my career, because [Olivier] has a tremendous amount to offer any actor."
When Laurence Olivier died in 1989, Jeremy told the Associated Press, "However many times you'd seen him, it was probably the most dangerously thrilling moment you'd seen on any stage."
Jeremy had some amusing memories of working with Guinness:
"I learned from [Guinness] how disciplined you have to be to sustain a role. ...He's also very human. He does not like the audience. If someone coughs, he sends his man with cough drops to Row J, Seat 5. Once, on a rare hot day, someone in the front row was using the program as a fan. Guinness knocked it out of his hand with a cane. Totally destroyed the illusion of blindness!"
Critic Michael Billington wrote in Plays and Players of JB's
performance: "Jeremy Brett deserves more praise than he's had for creating
a plausibly gauche, angular figure out of fairly slender materials."
Continuing his theatrical "journey," Jeremy was a Traveller Without
Luggage. In this play by French dramatist Jean
Anouilh, Jeremy portrayed an amnesiac who rejects his disturbing past
as it gradually comes to light. The play was inspired by the true story of a
French soldier who lost his memory during World War I. When the soldier's photo
was published, dozens of families claimed he was their missing relative. (The
gripping tale is recounted in a book, The
Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War, published in
2004.)
Then, Jeremy starred opposite Joan Plowright at London's Greenwich Theatre in Ibsen's Rosmerholm, playing John Rosmer, "the Norwegian Brutus: a charming, unsmiling pillar of moral rectitude, expressing both modesty and authority in his hawk-like features and unassertive stance." (The London Times.)
Jeremy also produced Rosmerholm under the auspices of "Company Theatre," a theatrical company he formed with actor/director Robin Phillips in August 1972. (Company Theatre presented nine other plays at the Greenwich, none of which featured Jeremy as an actor.)
Theatrical designer Daphne Dare (1929-2000) was a long-time associate of Robin Phillips, and she created costumes and sets used by Company Theatre. Her obituary in the London Independent stated:
"An annus mirabilis for the Phillips/Dare team came in 1973 with a season at Greenwich ([actor/director] Ewan Hooper with characteristic generosity giving the theatre over to them for a year). This period, with a remarkable company including Jeremy Brett, Mia Farrow, Elisabeth Bergner, Penelope Keith and Lynn Redgrave, included a House of Bernarda Alba putting black costumes against whitewashed walls, a Three Sisters of translucent beauty, the Forties frolic of Born Yesterday and the curio of the Hungarian Catsplay, as well as her beautifully restrained costumes for the musical Zorba. An extraordinary range of work, all designed on budgets slim to the point of anorexia but all absolutely true to the spirit of each piece."
(Robin Phillips left Company Theatre to become Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival in Toronto, Ontario, where he would work with Jeremy again in 1976.)
Good Company: JB with fellow Company Theatre members Joan
Plowright, Robin Phillips, and Mia Farrow in December 1972
Beginning on November 21, 1973, Jeremy co-starred as the Bohemian artist "Otto" with Vanessa Redgrave as "Gilda" and John Stride as "Leo" in Noël Coward's Design for Living at the Phoenix Theatre in London. This story of a "menage a trois" put the accent decidedly on the "men." (Coward himself had played the role of Leo when the play debuted on Broadway in 1933, with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne portraying Otto and Gilda).
The sets and costumes at the Phoenix in 1973 brilliantly captured the ambience of the 1930's. Writing in Plays and Players, Sandy Wilson raved about the entire show: "I could babble on for far more than my allotted space about the felicities and delights of this captivating production. It is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful...."
Wilson described Jeremy's Otto as "fetchingly tousled, a fatuous tornado of rage when Gilda betrays him and a marvel of patronising idiocy when he thinks he has her cornered..."
This production of Design for Living also played an important role in the story of Jeremy Brett. In the audience one evening was Joan Wilson, the PBS producer destined to become Jeremy's second wife. It was said that Joan saw Jeremy here for the first time and made up her mind to marry him.
Design for Living would also be Jeremy's last British stage appearance for nearly a decade. He set his sights across the sea, in search of new challenges.
Theatre programme covers scanned from L. L. Oldham's personal collection of JB memorabilia.