spiffy jellybean: January 2008

* updated 13 February

Sam attended a meeting that was organised by Equity regarding the Arts Council's cuts to theatre funding. Here's a quote from thisisnottingham.co.uk:

"...Samuel West stated: 'Cut funding to our smaller spaces and you eventually starve our larger ones to death...'"

Links
Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - "Arts Council debate on funding" (includes an mp3 of excerpts from the debate. Sam's bit is from 14:40 to 16:32) [link]
Transcript of a fabulous speech given by Sam at the meeting [link]
An article Sam wrote for the Guardian [link]
An article Sam wrote for the Telegraph [link]
Equity [link]
Article from The Stage [link]

Tags: Samuel+West, Sam+West, theatre, theater, funding, Arts+Council

* updated 11 February

Articles

An excerpt from playbill.com:

"For Charles Edwards, who originated the Hannay role in London, a Broadway debut is the light at the end of a very long tunnel. "It feels wonderful, primarily because I've been involved with this from the beginning. Somewhere in 2006, we started. It was a show before that, but Maria hired me when she started. She saw me do 'Hay Fever' at the Haymarket with Judi Dench. For a while, I was rehearsing by day and acting at night."

Edwards logged up lots of 39 Steps himself in preparing for the Brit-twit who passed for hero in the generation before 007, but he was ever-mindful of The Aitken edict: Don't Do Donat. "More than watching him, I watched the whole genre of that kind of film acting," Edwards explained. "That's what I was trying to know. I didn't want to do a Robert Donat take-off per se. I wanted to try and take off on that era of film histrionics." He still counts himself a fan. "Hugely — 'Goodbye, Mr. Chips,' all that, even when I was a kid.""

Interview from broadway.com [link]

An excerpt from the New York Daily News:

"...Edwards says he was 'proved utterly wrong' in thinking that audience members who didn't know the movie might miss out.

'It's a very physical show,' he says, with 'a lot of physical clowning and comedy, a lot of wordplay.'

His role is particularly demanding. 'There was one moment in the second act when there's an opportunity for me to be offstage for about 10 seconds,' he says. 'I said, "Please, can we keep that because I can have a glass of water."' Aitken vetoed the break.

Both leading man and director think the show's success owes much to the cast's Herculean efforts.

'That magic you get in a theater can only come about when you're all working 110%,' he says. 'You get a real buzz from giving your all every night.'"

Article from the Canadian Press [link]

Article about Arnie Burton and Cliff Saunders (they play most of the characters in the play) [link]

Article about the John Buchan novel and the Hitchcock film [link]

Pictures
broadway.com [link]
broadwayworld.com 1|2
New York Times 1|2
WireImage [link]

Clip from the New York Post:

Links
Roundabout Theatre[link]
Interview with Arnie Burton [link]
Charles Edwards - Theatre - The 39 Steps - Broadway 1|2
Charles Edwards - Theatre - The 39 Steps - Huntington 1|2|3
Charles Edwards - Theatre - The 39 Steps - Criterion 1|2|3|4|5
Charles Edwards - Theatre - The 39 Steps - Tricycle 1|2|3

Tags: Charles+Edwards, theatre, theater, The+39+Steps, 39+Steps, Broadway