The Reactionary Utopian
                     July 6, 2006


SIR JOHN AND MISS REDGRAVE
by Joe Sobran

     Many discerning critics rate Sir John Gielgud the 
greatest Shakespearean actor of the twentieth century. He 
was never a heartthrob, and for most of his career he was 
overshadowed by the handsome, thrilling Laurence Olivier, 
who was not only a great actor but a movie star too. But 
nobody has ever spoken Shakespeare more beautifully and 
intelligently than Sir John, and we can be grateful that 
he has recorded such legendary performances as his 
Hamlet, his Richard II, and now, on a BBC Radio 
audiotape, his King Lear.

     At 90, Sir John is still active. Even more 
wonderful, both his matchless voice and the mind that 
guides it are still in peak form. He hasn't played Lear 
since 1955 (he thinks his best Lear was the one he did in 
1940!). His new performance as the magnificently foolish 
monarch is supported by a  remarkable cast: Kenneth 
Branagh, Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi, Bob Hoskins, Emma 
Thompson. Such an assemblage of talent in lesser roles 
tells you what his profession thinks of him.

     We are lucky indeed that modern technology makes so 
many great artists available to us. Few Americans could 
have seen such great Shakespeareans as David Garrick and 
Edmund Kean when they lived; posterity can only guess 
what they looked and sounded like.

     But suppose Sir John had been cut off from us in 
another way. What if he had expressed political views 
that caused the Christian Right to oppose him, and he had 
been forced to cancel performances of LEAR or HAMLET in 
this country? You can imagine the uproar in the media. 
The network news would have made it a cause celebre: Sir 
John's face would have appeared on the covers of the 
newsmagazines; we'd have had a great to-do about 
censorship, the First Amendment, artistic freedom, and 
the threat posed to all of us by religious fanatics who 
want to decide what everyone else can read and watch.

     Afterward, the case would have been referred to for 
years as the martyrdom of a great artist, like the cases 
of the Hollywood Ten, Charlie Chaplin, and Ingrid 
Bergman.

     In fact, though, it couldn't happen. The Christian 
Right simply isn't that powerful. If it were, the media 
wouldn't dare to portray it as negatively as they do.

     But there is a parallel case in the real world. One 
of the greatest actresses alive is Vanessa Redgrave, 
scion of one of England's foremost theatrical families. I 
first encountered her in recordings of Shakespeare thirty 
years ago. She was already a brilliant performer on the 
British stage. Soon afterward her beauty and talent made 
her a film star. All the while, she also made minor waves 
with her passionate Trotskyist politics, her mildly 
scandalous personal life, and -- uh-oh! -- her 
denunciations of the Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

     Miss Redgrave has faced the kind of pressures I have 
just described -- but not from the Christian Right. A 
profile of her in the NEW YORK TIMES puts it with the 
utmost delicacy and syntactic obliquity: "It has been her 
fervent anti-Zionism that has done the most to keep her 
off American stages."

     What does that mean? In the case I imagined, would 
the TIMES have reported blandly that "Sir John's 
un-Christian views have kept him off American stages?" 
No, it would have said plainly that the Christian Right 
had forced the cancellation of his LEAR in America. There 
would have been no shyness about identifying the 
malefactors.

     But in Miss Redgrave's case, we are not really told 
who has stopped the rest of us from seeing her in person 
all these years. It is made to sound as if she did it 
herself, with no help from a certain potent pressure 
group. There are no thunderous editorials about artistic 
freedom, no cover stories, no give-me-liberty-or-give-me-
death posturings from the Sam Donaldsons. Miss Redgrave 
doesn't qualify for victimhood. Neither do those who 
might have wanted to watch her perform.

     Her story is in large part a scandal of media 
cowardice. Her story, in fact, has not been told, except 
in hints. Maybe one day the media will look back on their 
treatment of this gifted actress with the shame it 
merits.

[This column was originally published by Universal Press 
Syndicate December 29, 1994.]

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