Branagh: A Comet's Tale
By Sean French, Vogue, 1984
Kenneth Branagh, it seems, sprang into the world of acting fully formed.
Three years ago he was plucked from drama school, and an Equity card was
discreetly acquired for him so that he could star in the first West End
production of Julian Mitchell's 'Another Country'. He was highly praised,
the production was a great success and it all made a wonderful story in the
press.
Since then he has progressed without much difficulty except for the
distracting sound of gnashing teeth proceeding from envious fellow actors.
He has done excellent work, mainly on television. His only failure to date
was in the title role of Julian Mitchell's follow-up to 'Another Country',
'St. Francis', which began and ended in Greenwich.
Now - still in his early twenties - he takes another remarkable step
forward with three major roles in the new Stratford season of the Royal
Shakespeare Company. He will play the King of Navarre in Barry Kyle's
'Love's Labour's Lost', and Laertes to Roger Ree's Hamlet in Ron Daniel's
production. And he has already opened as Henry V.
It is difficult to make young Harry acceptable to a modern audience. He can
seem rather like a psychopathic boy scout, invading France, massacring
prisoners, executing his old drinking cronies Bardolph and Corporal Nym,
and making the St. Crispin's day speech, the most famous incitement to
violence in our language.
Laurence Olivier's rousing portrayal we can accept as necessary wartime
propoganda and Alan Howard's recent Harry was a fanatical, tormented
brigand and not unlike his Coriolanus. In the light of this, the coherence
and sympathy of Kenneth Branagh's performance is astonishing.
Branagh can look unprepossessing in repose, a slightly stolid countenance
topped with a mop of fairish hair. But his stage presence, his icily
controlled energy in front of an audience, is unique in his generation. In
'Another Country', he played Judd the schoolboy, whose benevolent Marxism
sprang entirely from his sense of aggrieved injustice. His performance
stood out from the production not in its brilliance but in its stillness
and warmth.
As a schizophrenic in the BBC television series 'Maybury', his
characterisation went through kaleidoscopic changes of mood, by turns
manically witty, gloomy, cruel, violent, sullen, tender, gauche, sometimes
bursting beyond any control including his own. It was passionately
accomplished, and through all his terrible behaviour you could just about
see why the psychiatrist (played by Patrick Stewart) liked and wanted to
help him.
With the help of director Adrian Noble, his Henry V is above all a clear
and logical portrait. The king decides that his claim for France is just
and then, though he has his doubts, assumes the confident facade that is
essential for an inspirational military leader. Branagh can think this
through but - which is everything - he can peform it seamlessly as well. An
example: Harry's St. Crispin's Day speech occurs immediately after he has
almost collapsed beneath his crippling fear of defeat. He stumbles out to
address the troops barely able to suppress his apprehension. His
rabble-rousing oration is as much a battle against his own fear as that of
his men.
Kenneth Branagh's exciting debut at the RSC has confirmed him as one of
those young actors - Anthony Sher and Simon Callow are two others - whom
one will seek out wherever they appear.
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