A Poet for Every Day of the Year at the National Theatre
A Poet for Every Day of the Year
Lyttelton, National Theatre, London SE1
★★★★☆
Helen McCrory’s voice had not crackled across the Lyttelton stage since her 2016 performance in The Deep Blue Sea, but it was heard again on Tuesday when a poetry reading in her memory closed with grainy footage of her at a similar event some years back. That McCrory voice, rich as brandied cake, delivered Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese. Amid despair “the world goes on” and clear pebbles of rain continue to drift across prairies while wild geese, high above, “are heading home again”.
McCrory died last April, aged 52. The Lyttelton evening, led by her widower, Damian Lewis, co-starred Simon Russell Beale, Fay Ripley, Danny Sapani and Lesley Sharp. It was chaired by Allie Esiri, editor of a new poetry anthology. While they read, Chris Riddell produced cartoons, his quick work being projected for all to watch.
Any fears of mawkishness were dispelled when Lewis recalled what a competitive force McCrory was on stage. No one could ever upstage her. Lewis then threw himself into a Burns night Address to a Haggis. He attributed his remarkable accent to coaching from his father-in-law, over gins.
Numerous poems followed: Larkin, Shakespeare, Shelley, Heaney, Cope, Plath. Highlights included, from Beale, William Robert Spencer’s Beth Gelert, that heart-ripping ballad about Llewellyn’s loyal hound. The penultimate reading was from Lewis: Derek Mahon’s Everything Is Going to Be All Right. “There will be dying, there will be dying, but there is no need to go into that.”
During the footage of McCrory’s Wild Geese, Lewis closed his eyes and leant his neck towards one shoulder. But there is, as Mahon says, no need to go into that. McCrory had been given the classiest of salutes, as good as a memorial service at the Abbey.
