National Theatre Talks
by National Theatre | YouTube | September 14, 2016
Categories Interviews The Deep Blue Sea Video
Categories Honorary Degree University of York
Helen Awarded Honorary Degree from University of York
Department of Theatre, Film and Television
by Staff | University of York | July 15, 2016
The Department of Theatre, Film and Television is delighted that Helen McCrory has been awarded an Honorary Degree. Award-winning British actress Helen McCrory has received an honorary degree at our summer 2016 graduation.
Prior to receiving the award, Helen visited the department and met with a small number of staff and students. She was very impressed with the facilities and is keen to develop a relationship with the department.
Helen has performed in numerous theatre productions, including at the Royal National Theatre. Her film and television roles include her portrayal of Cherie Blair in The Queen, Narcissa Malfoy in three of the Harry Potter films and Polly Gray in Peaky Blinders – for which she won a Best Actress Award.
In 2016, she will appear at the National Theatre, London in The Deep Blue Sea, and is currently filming We Happy Few, directed by Lone Scherfig.
Source: University of York
Categories Print Media Reviews The Deep Blue Sea
The Deep Blue Sea Review: Helen McCrory blazes in passionate revival
Terence Rattigan’s powerful portrait of emotional turmoil in postwar Britain is beautifully played – if only the sound effects weren’t so disruptive
Michael Billington | June 9, 2016 | The Guardian
Terence Rattigan’s best play has been long overdue for revival at the National. Fortunately, it gets an impassioned production by Carrie Cracknell that illuminates Rattigan’s psychological understanding and boasts a shining performance from Helen McCrory. Its only blemish is an intrusive sound score that suggests the characters are living not in west London in the 1950s but on the edge of Krakatoa during its eruption in the 1880s.
On a happier note, Tom Scutt’s design follows the example of the 1993 Almeida revival in creating a grey-green apartment block, with transparent walls, that reminds us that Rattigan’s play offers us a microcosm of 1950s England. The focus is palpably on Hester Collyer, a judge’s wife who has sacrificed ease and comfort to live with Freddie Page, a boyish war hero who cannot meet her emotional needs and who has no place in the modern world.
Continue reading The Deep Blue Sea Review: Helen McCrory blazes in passionate revival
Categories Reviews The Deep Blue Sea
The Deep Blue Sea – Lyttelton, National Theatre, Review: ‘McCrory gives a commanding portrayal of a woman exhausted by unreciprocated desire’
After winning awards for their collaboration on Medea, Helen McCrory and director Carrie Cracknell resume their partnership in this revival of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 masterpiece
by Paul Taylor | June 9, 2016 | The Independent
Helen McCrory gives a commanding performance in this revival of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play
(Richard Hubert Smith)
Helen McCrory and director Carrie Cracknell won awards for their striking collaboration on Medea. They resume their partnership, with more mixed results, in this revival of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 masterpiece.
You need an actress with the range to tackle the tragic extremities of Euripides and Racine if you seek to sound the depths of Hester Collyer, one of the great female roles of the postwar repertoire. The play may unfold in a dingy Ladbroke Grove rooming house, but it focuses on a woman who is a Fifties equivalent of Phedre, flouting convention in her obsessive infatuation with a man who cannot match the intensity of her feelings. One-sided passion, unequal love: it’s Rattigan’s abiding theme, explored here with matchless insight in a play that was inspired by the suicide of one of the playwright’s former male lovers.
Categories Print Media Reviews The Deep Blue Sea
The Deep Blue Sea: Helen McCrory achingly good as woman adrif
McCrory delivers one of the performances of the year
by Henry Hitchings | June 9, 2016 | Evening Standard
Her character Hester Collyer is besotted with a man who is incapable of reciprocating her seriousness. When we first see her she’s flat out in front of an unlit gas fire, having failed to kill herself. Throughout the two and a half hours that follow, we suspect another suicide attempt is imminent.
Her lover Freddie is a drunk whose distinguished career in the RAF has given way to a diet of golf and sketchy business meetings. Tom Burke captures the caddish manner of a fallen idol who has slumped into emotional and professional laziness. He’s cruelly insensitive — but retains a faint hint of likeability that makes his callousness feel especially sad.