Categories Print Media Theatre Tributes

Helen McCrory: In Admiring, Awestruck Memory

We Remember a Great Actress Taken Way Too Soon

This one hurt. No death of course is easy to absorb, especially one as premature and shocking as that of Helen McCrory, whose surrender to cancer late last week, age 52, came like the most brutal and sudden of thunderclaps. The announcement was made via Twitter on Friday by her husband, Damian Lewis, and I doubt I’m the only one who reacted with moist-eyed disbelief, and not only because the couple were familiar, and welcome, faces in our north London neighbourhood.

It seemed only yesterday that I had seen her in the ITV adaptation of the James Graham play Quiz, lending a peppery authority to the role of the Ingrams’ defence barrister, Sonia Woodley. Or as the prime minister, thank you very much, opposite Hugh Laurie in Roadkill: a nice promotion for an actress who had previously played a PM’s wife, Cherie Blair, in the film The Queen.

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Categories Print Media Theatre Tributes

Helen McCrory – Tribute: The Stage

Categories Reviews Rosmersholm

Rosmersholm at the Almeida – Review

Spellbinding Performances

by Michael Billington | May 23, 2008 | The Guardian

The Ibsen boom continues. And it is a measure of our theatre’s confidence in dealing with the old Norwegian ironist that even a dark, difficult late play like this can be bathed, both in Anthony Page’s production and Mike Poulton’s new translation, in such physical and psychological light.

More than most of Ibsen’s plays, this one is about the weight of the past. Rosmer, a former pastor, is oppressed by a whole series of factors: his conservative ancestry, guilt over his wife’s suicide and loss of religious faith. But, aided by his companion, Rebecca West, he believes he can set out on a new path of missionary idealism. This, however, turns out to be a fond dream as he alienates his allies, becomes a subject of scandal, and as Rebecca turns out to be haunted by incestuous demons.

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