Tag: Stephen Beresford

Categories Last of the Haussmans Print Media Tributes

Stephen Beresford Remembers His Friend Helen McCrory

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Helen McCrory Was a Great Actor — and a Great Human. The Playwright Stephen Beresford Praises his Friend’s Restless, Curious Nature

by Stephen Beresford | The Times | April 22, 2021

             Kindred spirit: McCrory in Beresford’s play The Last of the Haussmans DONALD COOPER/ALAMY
My first “in the flesh” sighting of Helen was on a spring morning in 2012. She was hunched over a pouch of rolling tobacco on the low wall beside the National Theatre’s stage door. She was giving off an air of “don’t notice me”, which is a tricky thing to pull off while wearing a fedora. Anyone who knew Helen recognised that crouched, industrious position of hers; a swift, practised kinesis, ending with a bravura lick of the cigarette paper and a head tilt; half provocative, half playful, as if to say: “Well now. Are you going to be interesting?”

There was no possibility of my being interesting. I was too terrified. It was the first day of rehearsals for my first play, and it was happening at the National Theatre. I was about to walk into a room full of people I had long admired: Julie Walters, Howard Davies, Rory Kinnear, Nick Hytner — and, of course, Helen.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she said, sliding her arm into mine as though we had known each other for 40 years. “I’m terrible at read-throughs.”

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Categories Last of the Haussmans Reviews

Review: The Last of the Haussmans

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Hippy Dippy

By Michael Billington | June 20, 2012 | The Guardian

Plays about the legacy of the 1960s are becoming increasingly common. After Mike Bartlett’s Love, Love, Love and Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Apologia, we now have this debut from Stephen Beresford. As an actor himself, he knows how to write whacking good parts and has all the benefits of a meticulous National production, but he rarely makes you feel the family he portrays can provide a metaphor for a generation.

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