We read Romeo and Juliet Hamlet Macbeth Julius Caesar and my favorite was Othello. “I was left with some black marks on my face.” But once the curtain closed that evening, Smith got the last laugh: “I did say it was the only time I saw stars at the National Theatre.When I was in high school, I had to read several of Shakespeare’s plays for class. “I think I scared the wits out of him from time to time,” she says.ĭuring a different show-in a scene in which Othello scuffles with Desdemona-Olivier actually struck Smith across the face. “I think I was more nervous of Laurence than of the critics,” the dame says of being cast in the production. On another occasion, Olivier told Smith that her line delivery was so slow that she “bored him off the stage.” The next show, Smith says, “I went so fast he didn’t know if it was Wednesday or Christmas. “I went in to help him with his eyelashes, and he was sitting there in all of that grunge ,” says Smith. Before the next show, when it came time for Smith to help Olivier-in full, horrific blackface-glue on his eyelashes, she went into his dressing room and showed him how seriously she’d taken his note. After one show, Olivier told his young co-star that her pronunciation of vowels was not up to par. Smith also reveals that she regularly butted heads with Olivier, who was quick to criticize her acting. (Olivier chose to wear blackface in the role, an appalling decision he defended in even more appalling detail in his biography.) Smith-who played Desdemona to Olivier’s Othello-readily recalls the horrors of seeing her co-star in head-to-toe black makeup every day. Of all the men they knew, Olivier’s is the name that pops up multiple times-not only because he was married to Plowright for nearly 30 years, but also because Maggie Smith co-starred with the stage great in a 1964 National Theatre Gallery production of Shakespeare’s Othello. Though the women don’t go more than a minute without cracking a joke, they also discuss their insecurities about their appearances and the rude male directors they have encountered. The film gives the impression that the dames’ cool armor and thorny asides were necessary tools they used to battle so many outsized male egos on and offstage-to blaze venerable careers before women were taken all that seriously, especially in the worlds of entertainment and theater. Their confidence does not seem simply born from maturity. And when the women grow tired of tea, they tell someone to bring them a round of champagne. When Michell prompts the ladies to talk about aging, Dench retorts, “Fuck off, Roger.” When a photographer annoys Smith, she tells him to put away his camera and be gone.
Speaking from the English countryside home that Plowright built with her late husband, Laurence Olivier, the women don’t let anyone behind the cameras-or at home-forget who is in charge. There aren’t many fall films more delightful than Tea with the Dames, a new documentary from Roger Michell ( Notting Hill) that features Dames Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, and Joan Plowright reflecting on their storied careers, their friendship, and the memories that still make them laugh.
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