If the hat fits ... Mark Rylance at the Broadway opening of Boeing-Boeing
Mark Rylance is a great actor whose distinctive presence and delicate, introspective, musical speaking voice have made him unique. Despite many outstanding film roles, he has made his name on the stage more than the screen, which is a pity as far as I am concerned -- because I'd like to see him in more films. As it happens, television audiences can once again see his tremendous performance as Dr David Kelly in Peter Kosminsky's The Government Inspector this Friday on More4 at 9pm.
But this week, on winning a Tony award in New York for his performance in the comedy revival Boeing-Boeing on Broadway, Rylance joined a very exclusive club: actors who have given genuinely memorable acceptance speeches.
There was none of the usual stuff about thanking his agent, or co-stars or pleading for world peace. Here is what he said:
"When you are in town, wearing some kind of uniform is helpful, policeman, priest, etc. Driving a tank is very impressive, or a car with official lettering on the side. If that isn't to your taste you could join the revolution, wear an armband, carry a homemade flag tied to a broom handle, or a placard bearing an incendiary slogan. At the very least you should wear a suit and carry a briefcase and a cell phone, or wear a team jacket and a baseball cap and carry a cell phone. If you go into the woods, the back country, someplace past all human habitation, it is a good idea to wear orange and carry a gun or, depending on the season, carry a fishing pole, or a camera with a big lens. Otherwise it might appear that you have no idea what you are doing, that you are merely wandering the earth, no particular reason for being here, no particular place to go."
That, evidently, was it, and it was only afterwards that Rylance revealed that what he had recited was a prose-poem called The Back Country, by Louis Jenkins.
Off the top of my head, I can think of only one other actor who has quoted a poem in an acceptance speech, and that was Russell Crowe, who on getting a BAFTA in 2002, quoted Patrick Kavanagh's Sanctity:
To be a poet and not know the trade, To be a lover and repel all women, Twin ironies by which great saints are made, The agonising pincer jaws of heaven.
Notoriously, Crowe became testy when the poem was cut from the edited BBC broadcast of the event, shouting at the director Malcolm Gerrie: "Who on earth had the fucking audacity to take out the Best Actor's poem?". It was a form of words which implies that at that moment, in Crowe's crazed mind, the "Best Actor's Poem" was not a personal, disposable whim but a settled tradition.
Perhaps it should be. Maybe actors, on getting their awards, should only be allowed to read out other people's poetry. Someone should try these lines from Eliot's Murder In The Cathedral:
Man's Life is a cheat and a disappointment; All things are unreal, Unreal or disappointing: The Catherine wheel, the pantomime cat, The prizes given at the children's party, The prize awarded for the English essay, The scholar's degree, the statesman's decoration, All things become less real.
That should set the mood nicely for a glitzy ceremony.
