THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING MIRIAM
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING MIRIAM, Glen Street Theatre, 15-19 April, Sydney Opera House 21-26 April 2015 and touring. Photography by Gavin D Andrews: above and right - Miriam Margolyes.
Director and script writer Peter J Adams dreamed up the tongue-in-cheek title for this delightful entertainment. Fortunately it won out over the star’s more modest choice of “An Evening With Miriam Margolyes”. Nevertheless, she begins the show with a self-deprecating reassurance that she’s not a bit important or particularly noteworthy, and then spends the next two hours making a liar of herself.
At 73 going on 74, Margolyes is an actress whose career on stage and film here, in Britain and the USA could be tagged variously as “renowned”, “household name”, “extraordinary” and – definitely – “unique”. She is one of the funniest comic actors, one of the more heart-rending dramatic actors, and one of the most characterful of character actors. And her ear for dialect, accent and mimicry is famous – although few will have heard her “do” Dame Maggie Smith until this show. It’s razor sharp and falls within an anecdote that’s as affectionate yet acidic as you’d expect of the Downton dowager countess.
Margolyes begins her story with her grandfather: a Jew from Belarus who emigrated, penniless, to Glasgow to make a new life. He started out as an itinerant hawker of costume jewellery and eventually worked his way to a proper jewellery shop in the city. A precious jewel is the unlikely focus of a poignant morality tale Margolyes tells of how her own father survived WW1. She was born in Oxford, however, attended the city’s high school, acquired her cut glass accent and read EngLit at Cambridge, where she was mesmerised by Clive James and Germaine Greer.
Later, with the untiring support and conviction of her beloved mother, becoming an actress came as naturally as academic distinction, although the story of Margolyes’ audition for the TV soapie Crossroads is so unbelievable it just has to be true. Also defying credibility – and gravity – are her experiences as a non-singer in the mega-musical Wicked. Despite being the girl in the school choir who was always told to shut up, she played Madame Morrible in the West End and then reprised the role on Broadway – what happened there is the cause of yet more laughter.
Laughter is the main ingredient of the show but there is also an effective leavening of seriousness. It occasionally becomes lump-in-throat moving and is always fascinating. Margolyes is a fabulous storyteller and the stories she has to tell range from hilariously ridiculous to gobsmackingly “omigod, she didn’t say that, did she?” But of course, she did – and does!
Margolyes has the wide-eyed forthrightness and honesty of a woman whose Inner Child has never been refused a thing nor been told to make herself scarce. Consequently she has not lost the innocence and optimism that’s most often knocked out of us by life’s mean tricks.
It makes her fearless and, for instance, able to dive straight into one of the Nurse’s speeches from Romeo and Juliet and then chortle and repeat it in plain English because, “almost none of you understood a word of that, did you?” As well as ranging across the highs and lows of her beloved Shakespeare, she also takes us on an exhilarating ride through her even more beloved Dickens, a writer she has loved since childhood and whose characters have inhabited her imagination and work ever since.
The show is given extra nuance and rhythm through the presence of John Martin on grand piano and occasional interjections. The music – from Liszt to Satie and beginning with an overture of music hall hits – gives the seemingly indefatigable Margolyes a little breathing space, but really, from the minute she walks on stage, beaming her wicked grin, she is ON. It’s a remarkable performance of a remarkable life – and she shows no signs of stopping any time soon.
The importance of being Miriam is that she is a force of nature and humanity. She is someone who doesn’t tell you to go out and grab life by the short and curlies, doesn’t exhort you to go out and be brave, or go out and be honest no matter what, but she does it all herself with such gusto and pleasure, it’s impossible not to leave the theatre determined to enjoy life and everything and everyone in it that much more. And that’s really important.
