In the case of Long Day’s Journey one of his strategies to help him learn the lines ahead of rehearsals was to gather his fellow actors together for a series of readings of the entire play. Since the idea was that these readings should be uninterrupted I was a fairly redundant presence, but they proved useful in identifying and agreeing on certain cuts.
The first of these readings was decidedly uneasy. We were all nervous and Olivier, like the rest of the cast, was a long way from the performance he would eventually give. However, since everything he did had size, so did his present awkwardness. I was reminded of those occasions in his office at the end of a working day when he would produce a bottle of non-vintage champagne (his preferred tipple) from the fridge beside his desk and invite those present to join him. After a glass or two he would sometimes embark on some anecdote replete with impersonations and funny voices but with such excessive energy that you wanted to open a window. Those qualities of sinew and muscle that can kick a performance right to the back of a large auditorium so that everyone experiences much the same thing and which are essential to great stage acting can seem inappropriate and even embarrassing in more intimate spaces, where nuance and suggestion carry greater force.
After the reading Denis Quilley said to me, with concern rather than criticism, ‘Sir’s American accent is a bit all-over-the-place, isn’t it?’ I think we were all a little taken aback by the clumsiness of his reading. He was like a man in a straitjacket vigorously trying to punch his way free. This was unusual. His reputation was for coming to rehearsals knowing exactly what he wanted to do. On the first day of Othello he had electrified the room by giving a reading as full-throttled as a finished performance.
Stage Blood: Five tempestuous years in the early life of the National Theatre
Michael Blakemore