Hello,

First post, been lurking for a while, but as I haven't seen a thread for this actor, I thought I'd start one. Hope that's ok?

I haven't ever seen Alex Jennings on stage, but I've booked to see "Present Laughter" at the NT, and am looking forward to it.

I was wondering about your views about Alex as I've heard positive things and by all accounts he's pretty good in PL.

I really wish I'd seen him in "His Girl Friday", because I'm a huge fan of the film.

And slightly off topic here, but if anyone has seen Present Laughter, when is the interval? I only want to know as I can then pace my liquid intake to prevent me from sitting for 20 minutes desperate for the loo!

AJ is very good in parts that suit him, and it seems PL is one of those. His range is quite wide - I have seen him many times - and like Simon Russel-Beale his is playing a broader range of parts than when he first started.

The first half is just under 90 minutes, IIRC. Personally I thought a bit of judicious cutting wouldn't have done any harm - 3 hours really is too long for a light comedy.

AJ is one of the funniest actors I have ever seen.

He won the Olivier for Best Actor In a Musical in My Fair Lady having taken over from Jonathan Pryce and I have to say I thought he shaded past Jonathan Pryce. I've never heard of someone taking over a lead and getting an Olivier apart from that year (I think maybe his Eliza got the same gong?).

What else? Brilliant Hamlet, but naff director, that Lord of the Rings man put stupid video screens everywhere (yawn). He did a great Peer Gynt, which will no doubt add irony to the Peer Gynt jokes in Present Laughter. Eponymous part in Albert Speer, Lord Foppington in The Relapse...

His Girl Friday I thought was an awful mistake on stage for everyonne concerned. I just didn't get any of it. I wouldn't know which performances of his to pick out as his best as usually after I've seen him I think oh that's the best thing he's ever done but then I think back and realise just how much great stuff he's done before.

He was also Theseus/Oberon in Adrian Noble's Dream, which is the best Dream I have ever seen.

I think he was also auditioned for Four Weddings...

I was watching a film the other day, that one Mark Kermode hated and I absolutely loved (so much I can't remember its name - but it had Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in it and she got shot, help me someone) and apart from a little cameo by Harriet Walter, I'm almost certain that Alex Jennings appeared for literally about half a second right at the end, playing a diplomat I think. It was so brief it was almost subliminal (though clearly not quite, since I'm mentioning it). Am I going mad or did it actually happen?

Babel. He had quite a big role in The State Within with Jason Isaacs but he's not had good luck with tv - there was a terrible sitcom about a failed actor (which I think sat on a shelf for years) and a thriller about a WW1 spy that nobody was very interested in but he's never had the right breakthough costume drama role

Who knows what would have happened to his career if he'd done Four Weddings - he was actually cast for a bit but filming delays meant he decided to go to Broadway instead (Hamlet? Peer Gynt).

Oh yes, thanks armadillo. Was it him?

Yes - he mentions it in a recent Guardian interview. Maybe his part was cut?

Right, thanks, I thought it was him. I think it must have been cut. I can't think why he'd have done it for no lines and half a second's screen time, no matter how big the cheque. At least Harriet Walter got to say a few lines.

I think one of his best performances was as Lucio in the Hytner "Measure for Measure" - always nice to see a very good actor in a relatively small part.

You're rolling back the years there, aren't you, Jan? That was donkeys' years ago. Was it for the RSC?

I heard that it was a Measure for Measure where he was first really spotted.

I thought the first part that really got public attention was the Hytner Country Wife at the Royal Exchange, (with Gary Oldman as Horner, (which I enjoyed a lot more than the current production at the Haymarket, depsite the lack of nudity!) - then he came to London and got an Olivier for Too Clever By Half (several years before Measure for Measure - he was already established in leading roles for the RSC and NT by then).

One of my favourite performances of his was the lead the The Liar at the Old Vic which was in one of Ranjit Bolt's rhyming translations.

Well, it doesn't really matter but that chronology is not strictly correct, but it gives me an opportunity to mention the following excellent web site once again which has an article on him .....

http://www.stratfordians.org.uk/

I had forgotten he was in Too Clever By Half - quite a disappointing production overall apart from AJ, part of J.Miller's failed attempt to revive the Old Vic.

The performace which has stayed with me the longest was his Peer Gynt - which makes the references in Perfect Laugher even funnier.

Two different productions of Measure for Measure - I don't think he got particular acclaim for the Hytner one did he? However memorable people may have found his performance. Not that I remember at the time, anyway (and it was after the Country Wife which he definitely did get good reviews for as I remember well at the time. Reviewers commented that he stole the show from a very starry cast).

Ah, thank you all for your info, especially for the interval time, I'll make a mental note not to quaff too much before I go in!

I have remembered that I saw him in a drama about Ballet a while back, he played Diaghilev (sp?), did anyone else catch that?

Oh and he was interviewed on Front Row on Monday, if anyone wants to listen again.

Brilliant in everything.

As Albert Speer he was jawdroppingly inspiring and, though I've said this once on this site already this week, I'll say it again: his Leontes in Winter's Tale was devastating.

Would love to see him in something meaty and serious again soon. Am sure we will. As exuberantly irresistible as he is in Present Laughter, watch out for the scene deep in the second half when the mayhem stops for a moment and it's just him in the dark with the gramophone...

Knockout.

'Inspiring' is an odd choice of word for Albert Speer. What did he inspire you to do? Invade Poland?

It was one of my first ever trips to the NT and I was inspired by an actor whose performance was so large that he seemed only a few feet in front of me even though I was on the back row of the Lyttelton circle, that someone could connect so far like that, and still be utterly subtle – he played the part with such introspection. I was quite awed at the way it managed to be big and small at the same time; I hadn’t seen that in what theatre I’d watched before. I was also inspired that an actor could invest such compassion into a character who we ought not to like; okay, sure, David Edgar largely did that when he wrote the part, but I’d say that if you’ve seen Jennings play a ‘serious’ role then you’ll hopefully know how much the man invests in it and the way he manages to telegraph so concisely and deeply the complexity his character is feeling. There seems to be so much brooding and quickening beneath the temples. Likewise with his Leontes in Winter’s Tale who in so many accounts is, until the last scene, just portrayed as a high-voltage bully. Jennings pacing the palace of Sicilia in his bare feet, his knuckles clenched around his mug of tea, somehow humanised the character more than Shakespeare does on the page. And that’s a good actor’s craft, surely. And it is really inspiring to watch.

I'm fairly sure I've seen every role Jennings has played in London in the last 15 or so years, so yes, I've seen him in quite a few serious roles. He's good but I actually wish he'd stick to light comedy (even though I wasn't particulary impressed with Present Laughter).

Something really annoyingly everlastingly schoolboyish about him. Like David Hare. Good actor though.

I see Nicholas Hytner said today in announcing the new NT season that he has discovered that Shaw is not a boring wind-bag. Unfortunately he has not discovered that David Hare is.

Which accounts ? Leontes is rarely played as "just" a bully in the early scenes, you can probably imagine that Jeremy Irons didn't play it that way (to name just one of the good ones). Even Tim Piggot-Smith was more nuanced than that (also good).

This would be the same David Hare whose last two shows at the NT have been complete sell-outs. I should have opened a sweepstake on how soon the complaints about the new NT season would start.

I thought David Hare was in a hissy fit with the NT? Anyone know if The Vertical Hour is confirmed for anywhere, by the way?

Obviously not in the very early scenes, Jan. Leontes is of course a pussycat to start with; it's only in act two that the irrationality kicks in, and there, at least in the two most recent RSC productions and the Globe's last, I for one found Leontes relentlessly unsympathetic. Which isn't wrong because that's how he's written on the page for much of it, but somehow with Jennings' Leontes you still loved him whilst hating him, you didn't condone his irrationality but you empathised with it, somehow, whereas other Leontes (not all, but some) do come over as plainly brutish, at least until the oracle opens their eyes. Of course I didn't remotely mean Jennings was the only person ever to do the part justice. You have to remember that, unlike you, the rest of us haven't seen every production staged in the last few decades, so of course we may make judgements based on just the ones we have seen.

Yes, that's the one.

Actually the reports on the NT new season I saw didn't really reveal much - one Shaw, one Ibsen, this Hare piece within the next two years, and the Vanessa Redgrave transfer. There must be more going on than that - that is more like an RSC full season (ie. only 4 plays). So, I will suspend judgement until full details are known.

Not strictly true as obviously I didn't see any productions of it at The Globe (wasn't there a Russian one there at one point ?). Was the last-but-one RSC one you saw with Antony Sher ? People here tend to complain when I describe certain features of that performance, needless to say I was not over-impressed (but otherwise as a production I thought it was very good).

That's because it was a review of last year rather than an announcement of next season. For one thing, they're also supposed to be doing a version of Oedipus next year.

I first saw him in Ghetto at the NT and he gave a great performance in a very unsympathetic role. I thought he was miscast as Prince Charles in the film The Queen, but that was only because he looks nothing like the man (Well, who does?), which would not matter very much on stage, but not so for a film.

Good Jennings interview on London's Marxist richkid rag Time Out:

timeout.com/london/theatre/features/1919/1.html