First the coming out passage, which happens after Corin Redgrave's son Luke is born.
"I cannot remember how he introduced the subject when, after an interminably long pause during which each of us, it seemed, had become absorbed in his own thoughts, he spoke again. Perhaps there was no introduction. I remember that his breathing seemed strained and difficult. 'I think I ought to tell you', he said, 'that I am, to say the least of it, bisexual.' I recall every syllable of that sentence, with its strange qualification 'to say the least of it', because it took him an age to say it and the pauses, which were more or less as I have punctuated them, were painful. In each pause he breathed more deeply, to the bottom of his lungs, letting the air out with a punctured sigh, his shoulders sagging forward. When he had finished he stared at me, angrily, as if I had forced him to speak, as if I had taken advantage of his too trusting nature, and then came three huge, heaving sobs, 'Aaagh...aagh...aaagh', and then the dam burst and his grief and rage came out in a great, terrible, heaving cascade. I had often see my father cry. He cried freely, without any attempt at restraint, and I was always grateful to have learned from him that there is nothing wrong with crying; quite the contrary. But I had never seen him cry like this. It was beyond anything I had experienced, a grief so awful that it seemed to undo him. I sat on the arm of his armchair, folded my arms around his neck, and when eventually he quietened a little I said, 'I know.' He said, 'Do you?' and that was all. The end of the conversation."
Now the passage re: The Browning Version:
For the first few moments my father's high, dry, nasal voice, slowly, wearily, as if for the thousandth time, construing a piece of Greek verse, strikes me as absurd, impossible. I want to call out, 'Don't You can't possibly sustain it!' I remember having much the same response to another great screen actor, Marlon Brando, when he boards the Bounty as Fletcher Christian and turns to speak to Bligh in the accents of a Regency fob. Everything about my father's performance in those first few frames gives me anguish: the tips of his fingers placed together under his chin; his stooping walk; the flick of his eyes to a remote corner of the classroom in case he might detect some inattention, some laughter. It seems such a high-wire performance, demanding that the audience accept it entirely on its own terms. And it has no safety net. Yet I do accept it, entirely, after the first few moments. And I realise that in this instance too the process is one of losing and finding. (...) At the climax of the story one of the boys gives Crocker Harris, as a present, a copy of Browning's translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon. ON the flyleaf he has written an inscription: 'God looks kindly on a gentle master.' The effect on Crocker Harris is one of terrifying catharsis. His body starts to shake, he turns away from the boy and he sends him out of the room before giving way to uncontrollable grief. It is impossible for me to witness that scene now without recalling the evening I spent with Michael in 1967 after Luke was born. I am not suggesting that any such parallel would have occured to Michael. The scene from Rattigan was filmed many years before the scene we played together in real life. (...) Even so, I have come to realise, painfully, that all drama, even Shakespeare's, is a form of autobiography.
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branchandroot
Redgravian quotes for you
Date: 2018-07-05 03:53 am (UTC)"I cannot remember how he introduced the subject when, after an interminably long pause during which each of us, it seemed, had become absorbed in his own thoughts, he spoke again. Perhaps there was no introduction. I remember that his breathing seemed strained and difficult.
'I think I ought to tell you', he said, 'that I am, to say the least of it, bisexual.'
I recall every syllable of that sentence, with its strange qualification 'to say the least of it', because it took him an age to say it and the pauses, which were more or less as I have punctuated them, were painful. In each pause he breathed more deeply, to the bottom of his lungs, letting the air out with a punctured sigh, his shoulders sagging forward. When he had finished he stared at me, angrily, as if I had forced him to speak, as if I had taken advantage of his too trusting nature, and then came three huge, heaving sobs, 'Aaagh...aagh...aaagh', and then the dam burst and his grief and rage came out in a great, terrible, heaving cascade.
I had often see my father cry. He cried freely, without any attempt at restraint, and I was always grateful to have learned from him that there is nothing wrong with crying; quite the contrary. But I had never seen him cry like this. It was beyond anything I had experienced, a grief so awful that it seemed to undo him.
I sat on the arm of his armchair, folded my arms around his neck, and when eventually he quietened a little I said, 'I know.' He said, 'Do you?' and that was all. The end of the conversation."
Now the passage re: The Browning Version:
For the first few moments my father's high, dry, nasal voice, slowly, wearily, as if for the thousandth time, construing a piece of Greek verse, strikes me as absurd, impossible. I want to call out, 'Don't You can't possibly sustain it!' I remember having much the same response to another great screen actor, Marlon Brando, when he boards the Bounty as Fletcher Christian and turns to speak to Bligh in the accents of a Regency fob.
Everything about my father's performance in those first few frames gives me anguish: the tips of his fingers placed together under his chin; his stooping walk; the flick of his eyes to a remote corner of the classroom in case he might detect some inattention, some laughter. It seems such a high-wire performance, demanding that the audience accept it entirely on its own terms. And it has no safety net.
Yet I do accept it, entirely, after the first few moments. And I realise that in this instance too the process is one of losing and finding. (...) At the climax of the story one of the boys gives Crocker Harris, as a present, a copy of Browning's translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon. ON the flyleaf he has written an inscription: 'God looks kindly on a gentle master.' The effect on Crocker Harris is one of terrifying catharsis. His body starts to shake, he turns away from the boy and he sends him out of the room before giving way to uncontrollable grief.
It is impossible for me to witness that scene now without recalling the evening I spent with Michael in 1967 after Luke was born. I am not suggesting that any such parallel would have occured to Michael. The scene from Rattigan was filmed many years before the scene we played together in real life. (...) Even so, I have come to realise, painfully, that all drama, even Shakespeare's, is a form of autobiography.