Margaret Webster

              1942
MARGARET WEBSTER

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ACTRESS   DIRECTOR   AUTHOR


MARGARET WEBSTER

Actress


MARY MAGDALENE
Family Portrait


MASHA
The Sea Gull


ANDROMACHE
The Trojan Women


LADY MACBETH
Macbeth





Director
Maurice Evans in Hamlet, Richard II, Henry IV and Macbeth; Helen Hayes and Maurice Evans in Twelfth Night; Judith Anderson in Family Portrait



Author Shakespeare Without Tears
BIOGRAPHICAL
MARGARET WEBSTER is one of the outstanding figures in the contemporary theatre.  She is distinguished as the greatest director of Shakespearean drama today.  As an actress of note, and as a successful author, and lecturer, she was recently listed as one of America's Ten Outstanding Women.

Margaret Webster comes of a prominent line of theatrical folk.  Her mother is the famous English actress, Dame May Whitty, whose name is mostly associated with classical drama, but who is also well known in the moving pictures.  Her father is Benjamin Webster, long a noted Shakespearean actor.  Her grand-father, and also her great-grand-father were famous actors and actor-managers.

Miss Webster's stage debut in London was in John Barrymore's Hamlet.  She appeared in Sir Philip Ben Greet's Shakespearean productions, and with Sybil Thorndike is Saint Joan, and in The Trojan Women.  She also played with John Martin-Harvey, and with John Gielgud.

Margaret Webster was born in New York on March 15, 1905, when her father and her mother were acting in this country.  She has been virtually reared in the theatre.  Her introduction to the stage was when she was a few months old, and her mother slipped her into a performance of The Merchant of Venice so that Margaret could say that she was on the stage with Ellen Terry.  In her girlhood, however, she later appeared with Ellen Terry.

Miss Webster is the only individual who has ever been a member of Council for both British and American Actors' Equity.

Despite Miss Webster's modesty about her accomplishments, she is a scholar and a critic.  She learned her Shakespeare on the stage, rather than in the school-room.



FIRST PERSON SINGULAR
I have played everything, from Greek tragedy to CHARLEY'S AUNT; I have directed everything from modern light comedy to Ibsen; I have adapted plays, produced them, stage managed them, lit them.  I have directed school productions, judged amateur dramatic festivals, written and talked about the theatre to audiences of all types in England and America.

I learnt To Be Or Not To Be as soon as I could read The Cat Sat on the Mat.  At school I played Puck and Portia and fell in love with RICHARD II and MACBETH.  I played Lady Macbeth on a fire-escape with Sir Philip Ben Greet, and Audrey at London's Old Vic.  With the former I learnt how to sink or swim under the most variously exacting conditions, with the latter I encountered a tradition of Shakespearean production which, in its essentials, is probably as sound as any now practised in the English-speaking theatre.

In America I have been described as Shakespeare's girlfriend.  I would be proud to deserve that appellation.

I have lived in the theatre ever since I can remember.  I shall love the theatre as long as I can foresee or imagine.  I shall believe in its vitality, its courage, its gaiety, its essential humanity.  I shall endeavour to serve it, and to serve American audiences, the most eager and swift in the world.  I shall try to justify the theatre's part in our American civilization, the way of living which we are pledged to defend and justify.

Margaret Webster


Lecture Subjects
THE ADVENTURE OF ACTING: What the actor's art means, and has meant, in the heritage of the English speaking peoples.  The story of some of its great exponents, past, and present, and a glimpse at the tradition as well as at the glamour of their achievements.

How the actor groups came to America, and how the frontiers of the theatre followed the Westward march of the white man.  Actors and the theatre in our lives today.

Miss Webster will illustrate the evolution of the playwright, and the actor by giving excerpts from great plays of the past three hundred years.

SHAKESPEARE—ALARUMS and EXCURSIONS: This is Margaret Webster's own story of Shakespeare and the modern theatre.  Through it Shakespeare emerges free of pedantry, the most successful and exciting dramatist who has ever written in English.  She tells of her direction of the spectacularly successful Maurice Evans' productions of Hamlet, Richard II, Henry IV, and Macbeth.

Miss Webster presents a vivid and personal illustration to the theme of her recent book,—Shakespeare Without Tears, namely that Shakespeare is still the most entertaining playwright now being presented on the stage.  She shakes off some old dust, and brings up some new and interesting facts about the actor—producer—dramatist who is the fellow-craftsman of all who love the theatre.

BACKSTAGE: A director at large, Miss Webster tells the story of behind the scenes as an author, actress, and that most comprehensive of all theatre folk—a director.  She gives a picture of the workings of the theatre, and assesses the function of the director in relation to everyone else backstage.

She discusses the art and science of mounting a play, and of interpreting an author's script.  She speaks of schools and trends of production in the modern American and European theatre, and makes some forecasts as to the future.

Miss Webster uses many colorful anecdotes of stage life, past and present.






MARY MAGDALENE IN FAMILY PORTRAIT

FAMILY PORTRAIT

… The dramatization of this story is expertly done and the staging, by that amazing and brilliant woman, Margaret Webster, is a triumph of splendid taste and supreme knowledge of values…
Miss Webster, herself, is magnificent as Mary Magdalene…

Sidney B. Whipple, New York World Telegram



Actress

THE SEA GULL

… So far as acting is concerned, the real star of the production is Margaret Webster, the Masha.  This English actress, who last year directed Maurice Evans' production of Richard II … Her work is a joy to the beholder.  She is largely responsible for the atmosphere that is set in the first act.  In her principal scenes the excellence of her impersonations is striking—witness the tragic quality of her confession to Dorn at the end of the first act, or the poignancy of her waltzing to the music played by Constantine in an adjoining room.  But, more significant of her accomplishment as an actress is the consistency of her silent acting.
L. A. Sloper, Christian Science Monitor



THE TROJAN WOMEN

… Miss Margaret Webster, who is known in these parts as Shakespeare's Girl Friend, can also stage Euripides with a sure hand, and, in addition, she acts the role of Andromache with compelling force and genuine tragic beauty.  There is an impressive performance too, by Dame May Whitty, as the sorrowful Hecuba…
Richard Watts, Jr. New York Herald Tribune



LADY MACBETH

… Miss Webster was a thrilling and beautiful substitute in Lady Macbeth.  She was notified in New York on Monday that Miss Anderson probably could not go on; packed a wig, and caught a plane.…  She shredded our heartstrings with a paralytic hand-washing; chilled us with the frightful errand of returning the daggers that had killed King Duncan. …  Never missed a word, or a step, or a stroke…
Ardis Smith Buffalo Evening News, March 3, 1942



Lecturer
Miss Webster, Brilliant, Dynamic, and Versatile, infuses her Lectures with the same Vitality and Humor that have Made Her Stage Productions so Successful.

As Margaret Webster appeared on the platform of the Plantations Club Auditorium, an anticipatory murmur swept through the audience.  She looked much like her pictures, slim, pale, with characteristic sweep of dark hair.  Her simple black dinner gown was topped by a striking three quarter length, loose sleeved taffeta jacket of large roman strips.  We were sure even before she spoke that she would have a thrilling voice, and when she began her lecture we were not disappointed.  Her full, resonant, rather mature and beautifully trained voice easily filled the auditorium.  Her diction (as might be expected of a graduate of the Ben Greet Shakespearean company) was flawless—but not painfully so.

Her manner was altogether charming—neither too formal nor informal.  She approached her subject with just the right degree of humor and of sincerity and held a singularly appreciative and attentive audience through her hour long lecture, with her slightly British, scholarly humor and her obvious sincerity…

Pembroke Record, Brown University Providence, Rhode Island

… Miss Webster's voice, rich and deep in tonal quality, and her manner, direct, modest, wholly without the self-conscious correctness and exaggerated elegance all too commonly associated with the theatre and related fields, all tended to endear her to her audience.

—By Professor C. R. Rounds
Head of Department of English, State Teachers College State Signal, Trenton, New Jersey


Miss Webster, the actress and producer, whose beautiful voice, and diction bespeak her English ancestry, was presented to a capacity audience yesterday afternoon in the Woman's Club auditorium.…  It was a scholarly and up to the minute discussion of the theatre, the drama, and the actors of today.—
Daily News Index, Evanston, Illinois





MARGARET WEBSTER—Director

Miss Webster is the finest director of Shakespeare that this town has had.—
Brooks Atkinson, N. Y. Times


As for Miss Webster, after her brilliant direction of this difficult work (Henry IV) I suspect her of being the FIRST LADY of the Theatre.—
Richard Watts, Jr., N. Y. Herald Tribune


… The alertness and intensity of Mr. Evans' Hamlet is enormously aided by the swiftness and sweep of Margaret Webster's superb direction, for she has infused into this Hamlet the electrifying directness and drive of tempo which distinguished her staging of Richard II and Henry IV (Part one) in Mr. Evans' performances of those plays here last season.—
Linton Martin, The Philadelphia Inquirer


Margaret Webster's direction is smooth, acute and sensitive and the staging is astute.—
Claudia Cassidy, Chicago Journal of Commerce



Author
An Accomplished Modern Director Discusses the Classics and Her Craft With Humor and Good Sense


Miss Webster writes lightly, easily and with an abundant sense of humor.  For the understanding playgoer there is not an obscure or otherwise dull page in the book.  Yet she makes evident a very unusual equipment of scholarly knowledge, both as regards disputed texts and the even more disputable problems of the Elizabethan mood and taste—of esthetics, and often very different from our own, of the greatest drama ever produced on this distracted globe.—
By John Corbin The New York Times, Book Review, Feb. 1, 1942.

Margaret Webster Makes Shakespeare a Pleasure

If, as playgoer, actor or director, you would understand why Margaret Webster has succeeded as she has in the Shakespearean productions she had made with Maurice Evans, you have only to turn to her book, Shakespeare Without Tears, which Whittlesey House has published.

Miss Webster's volume is not autobiographical except in the sense that all good critical writing is so.  It is a book of reactions rather than reminiscences.  It is the record of a mind—sensitive, deeply intelligent, humorous and practical — in contact with the writings of a dramatist whose very greatness has chilled, cowed or dulled most of those who have given their lives to analyzing his works.

Miss Webster is that rarest of mortals—a creative scholar.  Although she knows more about Shakespeare than most of the professors who make the study of him tearful, she is set free rather than imprisoned by her knowledge.

Unlike the Gradgrinds, she approaches Shakespeare, on his own theatrical terms.  She does not ignore the invaluable contribution of the better scholars.

Schooled in the Theatre

It is the simple fact that she has learned her Shakespeare in the theatre rather than in the library that freshens Miss Webster's knowledge and gives it its welcome point.  Although she is as soaked in his writings as are the scholars, her researches never lead to pedantry.

Witty Writer


If reading her Shakespeare Without Tears is both an agreeable and stimulating experience, it is because Miss Webster is as uncommonly endowed as a writer as she is as a director.  Her prose is something to fill professional critics with envy.  It is clean, warm, witty, and speaks for perceptions which are unfailingly admirable.—
By John Mason Brown New York World-Telegram


As an infant Margaret Webster imbibed Shakespeare with her nursing bottle.  Later she lisped To be or not to be instead of the usual nursery rhymes.  Scared herself half to death reading Lear and King John while she was still in rompers.  Played everything from off-stage Alarums and Excursions to Lady Macbeth long before reaching years of discretion.  And grew up to be one of the finest Shakespearean directors of our time.
Her father, Ben Webster, was a well known British actor.  Her mother is Dame May Whitty, a distinguished actress widely admired by this country's moviegoers.
Consequently Miss Webster's new book, Shakespeare Without Tears (Whittlesey House) comes with authority.  It also comes with grace.  It is easily and brightly written; scholarly without being doughty: lively without being skittish, and painlessly informative.…  Shakespeare without tears.—

Edwin H. Schloss Philadelphia Record




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George Jean Nathan writing in Theatre Week stated his reason for conferring on Miss Webster his annual citation for Best Direction of the Year (1939): Because being a woman, a tidy scholar, and a realist, she has given the Shakespearean tradition a lusty housecleaning, pulling down musty academic cobwebs with her directorial broom.  Because in partnership with Maurice Evans, she has given three Shakespearean plays, Richard II, Henry IV, and Hamlet back to the groundlings.  But above all, because the Hamlet this year was one of the most stirring and original New York has seen.



THE REDPATH BUREAU is an Institution.  Institutions are not created off-hand.  Redpath is recognized as an Institution because of the service it renders, and not because it was founded in 1868.

REDPATH has for three quarters of a century presented a list of celebrated speakers, and also managed tours of many distinguished personalities and attractions connected with the drama and the stage.  Over a period of twenty-five years it frequently brought to this country from England the famous Ben Greet Players for transcontinental tours.  Other attractions included The Milton Aborn Light Opera Company in The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, Pinafore, and The Gondoliers; Charles Rann Kennedy's The Servant in the House; John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln, and The Carolina Playmakers.

Its list of notable personalities of the stage and drama includes Miss Eva Le Gallienne, and Paul Green.

Miss Webster's lecture engagements are under the exclusive management of Redpath.

THE REDPATH BUREAU
NEW YORK OFFICE
40 Depot Plaza White Plains, New York
CHICAGO OFFICE
1316 Kimball Building
Chicago, Illinois