Classically trained British actors of Knapp's pedigree are a vanishing breed, and he illuminates the rigors and the...
Tasteful memoir from a repertory actor with the National Theatre Company in Great Britain who shared the stage with such luminaries as Sir Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Alec Guinness and Peter O'Toole.
Of Anglo-Irish origin, Knapp's writing is characteristically modest and understated, an admirable style most American celebrity memoirists would do well to follow. Within these pages, he attempts to capture the magic of his contemporary's performances, a tall order indeed, given that a dramatic performance, like a painting, cannot be effectively conveyed through words. Nevertheless, the book provides some notable insights into an actor’s life on the British stage. While director of the government-funded National Theatre, Olivier arranged for a new compensation system that paid a negotiated weekly salary to ensemble actors (whether they acted or not), plus a negotiated fee for each performance–-a system that didn't last long. Knapp also notes Franco Zeffirelli's surprise that no "giants and dwarfs...skinnies and fatsos" were to be found in the Company, Olivier dryly observing that British actors were expected to get into character through makeup and costume. The story, however, sags a bit at the beginning and the end. Ornitz's preface is soaked with Dickensian pathos: "There were times in the Knapp household when money was short and luxury consisted of an enamel bowl of hot meat faggots and pease pudding from the butcher's shop"; the later chapters, describing Knapp's travels through Japan–-notable for his encounters with Kabuki and Noh-–and eventual residence in Hawaii as a director and drama teacher, lack the sparkle of the anecdotes from his youth.
Classically trained British actors of Knapp's pedigree are a vanishing breed, and he illuminates the rigors and the satisfactions of their professional lives.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2000
ISBN: 0-7388-2135-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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