You’ve got to forgive Bowers, she’s unfamiliar with the married state
Maggie Smith and Robin Phillips
I thought she was forever but Maggie Smith too is mortal, it turns out.
Back when I wrote an opera blog Definitely the Opera (2010-2020), I happened upon the only biography of Maggie Smith that managed to see light of day with her (reluctant) cooperation. I read it right away and wrote this. My preoccupation with trouser roles in theatre and opera has somewhat diminished, but a chunk of this review remains of interest to anyone who’s ever appreciated MS.
From the vault:
Maggie Smith: A Bright Particular Star by Michael Coveney. London, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1992.
It has been a Maggie Smith Worship kind of August. La Smith does not technically belong in the world of opera, but her magnificence is of operatic proportions.
In actual fact (*this is one of MS’s phrases), my August was overtaken by a GB Shaw obsession until I stumbled upon a DVD of the GB Shaw Millionairess with Epifania Fitzfossenden played—sung is also apt—by Maggie Smith. That same DVD contained an extra piece, one of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series, A Bed Among the Lentils with Maggie Smith as a vicar’s wife with a drink problem. Every now and then I forget about the genius of Maggie Smith. Last time I received lessons in human nature from La Smith was around 2005-ish, when I saw The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, the most devastatingly devastating devastation that can befall a film viewer. After that I sought her Jean Brodie, where her crisp campness carries the (otherwise unremarkable) film, but that was that. I’d later run into the Downton Abbey parody videos and preferred them to the actual series.