Leading light of theatre Janet Suzman directs at Old Laundry

9:20am Saturday 10th October 2009

By Adrian Mullen

SCARCELY a year goes by without a former LAMDA student being honoured at a major film, television or theatre award ceremony, such is the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art’s standing.

Among its alumni are thespians such as David Sutchet, Claire Skinner, Harriet Walter and the excellent Jim Broadbent.

Another of the academy’s success stories is Janet Suzman, one of most experienced names in British theatre, who will direct LAMDA’s talented young actors in Athol Fugard’s soul-wrenching drama Master Harold and the Boys as part of the Old Laundry theatre Season.

Set in the apartheid-dominated world of 1950s South Africa, the production is staged on Thursday, October 22 (3pm matinee, 8pm evening show) and is one of three exciting modern classics being performed at the Bowness theatre by LAMDA’s third year students.

Following on, on Friday, October 23, LAMDA presents Peter Whelan’s engrossing semi-autobiographical 1950s drama about a young northerner who is posted, straight from the sixth form, to west Berlin to work for the British Army’s education corps.

LAMDA’s third offering is Stephanie Dale and David Edgar’s A Time to Keep on Saturday (October 24), which is set against a backdrop of a threatened Napoleonic invasion, and described as somewhere between Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, written as a boisterous rollicking spectacle.

For the record, Janet Suzman was born in South Africa, moved to London in 1959 and went on to train for the stage at LAMDA, making her debut as Liz in Billy Liar in 1962.

In 2005 she appeared in the West End in a revival of Brian Clark's 1978 play Whose Life Is It Anyway? starring Kim Cattrall. The year after she directed Hamlet, and in 2007, played Volumnia in Coriolanus at Stratford-upon-Avon. Apparently, once again the critics raved, noting that she made too few stage appearances.

Janet is a patron of the Market Theatre in her native Johannesburg and in 1976 played in its inaugural production The Death Of Bessie Smith with John Kani. A decade later she made her debut as a director with Othello - also filmed for Channel Four TV - which won an AA Vita Best Production Award.

I might just mention too, that Janet has twice won The Evening Standard Best Actress Award.

Her many television credits include Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective in 1986, and her first film role was in 1971, in Nicholas and Alexandra, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, BAFTA and a Golden Globe for her portrayal of the Empress Alexandra.

Janet has also penned Acting With Shakespeare: Three Comedies, a book based on a series of acting master classes.