Сибиль Торндайк: Жизнь и творчество выдающейся актрисы.

English actress (1882–1976)

Thorndike's roles of the early 1930s included the title part in Racine's Phèdre, Mrs Alving in Ibsen's Ghosts, and Emilia in a celebrated production of Othello at the Savoy Theatre with Paul Robeson and Peggy Ashcroft as Othello and Desdemona. In 1931 she was appointed DBE, the fifth actress to be made a Dame. refn|The four earlier theatrical Dames were May Whitty (1918), Geneviève Ward (1921), Ellen Terry (1925), and Madge Kendal (1926). In the West End in September 1933 Thorndike appeared in The Distaff Side, by John van Druten, which she took to Broadway the following year, having in the interim played Gertrude in Hamlet for the Old Vic company at Sadler's Wells in an uncut, five hour production directed by Greet (who appeared as Polonius). Thorndike and Casson were among the actors who felt an obligation to appear in the provinces as well as in the West End − according to the critic Hannen Swaffer "Sybil is the only actress whom the provinces treat like a queen" − and her expressed view was, "No actor has any business to say that they won't tour, it's part of our work". In 1936 the couple toured in plays by Euripides, Shaw, Noël Coward and D. H. Lawrence, and followed this with a tour of a new play, Six Men of Dorset, by Miles Malleson and Harvey Brooks the following year. In 1938 Thorndike appeared in New York as Mrs Conway in J. B. Priestley's Time and the Conways, In the West End she created the role of Miss Moffat in the long running The Corn is Green (1938) by Emlyn Williams. According to The Times, this play "showed her at the top of her form as an English spinster with a vocation for teaching, and obtained for her and the author, who himself played the Welsh mining lad who was her star pupil, a heartening success on the eve of war and of new developments in theatrical life".

When the Second World War began in September 1939, Thorndike, a convinced pacifist, protested against the conflict, but recognised that while it lasted the populace needed entertainment. In 1940 she took part in a film of Shaw's Major Barbara as General Baines, after which she and Casson joined a touring Old Vic company taking Macbeth to even the remotest corners of Wales. As there were few available hotels the actors frequently stayed with mining families, whom Thorndike found "wonderfully hospitable". By 1941, with the London blitz coming to an end, it was practical for the London theatre to revive, and the Old Vic company presented Shakespeare's rarely seen King John, in which Thorndike played Constance. As its own theatre had been severely bombed, the company played at the New Theatre. Later in the year the Cassons again toured Wales, adding Candida and Medea to their repertory. After the defeat of Germany in 1945 a Nazi blacklist was found in Berlin, naming eminent people to be arrested after an invasion of Britain. Among them was Thorndike, as a prominent member of the National Council for Civil Liberties.

When the Old Vic company played a season in New York in 1946 Thorndike chose to remain in England to appear with Casson. They were in Priestley's The Linden Tree in 1947, In the theatre Thorndike and Casson were in a revival of John Home's tragedy Douglas at the Edinburgh Festival (1950), The Cassons rejoined forces in Hunter's next play, A Day by the Sea (1953), directed by and co starring John Gielgud. Like its predecessor, the play appealed more to the public than to the critics, and ran for 386 performances at the Haymarket. refn|While the piece was in rehearsal Gielgud was arrested and fined for homosexual activity, and he was fearful of his reception by the first night audience. Unlike some in the profession Thorndike had no patience with homophobia. (Among those less sympathetic or helpful to Gielgud than Thorndike were Olivier and Edith Evans.) On the opening night Thorndike took the apprehensive Gielgud by the hand and whispered, "Come along, John darling, they won't boo me", and led him onstage − to applause and cheering from the audience. The couple toured southern Africa, Kenya, Israel, and Turkey in 1956, giving dramatic recitals. In New York the couple appeared in the world premiere of Graham Greene's The Potting Shed, which ran on Broadway for 143 performances in 1957, after which they revisited Australia and New Zealand, touring in The Chalk Garden. During the 1950s Thorndike appeared in eleven films: Stage Fright (as Mrs Gill, 1950), Gone to Earth (Mrs Marston, 1951), The Lady with a Lamp (Miss Bosanquet, 1951), The Magic Box (the Aristocratic Client, 1951), Melba (Queen Victoria, 1953), The Weak and the Wicked (Mabel, 1953), The Prince and the Showgirl (The Queen Dowager, 1957), Alive and Kicking (Dora, 1958), Smiley Gets a Gun (Granny, 1958), Shake Hands with the Devil (Lady Fitzhugh, 1959) and Jet Storm (Emma Morgan, 1959). Among her television appearances was a studio production of Waters of the Moon with Evans, Casson and Kathleen Harrison.

Thorndike's first stage role of the 1960s was Lotta Bainbridge in Coward's Waiting in the Wings; she and Marie Löhr played the lead roles of two residents in a retirement home for actors and actresses, perpetuating, and finally resolving, an ancient feud. She said of it, "I loved that play. It's the most lovely modern play I've played", but the piece was not a great box office success and closed after 188 performances. In 1961 Thorndike played the longest part of her career, the title role in Hugh Ross Williamson's Teresa of Avila, about the eponymous saint. She thought it "the most thrilling part I've been offered since Saint Joan", but Williamson's script, even after extensive revision by Casson, proved disappointing. Reviews were enthusiastic in their praise of Thorndike's performance, but neither the critics nor the public liked the play, which closed after six weeks. The critic J. C. Trewin wrote of "the most remarkably complete production – in my experience at least – of any play in our period". He called Thorndike's nurse "a miracle of gruff tenderness". The production was acknowledged as the highlight of the festival, and was revived the following year. Between the two stagings Thorndike appeared for the first time in a musical – playing the formidable Miss Crawley in an adaptation of Thackeray's Vanity Fair. The piece received bad reviews. The Guardian said that at her age Thorndike "should have known better than be caught up in this piece of prolonged nonsense", although The Times found consolation in her "blazingly theatrical figure" who "stamps every line with comic authority". Olivier moved from Chichester to become the founding director of the National Theatre in late 1963. He included Uncle Vanya in his first season, with many of his Chichester cast reprising their roles, but Casson, by this time in his late eighties, declined, and Thorndike did likewise. At the Duchess Theatre in January 1964 she appeared as the Dowager Countess of Lister in William Douglas Home's play The Reluctant Peer, a comic fictionalisation of the author's elder brother's recent renunciation of his peerage so as to be eligible for the premiership. Once again, Thorndike's notices were better than those for the play. Bernard Levin wrote, "she gets her fangs deep into the meatiest part she has had for years" and praised "the relish and zest she brings to her playing". She thought the critics were wrong to dismiss the play – "they only want avant garde and classics now" – and was sorry when her contractual commitments forced her to leave the cast six months into the eighteen month run. After appearing in two successive box office failures – Arthur Marshall's Season of Goodwill (1964) and William Corlett's Return Ticket (1965) – Thorndike rejoined Casson in what turned out to be their last West End production together, a revival of the classic black comedy Arsenic and Old Lace. With Athene Seyler co starring as her equally well meaning and homicidally lunatic sister, Thorndike enjoyed herself, the critics were enthusiastic, and the play ran from February to November 1966. Thorndike appeared no more on the London stage after that. At the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, in January 1967 she played Claire Ragond in The Viaduct, and at the same theatre in February 1968 she appeared as Mrs Basil in Call Me Jacky. Later in that year she toured as Mrs Bramson in Emlyn Williams's thriller Night Must Fall. The television was not her favourite medium – she found it restricting – although she had a success in 1965 as Mrs Moore in a BBC adaptation of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. Forster congratulated her on her performance, but she replied, "I loved Mrs Moore, but I am not wild about TV as a medium to express her! She's bigger than that". Casson died in May 1969, and Thorndike's only stage role after that was in the inaugural performance of the theatre named in her honour, the Thorndike Theatre, Leatherhead, in October of that year, as the Woman in There Was an Old Woman by John Graham. She was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1970. Her last public appearance was at the National Theatre's final night at the Old Vic in February 1976, where from a wheelchair she acknowledged the applause of her fellow members of the audience. Brian Harrison recorded an oral history interview with Thorndike, in December 1975, as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titled Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews. In it she talks about the progressive nature of the theatre, and her freedom as an actress as well as her support for women's suffrage. Thorndike and Casson had long lived at Swan Court, Chelsea, where she died on 9 June 1976, aged 93.

Thorndike described herself as "an old fashioned socialist, an Anglican and a pacifist – a mixture of which Mr Marx might disapprove". Corin Redgrave recalled, "Her shining spirit came through almost everything she did. She never wavered in her humanitarian Christian socialist beliefs". Giving the address at her memorial service, Gielgud called Thorndike "the most loved actress since Ellen Terry". Opinion is more divided about Thorndike's qualities as an actress. Sheridan Morley enlarged on Gielgud's comment, writing that she was not only the most loved actress but "one might add also the best". Hallam Tennyson felt "she over elocuted: she was the last trace of the Irving Terry era in which the important thing was to speak beautifully and clearly and be heard throughout the auditorium". Paul Scofield thought her "a glorious actress who suggested immense power. She aimed at the big targets, and used every ounce of her being to do justice to great classical themes".