Nicol Williamson
Jan. 26th, 2012 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceNicol Williamson has died. More than a month ago, apparently, but it's only just been announced by his son Luke.
I saw his Macbeth at Stratford in the '70s, with Helen Mirren, just (I think) a year after the famous minimalist McKellen/Dench production in the studio theatre. That was like an exercise in contrasts: intimacy against extravagance, repression against rampant sexuality. I adored them both, but hey, I was a teenager, however much I wanted to pose as an intellectual; it was the Williamson that fuelled my imagination. For a while there I tried to see whatever he was doing (or had already done, in cinema). But then there didn't seem to be very much. (Tho' I did find his abridged recording of The Hobbit. Being read to by a record player: it seems so odd, in retrospect.)
I saw his Macbeth at Stratford in the '70s, with Helen Mirren, just (I think) a year after the famous minimalist McKellen/Dench production in the studio theatre. That was like an exercise in contrasts: intimacy against extravagance, repression against rampant sexuality. I adored them both, but hey, I was a teenager, however much I wanted to pose as an intellectual; it was the Williamson that fuelled my imagination. For a while there I tried to see whatever he was doing (or had already done, in cinema). But then there didn't seem to be very much. (Tho' I did find his abridged recording of The Hobbit. Being read to by a record player: it seems so odd, in retrospect.)