Tom McCamus in Due South. Pic from Gothic Phantom's Lair
The London Free Press 6/28/07: Tom McCamus
Curtain falls on theatre legend
Thu, June 28, 2007
He called his magnificent voice a gift from God; colleagues credit his insight and power on the stage.
By KATHY RUMLESKI AND JAMES REANEY, SUN MEDIA
Canadian theatre legend William Hutt didn't need any encore to win raves and respect as one of Canada's greatest actors.
Hutt, who performed in New York, Toronto and London, England, is best remembered for his remarkable four-decade career at Stratford Festival. He died yesterday in Stratford at the age of 87.
Hutt, a founding company member, had planned to come out of retirement to perform in A Delicate Balance, opening Aug. 9 at the festival, but had to withdraw in March due to illness. It was reported yesterday he had leukemia.
He told The Free Press last November that the role of Tobias would be his encore.
"Every diva is allowed at least one . . . ," he said then.
He agreed to one more Stratford performance to honour his friend Richard Monette, now in his last season as artistic director.
A grieving Monette said yesterday: "William Hutt was my mentor, my friend, a great actor and a national treasure."
Quoting Hamlet, Monette added: "He was a man, take him for all in all: we shall not look upon his like again."
Hutt spent several seasons at London's Grand Theatre acting and as artistic director.
Art Ender, the Grand's president when he met Hutt in 1975 and his friend since that time, said Hutt was "very warm."
"If you were a friend, you were a friend for life."
Ender, who last spoke to Hutt on Hutt's birthday in May, said he was also a lonely man. "It gets lonely up at the top."
Stratford actor Bernard Hopkins was Hutt's choice as his successor at the Grand in 1980 and was in the festival's 2005 production of The Tempest, Hutt's finale.
"My god, it's the end of an era . . . he was a remarkable, remarkable, remarkable man," Hopkins said.*
Soon after, Hutt was on the small screen in a witty, self-spoofing role in Season 3 of the TV series Slings and Arrows. "Whatever situation Bill was in, he was never unfunny," Hopkins said.
Hutt and Hopkins often appeared in the same productions, including A Christmas Carol at the Grand. Hutt played Scrooge. Hopkins marvelled at hearing Hutt warm up in the wings by doing Hamlet.
" 'It's the one great gift I got from God. It's this voice,' " Hutt told Hopkins in all modesty. " 'It's nothing to do with me at all. It's a gift.' "
Former Free Press theatre critic Doug Bale said Hutt was a star who could compete with anyone "in terms of the profundity of his performance and the insight that he brought.
"What an extraordinarily meteoric blaze he made in the theatre," he said.
Bale said during Hutt's time as artistic director at the Grand he was a wonderful mentor to new actors Stephen Ouimette, Shelley Peterson and Tom McCamus.
McCamus credited Hutt with helping shape and determine his career and said Hutt's commitment to theatre was a continuing inspiration.
"He always was a great actor. He never lost his passion for it, his confidence for it, his power on the stage," the former London actor said.
Rave reviews were a matter of course for Hutt, whose most famous performances included the title character in King Lear; James Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night; and Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.
At six-foot-one and in heels, with a Queen Mary hat, Hutt was a formidable Lady Bracknell in Wilde's comedy. One little girl is said to have told her father that if she didn't know that was a woman, she'd think it was a man.
"That was the greatest compliment I could possibly get," Hutt said of the remark.
Hutt also travelled the world, acting and directing, and wowing Broadway in 1964 when he played the lawyer in Edward Albee's Tiny Alice alongside John Gielgud.
He was praised for his role as Sir John A. Macdonald in the mid-1970s TV miniseries the National Dream and in 1997 for the role of Tyrone in a film adaptation of Long Day's Journey Into Night.
With his rumbling voice and his lion-in-winter mane of white hair, Hutt commanded the stage well into his 80s, winning applause for his last turn onstage at Stratford as Prospero.
His last bow was taken on Oct. 28, 2005 and he uttered his final line:
"Let your indulgence set me free."
A funeral is being planned at St. James Anglican Church in Stratford.
© The London Free Press
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