If she's not on the box she's in a movie as Queen Victoria, and if she isn't doing that, then she's just as likely to be wowing the critics ina musical.Dame Judi Dench seems to have a wellspring of talent that will probably bubble away to the great delight of most of us until she takesher final curtain at some unthinkable time in the future.
In 1957 she was an elfin Ophelia, by 1982 she was an imperious Lady Bracknell in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. By 1987she was the Serpent of Old Nile - a beguiling Cleopatra with oily curls spilling onto her royal shoulders.
But the woman can transform her shape at will and earlier this summer I found Dame Judi to be another queen who was equallybeguiling - she was called Victoria and this queen worked alongside Billy Connolly, both actors giving wonderful performances in themovie Mrs Brown.
Fortunately for readers of this book, Judi Dench also has a phenomenal memory, which is something that has always amazed me. Howdo people manage to have such extensive recall, and is the art of writing a biography occasionally used to manipulate fiction - whoknows?
Certainly Dame Judi takes us back to her childhood and predictably to the trials in the family, where her father was a doctor. Obviously,fate took a hand and the young Judi followed her father around backstage when he went on visits to the Theatre Royal , York, in his roleas the company GP.
The young Peter Woodthorpe, who was a patient of Dr Dench's at the theatre, says: "I can't forget her voice. I never thought she'dsucceed as an actress because of her voice; she always sounded as if she had laryngitis, but she trained it."
The pattern of Dench's early life is not unexpected. Good at drama during her school days, she was totally encouraged by her family,and also we can read that her brother Jeffery went into the theatre, though not with quite the same show-stopping success .
Dench played Ariel in a production of The Tempest at Stratford, with Margaret Drabble, the novelist, offstage in the wings as a fairy,taking notes. "She had a natural gift for verse speaking. When she came onstage she just lit up for the audience," says Drabble.
But in theatrical biographies of this kind where early expectations are often mingled with revelations of a career of a totally differentkind (Dench expected to become a painter) you can expect a fair amount of interconnections. For example, Dench saw Peggy Ashcroftplay Cleopatra to Michael Redgrave's Antony in the 1953 season at the old Memorial Theatre and was quite overwhelmed by theperformances.
In later years Dame Peggy and Dame Judi became close friends and Dench went on to recreate many of Ashcroft's classic roles.
But theatre influences abound. A reference to that fine actress, Barbara Jefford (and why is Ms Jefford not yet a Dame?) and to DorothyTutin revealed that Dench shows a certain deference to the talent of other actors and it is one of her most poignant characteristics.
The book contains a fulsome reference to the opening night in Birmingham of Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company'sproduction of Much Ado About Nothing which opened 10 years ago in Birmingham at the Birmingham Rep Studio.
It was one of the prettiest productions of this play I have ever had the good fortune to review, featuring Branagh as a sparklingBenedick and Samantha Bond as a charming Beatrice. But it was also remarkable for being the production where Judi Dench made herdebut as a professional director.
Mr Miller notes in his account of that opening night that "the performance went well, and the local press approved." That is only the halfof it - so let me fill Mr Miller in on what actually happened to this particular member of "the local press," newspapers who, in Mr Miller'snotes, seem to remain nameless.
It was Judi Dench's triumph - a wonderful opening night for both her and the company. I filed copy for The Birmingham Post, thereforegiving the company its first review. After the phone-through I went to the top floor for the reception. It was quite empty and Judi Denchcame in alone looking extremely dejected.
I had met her on several occasions at the Stratford Poetry Festival where she had frequently been a reader. She recognised a friend,shook hands and then asked me in that amazing voice if the evening had been "all right," explaining she had been "Damed" thatmorning at Buckingham Palace. She was very emotional and patently exhausted by a punishing day.
We laughed a bit and cried a bit and I reassured this nervous woman that she had given Branagh a triumph which is exactly as thingsturned out, and then the cast came in with the champagne and the rest, as they say, is history. And that, is what actually happened, MrMiller, on that remarkable first night attended with tremendous goodwill by "the local press."
Many tributes in the book are provided by friends and colleagues who have been with her over the years, among them BarbaraLeigh-Hunt, her husband Richard Pascoe, Ned Sherrin, Alan Howard and dozens more. This Dame has a great heart and shows it, andaffection from others never stops coming her way.
Her presence at the funeral of Julian Belfrage, her agent, where she read beautifully an elegy, gave Belfrage's wife the much neededstrength to continue running the business. Belfrage, we gather, will never be replaced in Dench's life, he was her first agent and he washer confidante.
And a sense of humour? Well, you know what actors are like, the slightest thing can "throw" the nervous amongst the fraternity into fitsof giggles. Bill Nighy, who played the failed writer Hugh Marriner to Dench's pristine Foskett, the raddled club-owner in the televisionversion of Rodney Ackland's play The Pink Room (which became for television Absolute Hell) noted that one moment of rehearsalsalways stuck in his mind.
"There is a line in Absolute Hell where a chap comes in with a gun and says, 'who wants a bullet up the botty?' Judi just looked at mewith the most unprofessional look anyone has ever given me and we never got through that scene without corpsing."
Dench's triumphs seem never-ending and even when she is filled with doubts and despairs, the gods of the theatre seem to smile uponher. Her recent work as Desiree in A Little Night Music is a case in point.
Frustrated at rehearsals, uncertain about the demands made upon her in a singing role, Dench went on to triumph once more in aproduction which the composer himself initially seemed to hate.
"Why have you made it all so dark?" Stephen Sondheim said to the director, Sean Mathias, and stormed off to the comforts of theSavoy, vowing he would not bring his partner to see it.
Yet everything came out fine in the end and Dench worked her old magic. Sondheim went through rehearsals with her working closely,and when it came to the song Send in the Clowns, he said he hadn't a single note to give her on that score.
"No, that's yours now," said Sondheim, and it was a tremendous boost to Dench's confidence.
A summing-up of the talents of this remarkable woman might well be left effectively to Ian Richardson, an old RSC chum.
"The night I went her voice was completely off; she went flat a couple of times in Send in the Clowns, and the tears were pouring downmy face, because she just instinctively knows where to pitch the performance."
The production ran for a year in the repertoire and was so popular that it had to return for an eight-week run in the Olivier, playing eightperformances a week, and as soon as the posters went up showing this woman, who is now over 60, in her seductive red evening gown,it sold out completely.
Thanks to Mike Kennedy for sending this review of Judi's biography, With a crack in her Voice. It appeared on the Birmingham Post on October, 19, 2000.