Into The Breach Pays Homage to History On and Off the British Stage

As a former Broadway performer, American theatre is in my blood. Seeing some the greats like Marian Seldes, Zoe Caldwell, James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson and so many more shaped and crafted the type of artist I longed to become. Keeping the arts alive is and always be vital to the survival of humanity, whether they are in America or across the pond.

Making it’s World Premiere at the Telluride Film Festival over the weekend was the riveting documentary, Into the Breach exploring the extraordinary role British theatre has played in moments of national upheaval, reinvention and reckoning.

Directed and produced by Freddie Fox alongside producing partners Kenneth Branagh and Tamar Thomas, the film brings together an unprecedented cast of Britain’s most celebrated performers, writers, directors and politicians, including Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Gary Oldman, John Major and Joan Plowright in her last ever interview and many more, to examine how artists have repeatedly stepped “into the breach” when the country needed them most.

Featuring a round table of theatrical who’s who, this film will have theatre kids all over the world giddy as some these legendary actors share tales from their career and those they met and worked with along the way.

Moments like listening to Dame Judi Dench compare the talents of Sir Joh Gielgud to a well-done steak, clips recalling how racism didn’t prevent Paul Robeson from hitting the stages of  1930’s London as Othello, or watching memories wash across Sir Anthony Hopkins’ face listening to the voice of Richard Burton is the power these types of films always provide – the past meeting the present with sheer elation.

This generation may remember Joan Plowright as the crazy, racist granny in Bringing Down the House (alongside Queen Latifah and Eugene Levy), but not only was she one of the most respected leading ladies of the theatre, but she played a vital role in shaping the National Theatre alongside her late husband Sir Lawrence Oliver.

In a post Q&A with Freddie Fox and Sir Kenneth Branagh, the two expounded on a subject that was hit from all sides during the festival – the use of AI. “The theatre is about effort, sweat.  If you continue to use slick convenient methods to make things easier you lose the art,” Fox passionately stated.

Branagh shared a beautiful anecdote around Dench and Hopkins being late (a rare occurrence for either actors) on a day of shooting the doc, when he noticed 93 year-old and now blind Judie Dench crouched down at the proscenium searching for her pen mark of her name she left in the Old Vic theater many decades before.  These are feelings and moments that can’t be replicated anywhere.

Into the Breach is a beautifully crafted marriage of living luminaries and the storied history of British theater. Fox providing this quote I believe says it best, “…the beautiful thing about the theatre is you may arrive as in individual, but you leave as and audience whose heartbeat syncs up watching art.