The Tao of Bill

William Hutt as Prospero. Photo: David Hou. Courtesy Stratford Festival of Canada.

What’s William Hutt’s secret? On the eve of his valedictory performance at Stratford (as Prospero in The Tempest, opening on Monday, May 30), the 85-year-old actor still won’t give away his acting strategies.

How has he managed to husband his talent, making it last for 50-plus years? “You didn’t imagine I was going to tell you that, did you?”

One lives in hope. “It’s nothing earth-shattering, but if you have a secret in your life, it’s always helpful. But you have to keep it a secret.”

His favourite role? “Now if I told you that, all the other ones would be jealous. People sometimes come up to me to say, ‘You were so good as …’ and I think, ‘Oh this time, please let it be Lear or Prospero or James Tyrone [in Long Day’s Journey into Night],’ but no, it’s always, ‘I absolutely loved you as … Lady Bracknell [in The Importance of Being Earnest].”

Did all the gory deaths he witnessed while serving in the Canadian ambulance corps in the Second World War help him play tragedies? “I imagine so, but I can’t really say how.”

It’s not that Hutt is obstreperous. Well, maybe a little, but one hardly notices it because that famous voice is never more honeyed than when it’s saying — in a courteous, roundabout way — “No.” But, acting, good acting, is as difficult to describe in words as music.

The briefest of resumés establishes Hutt’s claim as Canada’s preeminent actor’s actor, perhaps even, as Stratford’s head Richard Monette has opined, the world's greatest living classical actor. Over his half-century of performing, he has played in every Shakespeare but three and has inhabited well over 100 roles, most of them leads. On occasion, he’s flubbed his lines (in Soulpepper’s Waiting for Godot last summer), but more often he’s nailed them (as Lear at Stratford at the turn of the millennium). He can do highfalutin, hysterical or hopeless; I’ve seen him deliver, with equal aplomb, fiery, barn-burning speeches (as Clarence Darrow in Inherit the Wind), amusing aphorisms (as Bracknell in Earnest) and grim, all-is-lost pronouncements (as James Tyrone in Journey).

He is the rare performer who’s made his reputation playing both fools and kings, and both tragic and comic leads. As well as being a Stratford stalwart since the festival’s first season in 1953 (“I played an eloquently silent courtier”), he’s appeared on stages in London, Toronto and New York — as well as on a postage stamp (one of the few living Canadians to do so). On Broadway, he’s given the first impression of a role written for him by his friend Edward (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) Albee; he’s tread the boards with the legendary likes of Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith, Alec Guinness, Sybil Thorndike, Jessica Tandy and John Gielgud. (“A lady from the audience, probably drunk, said loudly, ‘This is shit,’ and Gielgud whispered to me, ‘You know, she may be right.’”) Even when he’s having an off day (as in Godot), he’s compelling to watch; you still sit up whenever he enters. Why? What is this sphinx’s secret?

Born in 1920 in Toronto, his professional debut came late (he was 33 in Stratford’s first year), delayed by his war service (“I was introduced to death before I was introduced to life”) and his studies at Trinity College in Toronto. Fittingly, his first major role at Stratford will also be his last: he played Prospero in 1962, opposite an ingenue named Martha Henry as his Miranda. His latest Stratford boss, Monette, believes Hutt’s appeal has something to do with his going against a play’s grain, seeking out the contrapuntal to its theme. “He manages to find humour in tragedy and tragedy in humourous roles,” Monette recently said.

William Hutt in 1997, from a documentary produced and directed by Harry Rasky.

Notwithstanding Hutt’s size (he’s six foot two and has weighed as much as 220 pounds) and, increasingly, his arthritis and replaced hip, there’s nothing ponderous or heavy about his on-stage presence. Indeed, he often seems delicate, almost nimble on the stage; although I’ve seen him perform probably 30 times, I was surprised to learn of both his height and weight. Director Robin Phillips once told Hutt (when he was playing Bracknell) to walk through the room without disturbing one speck of dust, and it’s become one of Hutt’s mantras. He’s equally light off-stage: he lards his speech with drawled “darlings,” and avoids the oracular pronouncements that other distinguished actors (say, Christopher Plummer) so revel in.

A fellow cast member in the festival’s first year, the late Timothy Findley, once said of his long-time pal, “He was the first one among us at Stratford to insist on speaking [Shakespeare in] pure, unadulterated Canadian.” Hutt himself won’t go so far. “It’s impossible to say who was the first, but I did always try to make it accessible, by using my own accent, whatever that is.” (Although Hutt’s diction is far from mid-Atlantic, it never strays into hoser territory.)

The nearest Hutt has ever come to theorizing about acting is to say it is the art of “being private in public.” In our interview, he elaborates: “You have to make the observer feel like a spy, like someone peeping through a window at night. They should perhaps feel slightly guilty.” He continues making the case for naturalism: “The other side of that is that the actors must not appear to be aware that anyone is looking at them.”

Paradoxically, while appearing to ignore audiences, Hutt has always had sensitive antennae, ably intuiting their moods. He was playing Lear in 1972, while the Canada-Russia hockey final raged. “The audience was filled with high-schoolers, and they were restless,” he recounts. “They wanted to be in front of the television, not in some room watching an old man divide his kingdom. So as I exited from one scene, I told them Canada won six to five. I’ve never in my life heard such applause, such screaming — certainly not for a performance of mine. After that, they settled down; they were lambs, angels from then on, because they felt we were on their side, we understood them.”

This may be the closest we can get to the professional Tao of Bill: acting is the art of pretending to ignore an audience, while always attending to their needs. But, in the end, it’s not hugely close. When asked what line from Shakespeare he most likes, which one he would select for his professional epitaph, he quotes one of Hamlet’s most cryptic dictums: “There’s a special providence in the fall of the sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.” He explains, a bit: “You have to develop a willingness to meet whatever comes, not a resignation, but an acceptance that you’re not ultimately in control.” He guards his secret with his life.

Alec Scott is a Toronto theatre critic.