The Anton Lesser Junkie Quick Fix Web Site

The Critics Rave

Welcome to this subsection of the Theatre bit; a bijou work-in-progress in itself. Here you will find snippets from some reviews; enjoy.

Henry VI trilogy (1977)

Sally Emerson, Plays and Players: "The star turn is Anton Lesser's sprightly Gloucester who talks from one side of his large mouth in that staccato Olivier manner, has black swept-back hair and is twitchy with energy and evil. But his energy is attractive, far more so than the good looks of his brother Clarence and the white-suited langour of Edward. One of the high points is the death-scene of Henry in the Tower ... Richard drags himself through the trap door and stares up at him. The peacefulness of Henry, who knows he is about to be murdered, helps to infuriate the jittery Richard. He looks insect-like before the towering, Christ-like figure of his victim."

Some Americans Abroad (1989)

Matt Wolf, Plays and Players, September 1989: "As the departmental chairman trying to unload his snivelling colleague Henry (Simon Russell Beale) Anton Lesser makes Joe Taylor a contemporary equivalent to his quietly slimy Richard III on the Barbican mainstage."

Richard II (1990)

Garry O'Connor, Plays and Players, December 1990: "Quivering with icy indignation, Anton Lesser as Bullingbrook keeps injecting [Richard] with the poison of political reality."

Taming of the Shrew (1992)

'The Love of a Shrew - Stewart McGill meets Stratford's new Katherina, Amanda Harris, What's On, March 1992: " [...] Amanda Harris's Petruchio is long-standing RSC actor, Anton Lesser, and rather different from the bully-boy notions we may have. 'Anton is wonderful, it's instant love for Kate and his treatment of her comes from care and a deep love. This is not a violent play. What Petruchio does releases Kate from being a frustrated, inarticulate woman who can't say what she wants to say. She has a very bad relationship with her father and sister, doesn't want to get married and despises hypocrisy. She is on the verge of a breakdown when we first meet her. Then along comes a man who, through his love, helps her to become calm, serene, happy and humorous' she explains [...]"

The Birthday Party (1994)

Jeremy Kingston, The Times, 21.3.94: "Lesser invests Stanley, reluctant object of [Meg's] affections, with the peevishness and air of grubby vices that the role seems to require ..."

Paul Taylor, Independent, 19.3.94: "In assigning the part of Stanley to Anton Lesser, an actor of electric energy and intelligence, [director Sam Mendes] must, for example, have realised that here was a victim who, to start with at least, would have some fight in him. And indeed, there's a nervy aggressive edge to the way Lesser's frousty Stanley behaves, a barely suppressed fury that keeps getting sidetracked on to Meg."

Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 18.3.94: "Anton Lesser is equally impressive as their victim, impotent anger giving way first to blank faced despair, then to grunts and whimpers of terror that send shivers down the spine."

Alaistair Macauley, Financial Times, 19.3.94: "Anton Lesser traces all the various moods of Stanley - the play's principal victim - with convincing skill, but makes an altogether less forceful impression than [Dora] Bryan."

John Gross, Sunday Telegraph, 20.3.94: "Only Anton Lesser as Stanley the birthday boy never raises much of a smile. Nor is he meant to. It is an essential aspect of the play, and one of its strengths, that Stanely starts out by being a persecutor himself, subjecting Meg to a milder version of the verbal tormet to which he is later subjected by Goldberg and McCann. He is not a particularly pleasant individual all round. But his fate is, of course, monstrously in excess of whatever wrongs he has committed. You might even say that he is guilty and that he gets punished, but that his punishment has nothing to do with his guilt. Lesser's long stretches of silent suffering in the later stages of the play are horribly eloquent. What can he do? What can he say? In inferior productions of The Birthday Party, its terrors can seem contrived, but here they lie at its heart; and whether you decide that theyy are social or psychological or inexplicable, you never doubt their reality."

Michael Coveney, Observer, 20.3.94: "Anton Lesser's hapless Stanley Webber, the former pianist who drew the crowd to Lower Edmonton but found the concert doors locked against him second time out, is a highly-controlled picture of whey-faced, distracted edginess."

Irving Wardle, Independent on Sunday, 20.3.94: "And when Stanley shambles down in his pyjama top and dangling braces, it is not in the usual likeness of a hopeless buffoon. Anton Lesser plays him as a victim who has gone into hiding after some undisclosed calamity. He is in a permanent rage, and treats the doting Meg abominably. But he is not a retarded fool, and when the destroyers close in, he has something to lose. From this basis in farcical realism, the leap into poetic nightmare is as electrifying as ever."

Michael Billington, The Guardian, 19.3.94: "Anton Lesser's Stanley is not simply some spineless villain but - exactly like Josef K in The Trial - a figure compounded of arrogance, paranoia and unspoken guilt. Snarling, furtive and unshaven, Lesser visibly enjoys making Meg's skin crawl. It is a startlingly unsentimental portrait of the nonconformist outsider. And Lesser's bottled rage and violence only make his final transformation into a mute, black-suited insider all the more shocking."

Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 18.3.94, disapproved of "Anton Lesser's far too youthful and insistently furious Stanley. Lesser does not convey Stanley's seedy state of inertia and he shows no particular signs of foreboding when the threatening visitors begin their inquisitorial business."

John Peter, Sunday Times, 27.3.94: "Stanley, played by Anton Lesser at the Lyttelton as a lean, frustrated, whippet-like predator, is like a semi-retarded adult living in the womb-like shelter of a rented room."

Wild Oats (1995)

Robert Butler, Independent on Sunday, 10.9.95: "The coltish Anton Lesser excels here as the irrepressibly romantic actor, who pulls off the difficult feat of enlisting our sympathies whilst talking in quotations."

Louise Doughty, Mail on Sunday, 17.9.95: "Sarah Woodward is [the] gracious Quaker ... who falls for the itinerant strolling player Jack Rover, a part inhabited with boundless lovability by Anton Lesser."

Alaistair Macauley, Financial Times, 11.9.95: "As Rover, Anton Lesser ideally combines the theatrical extravagance of the seasoned actor with the open-hearted charm of a young man in love."

Paul Taylor, Independent, 9.9.95: "As he demonstrated in Two Shakespearian Actors, where he impersonated the great American thespian Edwin Forrest, Anton Lesser excels at depicting men who are driven to perform through some personal problem of identity. Without in any way diminishing the histrionic zest and high-spirits of his performance here, Lesser manages to suggest that Rover talks all the time like some demented Dictionary of Dramatic Quotations because life hasn't yet assigned him a script he can recognise as his own. Diminutive of stature, but with an outsize stage personality, he gives an excellent performance ..."

Maureen Paton, Daily Express, 8.9.95: "Best of all is Anton Lesser in the lead role. He has just the right gnashed-teeth intensity and quixotic derring-do to play Jack Rover, the ham actor with a quotation for every occasion."

Jane Edwardes, Time Out, 13.9.95: "With the biggest build up in thie history of English literature, Anton Lesser as the wandering actor vaults on to the stage with a quote for every occasion. Lesser's high-definition, mesmerising performance encompasses the sweet melancholy of a son who has lost his parents, the fierce pride of a man who loves his art, and the vanity of an actor who plunges into a fight crying 'Not the face!'"

Neil Smith, What's On, 13.9.95: "But so much hilarity is swallowed up ... in spite of a terrific central performance from Lesser as an affable, generous rogue unable to finish a sentence without mangling some famous quotation or another to suit the demands of the moment."

Michael Coveney, Observer, 10.9.95: "... magnificently led by Anton Lesser as the actor caught up in romance, Quakerism and familial reconstructions ... Lesser battles through indifference and adversity to find a deeper self-knowledge and fulfilment in true love."

Bill Hagerty, Today, 8.9.95: "Anton Lesser plays [Rover] so dashingly, and with such charm, that by rights Rover should be treading the boards in Drury Lane, rather than getting caught up in an unlikely story in Hampshire."

Robert Hewison, Sunday Times, 17.9.95: "Fortunately, Anton Lesser is an actor who enjoys the art of acting, so he is well cast as the strolling thespian ... He brings tremendous drive as the engnineer of the schemes."

Jack Tinker, Daily Mail, 8.9.95: "... as Jack, Anton Lesser overcomes his natural physical and vocal lightness with an impish relish which captures the true audaciousness of the play's spirit."

Michael Billington, Guardian, 9.9.95: "... the production is buoyantly sustained by Anton Lesser's superb Rover. He has all the character's insecurity, goodness and whimsical wildness yet also persuades you he has the whiplash anger of the born actor: he pounces on the word 'vagrant', as if his profession has been insulted, with all the fury of a pocket Kean."

John Gross, Sunday Telegraph, 10.9.95: "Anton Lesser's Rover is less satisfactory. Whatever his merits as an actor, he doesn't seem right for the part: he is frisky where you feel he ought to be debonair."

The Lucky Ones (April-May 2002, Hampstead Theatre)

A new play by Charlotte Eilenberg: "Sweeping across decades and four generations, this evocative and searching new play looks at how the hunger for place and belonging exerts a powerful influence on two exiled families."

The unpublished critics have yet to see this production, but published ones seem to be full of admiration for the Great Man's performance.
*Michael Billington, The Guardian, Tuesday 23 April 2002, "a rivetting performance by Anton Lesser.... Lesser's hypnotic display of unpredictability".
*Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, Tuesday 23 April 2002, "Anton Lesser, seething with old resentments and new rage, galvanise[s] the stage with passion."
*Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph, 27 April 2002, "Anton Lesser gives a great performance as the most damaged of "the lucky ones"."
*Kate Kellaway, The Observer, 28 April 2002, "Leo (Anton Lesser), compelling, impulsive, dapper."
*Benedict Nightingale, The Times, Wed 24 April 2002.
*Peter Hepple, The Stage, April 2002
*Philip Fisher, Whatsonstage.com, April 2002

Iachimo in Cymbeline in the RSC 2003 season! This production runs at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from 30 July - 7 November 2003. It is directed by Dominic Cooke and stars Emma Fielding and Daniel Evans.

*Benedict Nightingale, The Times, 8 August 2003, "Anton Lesser ... brings a chilly arrogance to Iachimo, here the natural leader of Rome's white-suited Dolce Vita set."
*Alastair Macauley, Financial Times, 8 August 2003, "Best of all is Anton Lesser's Iachimo - an oxymoron of world-weary despair and inventive glee, both lethal and plaintive in his unswerving focus on other characters, a traitor who shows both the pathos of evil and its wit."
* Michael Billington, The Guardian, 8 August 2003, "Anton Lesser's Iachimo is so wickedly lascivious that he can't resist crawling all over the sleeping Imogen in a manner that exceeds the call of duty."
*Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph, 8 August 2003, "Anton Lesser is wonderfully comical as Iachimo, a malevolent gnome of a man who puts one in mind of Robin Cook."

Brutus in Julius Caesar at the Barbican Theatre 14 April - 14 May 2005. It is directed by Deborah Warner and stars Ralph Fiennes as Mark Antony, Simon Russell Beale as Cassius, and John Shrapnel as Caesar. Anton replaces Paul Rhys who had to withdraw because of illness.

*Benedict Nightingale, The Times, 21 April 2005, "It’s a riveting performance, as is Lesser’s Brutus, a man who unwillingly decides he must kill someone he genuinely loves and remains desperate to maintain his purity of vision and motive despite co-conspirators for whom he feels aversion."
*Alastair Macauley, Financial Times, 21 April 2005, "Lesser's Brutus is an intellectual, but never noble - the adjective most applied by other characters to him - and he overdoes his trick of rapid vocal vibrato. Julius Caesar works throughout only if it becomes Brutus's tragedy too: Lesser stays strangely untouching...."
* Michael Billington, The Guardian, 21 April 2005, "Instead of all that tosh about the noblest Roman of them all, in Anton Lesser's fine performance he is a choleric hysteric, more concerned with his own image than making the right decisions. Agonising under a crescent moon in his orchard, Lesser is ironical with conspirators and waspishly vehement when crossed by Cassius. Gone, I hope forever, is the notion of Brutus as a putative Hamlet or a decent pipe-smoking liberal. The man is a walking political disaster; and Lesser is not afraid to highlight his enormous self-regard and double-think. When he says of Caesar, "Let's kill him nobly but not wrathfully", one is tempted to ask what difference that makes to the victim. Even after the assassination, Lesser shows Brutus cowering in quivering uncertainty: clearly the most neurotic Roman of all."
*Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph, 21 April 2005, "Lesser beautifully captures Brutus's grief over his wife's suicide.."
* Paul Taylor, The Independent, 21 April 2005, "Anton Lesser a compellingly tortured Brutus...."

Leontes in The Winter's Tale at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in rep 26 October 2006 - 6 January 2007. It is directed by Dominic Cooke and stars Kate Fleetwood as Hermione and Linda Bassett as Paulina..

*Paul Taylor, The Independent, 17 November 2006, "It's the first time that I've ever seen a director take literally the idea that the jealous Leontes (excellently tormented Anton Lesser) and Polixenes (fine Nigel Cooke), the friend he deludedly believes has cuckolded him, were "twinned lambs" as children, giving them a strong resemblance, so that it looks as though either could be the father of Leontes' little boy".
*Michael Billington, The Guardian, 16 November 2006, "witness close-up the mental disintegration of Anton Lesser's remarkable Leontes. Tense and wiry, Lesser seems to be admitting us to the dark side of his sub-conscious as he seizes on words like "sluiced" and "slippery" to describe the sexual act."
*Kieron Quirke, Evening Standard, 16 November 2006, "Lesser's tortured jealousy at the start is compelling, but thereon he is a jittery tyrant of little complexity, his motivations forgotten."
*Benedict Nightingale, The Times, 17 November 2006: "With Anton Lesser finding serious jealousy, blistering anger and eventually a quiet, remorseful melancholy in Leontes, and Linda Bassett and Joseph Mydell strongly in support, The Winter’s Tale is never less than gripping. Myself, I had always found the reunion at the play’s end less moving than its counterparts in King Lear and Pericles; but not this time. When Lesser’s Leontes saw movement in the statue of Kate Fleetwood’s fine, feeling Hermione, and recognised that she was alive with a wondering “O, she’s warm”, I blinked and I gulped. Several times."
*Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, 17 November 2006, "I am belatedly coming round to the view that Anton Lesser is often just too actorly; but he gives his all at moments of fevered emotion, and as Leontes he has plenty of those: fevered jealousy about his wife Hermione, followed by fevered repentance."
*Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 17 November 2006, "Anton Lesser is in devastating form as the destructively jealous Leontes."
*Kate Bassett, The Independent, 19 November 2006, "Anton Lesser's small, ruinously insecure Leontes spits jealousy in his white tie and tails."
*Terry Grimley, The Birmingham Post, 17 November 2006, "Being so close is quite an experience when you have performances as terrific as Anton Lesser's steely-edged Leontes, whose sudden and insane delusion that he has been betrayed by his wife and oldest friend drives the first half of the play.... Lesser, who dons age along with a pair of glasses in Part 2, gives one of the production's outstanding performances."
*David Benedict, Variety, 26 November 2006, "Leontes (a meticulous, driven Anton Lesser)".
*Pete Wood, Whatsonstage.com, 26 November 2006, "Anton Lesser ... is on excellent form as Leontes, a part which requires an actor to turn, in an instant, from genial father and friend into a psychopath and, as suddenly, into one suddenly brought to his senses and deeply penitent."
*John Peter, Sunday Times, 26 November 2006, "Anton Lesser's performance misses out on the man's near-masochistic willingness, in the second half, to suffer his punishment, but he goes to the dark heart of Leontes the tyrant: the egotism, the way pain makes him angry, the way his obsession makes him root around for proof".
*Susannah Clapp, The Observer, 17 December 2006, "Anton Lesser's jealousy falls on him like a sad affliction; his face is that of someone squeezed by an agonising pain."

Still ter come: Twelfth Night, Taming of the Shrew, Merry Wives, Two Shakespearian Actors and a whole bunch more. In the meantime, content yourselves with the on-line reviews available at the Theatre page.