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Judi, Maggie, Joan and Eileen: all hail British theatre's great dames | Michael Billington

Roger Michell’s film Nothing Like a Dame brings four legends together – and evokes decades of brilliant performances

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest. The wheeze of bringing together four of Britain’s distinguished theatrical dames – Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Maggie Smith – and letting them reminisce has yielded an extraordinary film which opens in cinemas next week before being shown on BBC TV under the Arena banner. Called, inevitably, Nothing Like a Dame, and directed by Roger Michell, it is both hilarious and, in its mix of present-day recollection and past footage, extremely touching. It also reminds me of the truth of David Hare’s observation that acting is ultimately “a judgment of character”.

The four dames have known each other a long time and have much in common. Between them they have played all the great roles: Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Saint Joan, the Duchess of Malfi. They have lived through radical changes in the approach to verse-speaking. And they have experienced the humdrum delights of theatrical digs: one legendary story involves an actor returning unexpectedly to pick up a script and discovering his landlady spreadeagled on the kitchen table with the milkman, only for her to shyly declare: “You must think me a terrible flirt.”

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