In “Hamlet,” the melancholy Dane soliloquizes about the importance of how the show’s play-within-a-play could help him solve the mystery of whether his uncle, Claudius, murdered Hamlet’s father: “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”
Theater helps actors and playgoers alike discover a type of truth that can’t be accessed in any other medium. There’s nothing like the rigor of performing in front of an audience multiple times a week. If you’re on the hunt for inspiration, look to the work of these legendary stage actors. The play’s the thing, indeed.
Simon Russell Beale
In 2008, the Independent named this British legend “the greatest stage actor of his generation.” Over the course of his five-decade career, Beale’s theater work has netted him a Tony, three Oliviers, and four Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards.
Thanks to his versatility and humanity, Beale brings a sense of groundness to subtle dramas and broad comedies alike. He’s perfectly at home whether he’s starring in revivals of classics like “Hamlet” and Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” or modern works like Stefano Massini’s “The Lehman Trilogy” and Christopher Hampton’s “The Philanthropist.”
Robin de Jesús
De Jesús has earned three Tony nominations and a Drama Desk Award for his performances in some of the most influential musicals of our time, including “La Cage aux Folles,” “In the Heights,” “Wicked,” and “Little Shop of Horrors.” He’s a sensitive, endearing performer who brings emotion and zest to even the most tragic roles. He also turned in beautiful performances in a pair of theatrical film adaptations: Joe Mantello’s “The Boys in the Band” (2020) and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “tick, tick… BOOM!” (2021).
Judi Dench
Screenwriter Lee Hall once said that it’s “any writer’s dream” to work with this legendary dame. “She found every nuance, even a lot that I didn’t know was there in the script,” he told us of her performance in 2017’s “Victoria & Abdul.” Dench is a prolific performer of Shakespeare, having delivered acclaimed, nuanced turns in plays like “Hamlet,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “Macbeth,” to name just a few. The 90-year-old legend has also won seven Olivier Awards and a Tony (just one?!) for modern works like Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” David Hare’s “Amy’s View,” and Hugh Whitemore’s “Pack of Lies.”
Brian Dennehy
This late Chicago theater legend often spoke about the importance of performing great stage works. In a 2008 interview with the Toronto Star, he said, “When you walk with giants, you learn how to take bigger steps.” He won a Drama Desk Award and a pair of Tonys for his leading turns in two of the biggest plays out there: Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” and Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Dennehy made even towering characters like Willy Loman and James Tyrone feel relatable, never playing above the audience’s heads.
David Alan Grier
Though Grier is best known for his brilliant comedy work on the classic sketch series “In Living Color,” he’s also a classically trained actor with a Tony Award under his belt. Over the years, he’s plumbed surprising depths in Charles Fullers’ “A Soldier’s Play,” George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” and Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” He told us that he finds theater to be a compelling challenge because of the “emotional demands” of the medium. “To play all those notes honestly and without a false note or manipulation requires me to be in a free and relaxed state so I can draw on that and inhabit it completely,” he said.
Uta Hagen
Born in 1919, this three-time Tony winner turned in unforgettable performances in classics like Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” And that’s not all: Hagen was also a hugely influential drama teacher and practitioner. Rooted in Konstantin Stanislavsky’s philosophies, her technique emphasizes a practical approach to theatrical texts, viewing acting as an ongoing relationship with the elements of everyday life.
Nathan Lane
Lane is a Broadway icon who’s poured his riotous soul into musical comedies including “Guys and Dolls,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” and “The Producers,” earning three Tonys, an Obie, and an Olivier Award in the process. An entertainer through and through, his performances are often broad and borderline vaudevillian. But he also knows when to dial it back, as he did in his acclaimed turn in the 2018 Broadway revival of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” as real-life villain Roy Cohn. Describing his preparation for the role, he told us, “You can’t play a monster; you can’t play evil. This is someone who thinks he’s right.”
Angela Lansbury
Though she’s best remembered as the star of TV comfort watch “Murder She Wrote,” Lansbury is also a six-time Tony winner whom the New York Times once dubbed “the First Lady of Musical Theater.” She had a fiery stage presence, bringing verve and vitality to iconic musicals like “Sweeney Todd,” “Mame,” and “Gypsy.”
Lansbury continued to inspire working actors up until her death in 2022. “When you get the opportunity to do something that seems above and beyond or way off center of what you think you should be doing, and if you feel you can bring something to the project and do it well, it will often lead you to the thing you really want to do,” she told us in 2019.
Brian Stokes Mitchell
One of the great modern interpreters of musical theater, Mitchell won a Tony for his turn in the 1999 Broadway revival of Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate.” He’s also made his mark in productions of “Ragtime,” “Man of La Mancha,” and “Oliver!” Mitchell has a phenomenal baritone singing voice, of course, but he also brings stunning depth to the characters he plays. He told us that theater “never exists, truly; it only exists in the way people think they remember it. But it’s a really powerful way to tell a story and to pass something on.”
