Friday Book: Dame Judi gives nothing away

JUDI DENCH: WITH A CRACK IN HER VOICE

BY JOHN MILLER, WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON, pounds 20

LISTEN IN on any group of actors - especially those who have been in the Business a while - and pretty soon the conversation will distil down to a catalogue of who did which show with whom, what went wrong with the set, what the reviews were like, and how the company was one big, lovely family. Once that's out of the way, they will move on to which actor corpsed the worst and who managed to make the others corpse without losing it themselves.

And that's what reading this new biography is like. It is as though Dame Judi is holding court and working methodically through her CV - dates and places, Hermiones and Hermias, directors and debuts. But she only really comes alive when remembering those practical jokes, on stage or off, the secret games invisible to the audience.

Not that you feel she is one of those grandiloquent thespians who would actually hold court. Given her high profile, she has been remarkably, laudably careful about how much she has publicly revealed herself. But then it seems there aren't any great revelations waiting - or, if there are, this overly respectful biography studiously avoids them.

John Miller starts at birth and ends with Dame Judi's Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown. But this is hardly an Understudy's-On-And-Ziegfeld's-In- Tonite story of overnight stardom. It isn't even a Go-On-The-Stage-And- I'll- Disown You tale of talent's victory over prejudice. In fact, the Dench parents were keen amateur actors and often had the cast from the Theatre Royal round to their home in York. An elder brother was already on the stage and when Judy wanted to go to drama school, they actively encouraged her. There she became Judi.

Auditioned in her last year, the Old Vic cast her on the spot as Ophelia. Admittedly, she was not considered a success and was replaced for the US tour, but this was a rare setback. Since her professional debut in 1957, not once has she had to wonder "Will I ever work again?"

This biography - zealously authorised - takes us through each of her triumphs and near-triumphs. Miller does not like to admit to any turkeys (maybe there haven't been any). If any show was not considered a success at the time, he puts it down to another cause.

So we wend our way (that's his kind of language) through Old Vic seasons, her first stint at the RSC (Isabella in Measure for Measure, Titania in Midsummer Night's Dream, The Three Sisters at the Oxford Playhouse for Frank Hauser and The Promise, which first takes her into the West End. Then she is back at Stratford for the Hermione-Perdita double in A Winter's Tale, and London Assurance and then the landmark Macbeth with McKellen. From there she decamps to the National for A Kind of Alaska, Lady Bracknell and Mother Courage.

And so it goes on. And, for each, we get the casting process, her doubts, her doubts overcome, the rehearsal period, more doubts, more doubts overcome, the first night, the dressing-room japes and - yes - the corpsing. And each show's history is rounded off with a dutiful selection of reviews. Never has one book contained so many paragraphs beginning "J C Trewin struck a similar chord in the Birmingham Post" .

And maybe this is the problem with listening to actors. They will talk about where, when, who, but never how. Acting is one of the most slippery, indefinable arts: we know good acting when we see it, but can we define the difference, the methodology, that results in acting of genius?

Disappointingly, this book never attempts it. Dame Judi clearly gave her biographer many days of her time, but he never once attempts to find the source of her throaty, neon spirit. He quotes Billy Connolly - her co-star in Mrs Brown - after reading the books about how to do this job of acting: "I read `Be real, don't get caught acting'. I thought how the hell do you do that?" For him, and for the reader, the question remains tantalisingly unanswered.

So this biography genuinely leaves you wondering if she knows how she does it. Here's a woman who does not even read the script before rehearsals, who leans over to the designer half way through the first read-through and says, "I'm absolutely dying to know what happens next." Miller never meditates on her methods, never opens up a dialogue among the directors he quotes. As a result, his subject remains as mercurial and intangible as the art itself.

This is a safe book, a book written for her ageing fan-club, for those who have come to know her through A Fine Romance and As Time Goes By. These sitcoms - unlike many of her edgy stage performances - never attempt to unsettle or astound. This is a fitting biography to accompany them.