Background
Margaret Webster was born in New York City to famed British actors Ben Webster and Mary Louisa May Whitty (later, Dame May Whitty), during one of their American engagements; thus she had dual U. S. and British citizenship.
( A prominent producer-director of Shakespeare's plays wr...)
A prominent producer-director of Shakespeare's plays writes with wit and verve about the Elizabethan theater and subsequent modifications in theatrical practice, differences between actors and audiences in Shakespeare's day and ours, and more "There is not an obscure or otherwise dull page in the book." — N.Y. Times Book Review.
https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Without-Tears-Directors-Playgoers-ebook/dp/B00A44Z00M?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00A44Z00M
(Previous owner's bookplate on FFEP. DJ price clipped, tor...)
Previous owner's bookplate on FFEP. DJ price clipped, torn and tattered.
https://www.amazon.com/same-only-different-generations-theatre/dp/057500388X?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=057500388X
Margaret Webster was born in New York City to famed British actors Ben Webster and Mary Louisa May Whitty (later, Dame May Whitty), during one of their American engagements; thus she had dual U. S. and British citizenship.
She was educated in England, attending Queen Anne's, a public (that is, private) school in Caversham. Webster, who discounted the importance of a degree for a theatrical career, never attended college; she did study acting briefly at London's Etlinger Dramatic School, which her mother managed beginning in 1921.
Webster's first professional acting job was as a member of the chorus in Sybil Thorndike's production of The Trojan Women (1924). She was soon appearing regularly in commercial West End plays, in classics staged at the Old Vic (where she usually played second leads), and in the productions of Ben Greet's Players, a troupe famous for its Shakespearean revivals. She began to direct in 1933, first with amateurs. Especially impressive was her outdoor pageant version of Shakespeare's Henry VIII (1934), staged in Kent, using eight hundred women in the baptism scene. Webster, who eventually acted in many plays she also directed, continued her London acting career while directing for several noncommercial groups in the years 1935-1936, simultaneously picking up a mastery of stage lighting. By 1937, her newfound skills were recognized when she handled her first commercial play, Keith Winter's Old Music. Soon after, she went to New York to direct her friend Maurice Evans in a rare Broadway production of a Shakespeare play, Richard II (1937). The swiftly paced, scenically fluid, and--despite a low budget - visually striking production accumulated a recordbreaking 171 performances, leading to a series of Shakespearean productions that made Webster America's most consistently successful Shakespearean director. Webster's Shakespeare productions on Broadway included Hamlet (1939), with Evans, remarkable for using an uncut text; Henry IV, Part I (1939), with Evans as Falstaff; Twelfth Night (1940), with Helen Hayes as Viola and Evans as a cockney Malvolio; Macbeth (1941), with Evans and Judith Anderson; a recordbreaking, 295-performance Othello (1943), starring black actor Paul Robeson in what was then a highly controversial piece of casting (Othello was traditionally played by whites in blackface); The Tempest (1945), with black actor and former boxer Canada Lee playing Caliban (another part usually played by whites) and with ballerina Vera Zorina as Ariel; Henry VIII (1946), part of the repertory of the failed American Repertory Theatre (ART), a nonprofit troupe that Webster cofounded with Eva Le Gallienne, her frequent collaborator, and Cheryl Crawford; The Taming of the Shrew (1951); and Richard III (1953), starring Evans. She also staged abbreviated versions of four Shakespeare comedies for the Merrie Old England exhibition at the New York World's Fair (1939) in a miniature version of the Globe Theatre, and directed several more Shakespeare plays for the Margaret Webster Shakespeare Company (Marweb), a bus-and-truck touring troupe she founded in 1948 and managed for two years. In 1952, she toured in her one-woman program, An Evening with Will Shakespeare. Webster also directed three Shakespeare productions for British repertory companies in 1956, 1957, and 1960. Her book, Shakespeare without Tears (1942), became a classic in the field, and reflected Webster's conviction that the bard could be both accessible and entertaining to modern audiences. She claimed that Shakespearean direction must make the story live as clearly and straightforwardly as possible while keeping the directorial presence discreet. Her emphasis was on character reality, rather than political or social issues. Crucial to her style of direction was an inspired leading actor, which many felt she had in Evans. Often, she allowed the star to dictate his or her own interpretation of a role. The clarity of her productions was one of their most noted features, and she was renowned, if not always appreciated, for what some termed her "domestication" of the action, so that behavior seemed detailed and lifelike. This was accomplished despite her preference for simplified, nonobtrusive - though always beautiful - sets and minimal furnishings that allowed for rapid shifts from one locale to another. Because the proscenium stage allowed her to create striking pictures, she preferred it to adaptations of the Elizabethan theater, although she approved the addition of a forestage in order to increase actor-audience intimacy. Despite being famed for her uncut Hamlet, Webster took textual liberties when necessary. Webster also provided excellent stagings of modern classics, including New York productions of The Cherry Orchard (1944), codirected with Le Gallienne; Ghosts (1947) and Hedda Gabler (1947); and a number of Shaw plays: The Devil's Disciple (1950), Saint Joan (1951), and Back to Methuselah (1958) among them. Beginning with Young Mr. Disraeli (1937), in which her father starred, Webster staged over a dozen contemporary plays in New York, but these were never as successful as her classical productions. In 1950 she became the first woman director at the New York's Metropolitan Opera, for whom she staged several works; she also directed operas for the New York City Opera Company. Despite a brief period spent in Hollywood in 1940, she never directed a film, although she did eventually direct some television scripts. After a very active Broadway career through the 1940's, she turned elsewhere in the 1950's, which saw her touring Shakespeare around the country and preparing the way for the resident theater movement that soon would follow; returning, in 1953, to England after eighteen years, where she worked until 1970; giving readings of Shakespeare and Shaw and staging O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet for both black and white audiences in South Africa in 1961; directing plays on university campuses and Off Broadway; and mounting plays for the National Repertory Company (NRC), a new touring company founded by Le Gallienne in 1965-1966. The principal reason for all this non-Broadway work was the unjustified damage to her reputation caused when actor José Ferrer named her as a Communist in his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in May 1951. A liberal, but never a Communist, Webster was eventually exonerated. But during the 1950's she was blacklisted and denied the opportunity to practice her craft in major commercial productions. Webster was long an important board member of the Actors Equity Association. In addition to her work with the ART, the Marweb troupe, the NRC, and other companies, she also was the force behind the creation of the Experimental Theatre, which she founded in 1941 as a noncommercial outlet for actors needing experience in the classics. Though shortlived, partly because of the war, it was later revived by others and proved an important spur to the Off Broadway movement of the 1950's. Webster was also a powerful advocate for the establishment of a subsidized American national theater. She died in New York City.
( A prominent producer-director of Shakespeare's plays wr...)
(Previous owner's bookplate on FFEP. DJ price clipped, tor...)
This no-nonsense woman, who usually wore her hair short, preferred slacks, and invariably had a cigarette dangling from her lips, was an idealist at the forefront of various attempts to establish noncommercial outlets for great plays and opportunities for actors to expand their talents.
Quotes from others about the person
Critic George Jean Nathan described her as "the best director of the plays of Shakespeare that we have".
Webster never married.