The Honourable Beast: A Posthumous Autobiography [Hardcover]

John Dexter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 14, 1993 | ISBN-10: 087830035X | ISBN-13: 978-0878300358 | Edition: 1

Chock-full of intimate encounters and scathing gossip, The Honourable Beast is the memoir-diary of the late John Dexter, the Tony Award-winning director of numerous plays and operas.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This collection of diary entries, letters, production notebooks and memos is less an autobiography than a freewheeling journey through the mind of Tony Award-winning stage and opera director John Dexter, acclaimed for such productions as M. Butterfly and Equus . Dexter (1925-1990) was connected with the Royal Court and National theaters in London as well as with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, where he had a tumultous tenure as director of productions from 1974 to 1981. His comments on the theater people he worked with show that while he could be ingratiating when it was required by prima donnas, he was generally difficult, bitchy--and inspired. Especially revealing are Dexter's remarks on the state of the theater in the U.S. and England, and his frank accounts of his disputes with the Metropolitan Opera conductor, James Levine, and playwright Peter Shaffer. Nevertheless, this conglomeration of writings assembled after his death will be confusing for readers who are not familiar with Dexter's circle of theatrical personalities and their power struggles. Photos not seen by PW .
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Deep salad of diary clippings, jottings, and letters--all bearing on directing plays, films, and operas--from the collected unpublished writings of the Tony-winning director of Equus and M. Butterfly, who died in 1990 following seven years of directing operas at the Met. Never in great health and disabled by polio as a soldier, Dexter touches on autobiography here only when it ties into a production. When he died, he was assembling a journal of sorts from his diaries and director's notes, as well as from letters to and from actors and playwrights, singers, set designers, and other theatrical folk he'd worked with during his 40 years in the theater: Here, his labors were taken over by longtime friend Riggs O'Hara, assisted by Andrew Weale--and theater writing doesn't get much richer than this. Dexter worked and mingled with the greatest talents of his day: Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, Rudolf Nureyev, Paul Scofield, Richard Burton, Stephen Sondheim, Maria Callas, Anthony Hopkins, Kenneth Tynan, and Maggie Smith, among fabled others. We follow his early mullings and musings about productions to be launched, as well as about rehearsals, fights, and sackings. Working often with a nearly bare stage to draw out the audience's imagination, Dexter strives to bring freshness to each work while not getting in the way of the talent at hand. Meanwhile, he has the actor-manager's passion for budgets. As he says when the producers waffle about hiring him for M. Butterfly, ``No call. They don't want me. I am difficult, British, homosexual, expensive--and whilst I can, with modified rapture, admit to the first three charges, the last is deeply wounding.'' Many inspiring moments prime the reader with hope for a biography--as well as for a clearer spelling-out of Dexter's stagecraft. (Illustrations) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (July 14, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087830035X
• ISBN-13: 978-0878300358
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,362,408 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.