The family business

Stored in the archives of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum are boxes marked “Redgrave” that contain memorabilia of a family of actors that stretches as far back as the 18th century. Among the ephemera are books, portraits, letters and programs associated with, among others, Roy Redgrave, the self-styled “Dramatic Cock o’ the North,” who played London’s Sadler’s Wells in 1902 and later became a silent-film star. His son, Michael, followed in the family profession, scoring triumph after triumph on the London stage, in 1935 co-starring in a production of “Flowers of the Forest” opposite Rachel Kempson, whom he later married.

In the years to come, the couple’s progeny, Vanessa, Corin and Lynn, would collect their own voluminous theatrical clippings, as would their grandchildren, most notably Natasha Richardson and her sister Joely. All of which might lead one to think of the Redgraves as one of the preeminent theatrical dynasties of our time.

One would be wrong, according to Vanessa Redgrave.

“We’re not a dynasty!” says the actress, mother of Natasha and Joely. “We’re a family of professional actors. That’s not a dynasty! I’m so sick of hearing this word; it’s used so loosely, and it is so completely inappropriate. We have no power. We just have the power that’s in ourselves to try to do the work as well as we can.”

The opportunity to look anew at that power and the Redgraves’ particular contribution to theater is sparked by the fact that Vanessa, Corin and Lynn each will be starring in separate projects on the New York stage this season. First up is 63-year-old Corin, playing the notorious Benedict Arnold in the new Richard Nelson drama “The General From America,” off-Broadway through the 22nd of this month.

In March, Lynn, 59, will perform in her own off-Broadway play, “The Mandrake Root” -- inspired by her mother, Lady Rachel Kempson -- in which the arrival of a dyspeptic 80-year-old actress on her daughter’s doorstep spurs an attempt to reclaim the damaging past.

And later in spring, Vanessa, 65, takes on the role of drug-addled Mary Tyrone in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” with Brian Dennehy, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert Sean Leonard.

The Redgrave family first burst into the American consciousness through film, not stage. Michael Redgrave -- long established in Britain as a commanding classical stage actor, the equal of Olivier and Gielgud who, like them, would later be knighted -- became known to U.S. audiences as the star of such films as Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” (1939) and “Mourning Becomes Electra” (1947), for which he received an Oscar nomination. His daughters, Vanessa and Lynn, became international film stars in 1966, nominated for Oscars for, respectively, “Morgan” and “Georgy Girl” -- Vanessa as a cool, sexy beauty, Lynn as an ugly duckling. Even Corin was a film presence that year, in a brief role as a hothead in “A Man for All Seasons.”

But it is on the stage that the Redgraves have wielded a creative power as commanding as any Plantagenet or Windsor. No one family since the Barrymores has earned more collective critical acclaim and honors or, for that matter, generated more grist for tabloid headlines. But through all the controversies, what has remained constant is a fierce devotion to the profession that Corin, the middle child, likened to a vocation. In organizing the Redgrave memorabilia with his sisters for a planned exhibition next year at the Theatre Museum in London, Corin said, “I was struck by how brave and committed to their calling they were.”

Jobs that keep them on the go

Speaking by phone with the actors about how the blood ties of the past reverberate in their lives and work revealed just how peripatetic -- and busy -- this generation of Redgraves is. Lynn, who lives in Connecticut, was reached in Australia, where she was filming “Peter Pan,” playing a flamboyant aunt in the Darling family. It’s the fourth in a line of just-completed movies, which include the David Cronenberg film “Spider,” starring Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson (no relation) and Gabriel Byrne.

Corin, who lives in London with his wife, actress Kika Markham, spoke from New York, where he had begun performances of “The General From America.” And Vanessa was on the fly, moving between London and Copenhagen, where she was involved in aiding human rights organizations in the case of Chechen political prisoner Ahmed Zakayev.

“When we were children, because we’re an acting family and my parents were often heading off for a tour or to make a film, there were a lot of goodbyes and a lot of welcome-homes,” Lynn recalls. “We would hug and kiss even if we were just going to shop.”

Those abandonment fears, which fell particularly hard on Lynn as the youngest, are one of the themes of “Mandrake Root,” her second play to deal with family issues. The first, “Shakespeare for My Father,” more directly addressed her relationship with her remote but exacting father.

In “Mandrake Root,” named after a powerful aphrodisiac with mystical properties, the father figure is Robert, a distinguished actor whose homosexuality causes his actress-wife, Rose, to take up with a lover.

Though there are autobiographical elements (Michael had male lovers, famously Noel Coward), Lynn cautions that anyone looking for more than glancing similarities would come up empty-handed. “It would be going down the wrong garden path,” she says. “Robert is definitely not my father, and Sally [his daughter] is definitely not me.”

But there appear to be more similarities between Rose and Rachel Kempson. Speaking of her mother, now 92, Lynn quotes actress Constance Cummings, who once said of Rachel, “She is like a beautiful swan, gliding gracefully through adversity.” And Rose is a fascinating and complex character: a sexually charged romantic grown angry, forlorn and confused with age but still a force of nature.

“It’s a fictionalized account, but Lynn is playing her mother, at ages 20, 40, 60 and 80, and she is incandescent,” says Susan Dietz, one of the producers of the play, which premiered at San Jose Rep earlier this year. “This [is a] very tough look at the failings of a mother and a daughter and how they begin to repair the damage.”

Any damage was suffered by the children of such an emotionally complex and talented couple apparently was compensated for with an environment in which art, literature, poetry and drama held sway and talent was nurtured and held to the highest standards.

Given their famous pedigree, all three of the Redgrave children sought to make their own way in the acting profession and avoid the inevitable comparisons -- out of sheer self-preservation if nothing else, Lynn says. “I think we’ve all aspired to become better and better as actors because the bar was set so extraordinarily high,” she says. “Our regular fare was to see the greatest of actors -- our parents’ friends and peers -- and I think because of that, Vanessa, Corin and I enjoy a shared passion about being actors and respecting what it takes to do the work.”

In later years, Lynn and Corin have also turned to writing, following another family tradition: Their great-grandfather Fortunatus Augustus Scudamore was a writer of Victorian melodrama, and Michael also wrote adaptations and original plays.

Lynn is on to her third play, “Nightingale,” a one-person show about a pinched, disappointed woman whose past is slowly revealed. Corin, in addition to writing a memoir of his father, has written and performed a monodrama about Sir Anthony Blunt, a British art scholar who spied for the Russians (and who was an acquaintance of Michael Redgrave’s during their Cambridge days).

An education in social issues

Corin’s current role of Benedict Arnold is yet another conflicted and complex character in a resume that includes Oscar Wilde in “De Profundis” and Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus.” Corin says he is drawn to playing maverick characters, not unlike his sister Vanessa. That against-the-grain propensity bleeds into their politics as well.

While Lynn is comparatively less political, Corin and Vanessa have been -- and are -- committed and active socialists. They are co-founders of the Workers Revolutionary Party and the Moving Theatre, a stage company committed to works of contemporary relevance. Indeed, Corin’s last great role in America was a gift from Vanessa: She discovered an unproduced play of Tennessee Williams, “Not About Nightingales,” and the Moving Theatre brought it to Broadway with Corin as a towering, sadistic prison boss, a role that won him a Tony nomination in 1999.

The siblings have also acted together through the years. Vanessa and Lynn were in a West End production of “The Three Sisters” with Vanessa’s daughter Joely. And Corin and Vanessa have assayed the stage, playing lovers in Coward’s “Song at Twilight” and brother and sister in “The Cherry Orchard.” Although Corin maintains that he doesn’t look for social or political relevance in roles, he says, “One is very glad when it does resonate. When you can share something about the political condition with the audience, then one feels doubly blessed. For example, what’s striking in Richard’s play [‘The General From America’] is this quest for certainty: This is right and that is wrong, this is good and this evil, the attempt to devise some sort of moral compass that is due north, and march off confidently. Well, the world is a much more complex place than that.”

Because their father was also a committed leftist, one might gather that he was instrumental in the development of his children’s tenacious fight for social justice as they see it -- there was a period when Corin was blacklisted by the BBC and snubbed by the Royal Shakespeare Company for his radical politics, and Vanessa has been the subject of countless attacks. But Vanessa says her political education came first from family friends, actors such as Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Robeson and intellectuals such as George Devine, and then through her husband, the late Tony Richardson. “He was the real [political] shaker and iconoclast of the family,” she says. “I was a very conservative and somewhat ignorant lady compared to him.”

Vanessa says that what she did learn from her parents was discipline (“never to offload your moods and tiredness onto the process”), openness (“not to judge everything in a play by how I would react, but to put myself in the shoes of somebody who is not me”) and the sense of acting, in its best expression, as “something connected to public service.”

“I think all good work is of social significance in some way or another,” she adds. “And as a theater family -- and that is what we are -- those standards are very high. I’ll put my mother first, because she usually gets put last, but as an actress, she was extraordinarily poignant, tender and had -- and has -- spontaneity and immediacy, which is stunning. And as for my father, well, the Shakespearean texts seemed to come from him as though they had never before been uttered by anyone, including himself. So, when you ask if I’m feeling nervous about ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night,’ yes, I’m feeling quite nervous about Mary Tyrone. It’s enormously demanding. And it is exactly what it says it is: one long shot into the night.”

For Vanessa, the crosscurrents of family, politics and art converged in a moving way a couple of years ago when, after the liberation of Kosovo, she and her mother participated in an arts festival in the capital city of Pristina. Rachel Kempson recited Sonya’s concluding speech from Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” about the dignity and redemptive power of work and the search for peace until final rest comes with death. Given the significance of “Vanya” in Michael’s career, the play would already hold a special place in the Redgrave legacy. But it would also seem to encapsulate the family’s values of hard work, steely determination, personal bravery and the romantic blood ties that lie beneath it.

In 1979, while filming in Australia, Lynn discovered the unmarked grave of her grandfather and asked her father what he would like to have put on the stone. “Roy Redgrave, actor,” he replied. “Just yesterday I went and visited my grandfather’s grave,” Lynn said from Australia. “It’s high on a hill, with the ocean on one side and a spectacular view of Sydney Harbor on the other. I’ve always had this romance about this gypsy life we lead. And Roy, he was an adventurer.

“Just hop on a boat, write a couple of plays on the way, get off, join the company and behave badly, get drunk. I don’t get into the ‘behave badly,’ the ‘get drunk,’ but the rest of it, that’s exciting; still exciting. When I get on the plane, get in the car, it’s still a romance.”

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A history that keeps rewriting itself

The Redgrave name is synonymous with acting. The family’s ties to the stage date back to the 18th century. Vanessa, Corin and Lynn Redgrave all have numerous stage, film and television credits, as do several of their relatives. A sampling:

George Ellsworthy “Roy” Redgrave (1873-1922)

On stage: Made his debut in 1899. First appeared at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in 1902, and appeared frequently on the London stage. Married actress Margaret “Daisy” Scudamore in 1907 and later left her and young son, Michael, to seek his fortune in Australia.

On film: Starred in such silent movies as “Robbery Under Arms” (1920).

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Michael Scudamore Redgrave (1908-1985)

On stage: First appearance: 1934 at the Playhouse in Liverpool, where he met actress Rachel Kempson, whom he married in 1935. Spent a season with the Old Vic in 1936, joined John Gielgud’s company at the Queen’s Theatre in 1937.

Took on many classics, such as “Uncle Vanya” and Shakespearean roles. Made his Broadway debut in “Macbeth” in 1948; nominated for a Tony for “Tiger at the Gates” in 1956. Knighted in 1959.

On film: Began his career with Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes.” Received Oscar nomination for “Mourning Becomes Electra.”

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Rachel Kempson (1910- )

On stage: Debuted in 1932 as Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet” in Stratford.

On film: Appeared in more than 15 films over the past six decades, including “The Captive Heart” (1946, with husband Michael), “Tom Jones” (1963, with daughter Lynn), “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1968 with daughter Vanessa) and “Out of Africa” (1985).

On television: Numerous credits, including “Uncle Vanya” in 1991.

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Natasha Richardson (1963- )

On stage: Highlights include roles as Helena in “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream” and Ophelia in “Hamlet” at the Young Vic. Starred with her mother, Vanessa, in 1986 in “The Seagull.” Named best actress by London Drama Critics in 1992 for “Anna Christie,” which moved to Broadway in 1993 and led to her first Tony nod. Won a Tony in 1998 for her portrayal of Sally Bowles in “Cabaret.”

On film: Several movies including “Chelsea Walls” (2001), “The Parent Trap” (1998) and “The Handmaid’s Tale” (1990).

On television: Credits include last year’s miniseries “Haven.”

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Joely Richardson (1965- )

On stage: Spent a season at the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in several productions, including “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Macbeth.” Later seen at the Liverpool Playhouse in “Miss Julie” and in “Beauty and the Beast.” Performed with mother Vanessa in “Lady Windermere’s Fan” earlier this year on London’s West End.

On film: Among her credits are 1996’s “101 Dalmatians” and 2000’s “The Patriot.”

On television: Roles include Lady Chatterley in 1992 BBC miniseries “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

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Jemma Redgrave (1965- )

On stage: Appeared in the 1990 West End production of “Three Sisters” with aunts Lynn and Vanessa and in the 1998 Peter Hall Company production of “Major Barbara.” Father is Corin Redgrave.

On film: Credits include “Howards End,” 1992, with aunt Vanessa.

On television: “Bramwell” series in U.K.