There is Nothing Like a Dane is an affectionate compilation of mostly funny (but sometimes serious) bits and pieces about Hamlet - interwoven with Clive Francis's delectable caricatures of various members of the theatrical profession strutting their stuff.
The great hall of fame is duly visited, though its inhabitants are not always as dignified as they would like to seem. Here are glimpses in word and pictures of the likes of Donald Wolfit, Kenneth Branagh, John Gielgud, Henry Irving, Jonathan Pryce, John Barrymore, Alec Guinness, Richard Burton and of course, Laurence Olivier. The tone is also elevated now and then by contributions from great writers such as Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Henry Fielding and P.G. Wodehouse. But the chief delight is in the unexpected: a stubbornly mustachioed Ophelia in Poona, India, an inadvertently horn-rimmed Hamlet on London's Waterloo Road - and would you believe Tony Hancock, Tommy Cooper and even June Whitfield as the Prince of Denmark?
This is a book for actors and audiences - and Shakespeare buffs on their day off.
About the Author :
Clive Francis is well-known as an actor as well as a caricaturist. He has made over a hundred television appearances, while his London stage career began in 1966 with There's a Girl in My Soup. He performed in a large number of shows in London's West End, including Graham Greene's The Return of AJ Raffles, Somerset Maugham's The Circle, Simon Gray's The Rear Column, Sheridan's The School of Scandal, Noel Coward's Look after Lulu, Michael Frayn's Benefactors, Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw and Alan Bennett's Single Spies. He joined Alan Ayckbourn's company at London's National Theatre in 1986 and was Scrooge for two years running in the Royal Shakespeare Company's A Christmas Carol.
Clive Francis has been caricaturing professionally since 1983 and has had seven solo exhibitions including three at the National Theatre. He has designed a number of posters and book covers, including two for Alec Guinness and two for John Gielgud.
