February 20, 2015

Fifty years after his death, Winston Churchill has emerged as a star on an unexpected platform: New York theater.

Dakin Matthews as Winston Churchill THE WALL STREET JOURNAL—February 20, 2015. The likeness of the “British Bulldog” is appearing on two stages this season. On Broadway, Churchill is among the prime ministers who meet with Queen Elizabeth II, played by Helen Mirren, in “The Audience,” opening March 8 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. At off-Broadway’s New World Stages, the one-man show “Churchill” has sold so briskly ahead of its Wednesday opening that it already has extended its run.

The timing is just right: 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death, on Jan. 24, 1965, and all year, the legacy of the Nobel Prize-winning wartime leader will be extensively celebrated.

An online hub, Churchillcentral.com, has been created to list information and events. The Royal Mint has struck Winston Churchill 2015 coins. London Mayor Boris Johnson has published a best-selling book, “The Churchill Factor,” ahead of the 50th anniversary. And at a December auction at Sotheby’s in London, several of Churchill’s own paintings sold for prices that far exceeded estimates—one setting an artist record by selling for £1.8 million ($2.7 million) after an estimate of £400,000 to £600,000.

“There has never been a stronger interest in Churchill,” said Barry Singer, proprietor of Midtown Manhattan’s Chartwell Booksellers, which bills itself as the world’s only Winston Churchill bookshop.

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Not only have anniversaries fueled interest, he said, but so have the increasingly public failings of contemporary politicians. 

“There is this sense that he was a leader and a human being that we don’t see in politics anymore,” Mr. Singer said.

A different factor entirely led actor Ronald Keaton to write the one-man show “Churchill” for himself: He needed the work.

“I’m an older character actor, and sometimes you have to create your own opportunity,” said the 60-year-old Chicago thespian who, though slightly portly and follicle-challenged, is more often mistaken for actor Wilford Brimley.

“For a good 40 years, I had a thick mustache,” he said. “I shaved it for this show.”

Mr. Keaton decided to write his own monologue after coming across an old VHS tape of Churchill portrayed by actor Robert Hardy, lately of the Harry Potter films. With the idea sparked, he tucked into some essential reading: “Churchill: A Life” by Martin Gilbert, “The Last Lion” by William Manchester and “Winston Churchill: An Intimate Portrait” by Violet Bonham Carter.

The enormousness of the task was quickly apparent. “You could put on three or four different shows,” Mr. Keaton said. “You could do Churchill’s views on painting alone.”

To focus the narrative, he set his show in March 1946, when Churchill journeyed to Fulton, Mo., to speak at Westminster College. The occasion would become famous for what is known as the “Iron Curtain” speech.

Mr. Keaton’s Churchill looks back at the highs and lows in his public life, as well as his early years, marriage and painting hobby.

“We’re dealing with so much biographical information that the audience has to know, so you try to distill it,” said Mr. Keaton, who closely studied Churchill’s speaking manner and accent for the show.

By contrast, five blocks away at “The Audience,” actor Dakin Matthews is less bound to verisimilitude.

In “The Audience,” Churchill is one of several prime ministers who visit the queen weekly for a private meeting, known as the Audience. Playwright Peter Morgan imagined the dialogue of these meetings.

While some of Churchill’s rhetorical style is reflected in the lines, the portrait is “slightly exaggerated,” said Mr. Matthews, a longtime Shakespearean actor and dramaturge. “We’re looking at what Churchill must have seemed like [to the queen].”

For Mr. Matthews, 74, the challenge was in creating a voice that Churchill might have used in conversation, rather than in the meticulously rehearsed speech patterns that Americans may have heard in his recorded public speeches.

“I’m sure his conversation didn’t sound like his oratory,” he said, adding that he listened to a few outtakes of Churchill speaking “off-camera” before or after official recordings. “One has to at least sound like what Americans think of as Churchillian.”

In life, Churchill was the first prime minister the queen met with in her official capacity as head of state. And in “The Audience,” he delivers something of a lecture to the young woman, explaining how the meetings should work.

As an actor, Mr. Matthews knows tough-guy roles. He recently played the boxing coach Mickey in the Broadway musical version of “Rocky.” But he said he has no sparring urges toward the actor portraying the same character on a nearby stage.

For his part, Mr. Keaton said he has a bit of envy toward Mr. Matthews’ situation as Churchill: “He has company to talk to. I’m up there by myself.”

Copyright © The Wall Street Journal

Photo: Dakin Matthews as Winston Churchill in ‘The Audience,’ which opens March 8 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. © JOAN MARCUS

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