Laying out to filth (Evening Standard 26 March 1990)
Marvellous Maggie Smith was the toast of Broadway last night with rave review from New York critics after the opening of Lettice and Lovage.
The curtain went up and down three times at the end, bringing the audience to its feet at the packed Ethel Barrymore Theatre. New York Tiimes critic Frank Rich, known as "The Butcher of Broadway", said the Peter Shaffer comedy "has brought this spell-binding actress back to Broadway after an indecently long absense ... and has the shrewd sense to keep her glued to centre stage."
This was music to everybody's ears at thee first-night party, which included Shaffer and guests like Anthony Quinn, Jonathan Miller, director Michael Nichols and actress Mary Beth Hurt.
Critic Clive Barnes, equally adept to putting the knife in, wrote under the headline "Maggie the Magnificent": "Let's bend a knee in homage and welcome the returns of the Smith of the Smiths... her acting, while deliciously larger than life, never for a second forgets the life it is larger than."
Howard Kissel of the New York Daily News added: "If anyone can justify a 'star vehicle' it's Maggie Smith.
"As powerful as she is in movies of TV, the theatre is her true element."
The critics also loved co-star Margaret Tyzack. The Times calls her "Estimable ... a flawless performance", the Post "A perfect counterweight to Dame Maggie" and the News "An unending study in melancholy and dourness... the pairing is incomparable."
It has taken a lot of patience to get Lettice and Lovage - a former winner of the Evening Standard Drama Award for Best Comedy - to Broadway.
Maggie broke her shoulder falling off a bike while on holidays two years ago and then suffered a serious virus which put the play back a year.