No Turn Unstoned: The Worst Ever Theatrical Reviews by Diana Rigg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"'A critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned,' as my friend the Reverend Joseph McCulloch once remarked to me, and from this maxim came my idea for the book. It followed, surely, that everyone in my profession must, at some time, have been given a bad notice. So I wrote to all the well-known actors and actresses of today and asked them to donate their worst/funniest review."
(From the author's Introduction.)

Diana Rigg is one of the greatest living stage and film actresses, winner of the Tony Award for the title role in Medea. She is also a CBE and a Dame for her service to the arts of drama. Most people my age, though, remember her from the unforgettable role of Emma Peel in the British cult TV series of the late 1960s, The Avengers (please note that it has absolutely nothing to do with the Hollywood Avengers of today, and is of stellar quality instead, sort of like Monty Python of science-fiction; if anything, it might be considered a precursor of X-Files.) I was a late teenager in the late 1960s and like tens of thousands of other teenagers I was in love with Ms. Rigg. She also appeared in one Bond movie, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and James Bond actually married her. Well, had I been James Bond I would have married her too. Most men would. Anyway.

No Turn Unstoned (1982) is a collection of fragments of "the worst ever theatrical reviews" compiled by Diana Rigg. There is no good way of reviewing a book that consists of a thousand or so quotes. Let me only say the collection is very funny, and even if the readers have not heard about many people that are criticized, often brutally but almost always wittily, they will laugh out loud anyway. But before I quote a few of my favorite bits and pieces, here's a partial list of really famous actors who are skewered by the reviewers: Judi Dench, Tom Courtenay, Sarah Bernhardt, Julie Christie, Mia Farrow, Albert Finney, John Gielgud, Ian Holm, Anthony Hopkins, Glenda Jackson, Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, and Vanessa Redgrave. Each one of these giants of acting took a beating from critics at some point of their career. What about Diana Rigg herself? Sure, she gets made fun of too:

"Diana Rigg is built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses."

Some of my other favorites: About Katharine Hepburn:

"An actress of such strikingly limited ability that, in professional company, she seems almost amateurish [...] You know she can't act, yet you do not particularly mind."

About John Gielgud:

"Mr. Gielgud has the most meaningless legs imaginable."

About Glenda Jackson:

"Glenda Jackson has a face to launch a thousand dredgers."

About a certain play:

"I can certainly add that, unpleasant though the prospect of being kicked in the stomach by a horse may be, I would certainly rather be kicked in the stomach by a horse than see the play again."

A devastating, sometimes cruel, and very funny collection!

Three-and-a-half stars.


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