And, let's face it, it's fun to get "the dish," the gossip, the dirt, which is fun and facetious and is the spoonful of spice that makes the "educational purposes" go down a little easier.
The late director Roger Michell had the idea to film a little ritual he'd heard about. Of how four ladies of the theater: Joan Plowright, Eileen Atkins, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench would regularly get together at the West Sussex home of Plowright and her husband Laurence Olivier, when he needed a place close to where he was directing theater. The four saw the place as a bit of an idyll to unwind, talk shop, and as a means to get away with their families. Michell wanted to film the actresses, all named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, talking in a shared space of community.
But, it could hardly be called intimate. Proving that the mere act of observing changes the outcome, the actresses are beset by make-up artists, proper lighting, weather, staging—"have you ever sat like this in your life?"—and a flurry of crew—at one point, Maggie Smith chides a set photographer for taking too many pictures in her field of view and at another, they express shock that it's the first day of one of the crew-members. One is sure that one is watching real conversations—prompted, of course—and the actresses are very forthright, but one gets the sense that they're being honest, they're holding things in reserve for good behavior.
—At one point, Plowright mentions that "none of us was ever in the front ranks of great beauties" Atkins recounts hearing an overheard conversation between producer-director in an early stage role: "She's not very pretty, is she?" "No, but she's sexy." "That saved me," she confesses.
—All of them recount stage jitters, with Atkins saying that "On the way to the theater I always think, would you like to be run over now? Or in a massive car accident? And I only just come out on the side of no."
—Michell asks what it was like to work with their husbands and Smith immediately replies "Which one?"
—commenting on their physical frailties, Maggie Smith asks Plowright if she wants to borrow one of her hearing aids (as Plowright's batteries have worn out) and Dench cackles "...and we have three working eyes between us!"
—During her stage run in "Othello" with Olivier, Smith recounts how a slap delivered by him connected and she wryly comments "It was the only time I saw real stars at the National Theater" and how Olivier was always criticizing how she said her vowels, and upon walking in on Olivier applying his Moor make-up "schmudge" said "How now, brown cow?" and noting her vowels, he said "Much better!"
—Dench is forced to recall her questioning director Peter Hall to play Cleopatra: "Are you sure you want a menopausal dwarf to play this?"
Interspersed with the interviews is much archival footage and photographs in their roles throughout their careers, both on stage and in film, as well as the ceremonies where they received their respective British honors, and it's a trip to see them through various stages of their lives doing comedy, drama, even Dench's turn as Sally Bowles in the 1969 staging of "Cabaret." There's some tart chiding of Dench's seeming to now get every part in Hollywood films. The conversation is lively, but, as the documentary nears its end, one can see energies starting to flag, and silences punctuating the conversation. It's a reminder of fragility even for the grandest of dames, even at the highest of teas.
"That's RUDE!" says Dench, outraged.
They're Americans." says Plowright. "That's how they talk!"
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