‘The Half’ is how actors refer to the half hour before their play begins, when they ready themselves, steady themselves, for their performance. For 25 years Simon Annand has been allowed to catch these vulnerable moments and the result is a series of intimate, revealing and beautiful portraits.
Many of the subjects are famous, a few are not. Some do exercises like athletes, pulling their limbs into unlikely positions — sometimes sitting beside a wash-basin, like Saffron Burrows (above). Others lie on the floor; Derek Jacobi before ‘The Tempest’ may be asleep. Julia Stiles looks defiant. Glenda Jackson and Max von Sydow, surprisingly, roar with laughter. Naturally enough, many are peering at the equipment they are about to work with, perfecting make-up, checking hair, though Tim Piggott-Smith manages to telephone at the same time.
The most interesting are those doing what you immediately feel you should have foreseen: the actor gazes into space, focusing mentally but not physically, concentrating with an intensity that sometimes looks bleak or even despairing, lost to the world.
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