Remembering Lynn Redgrave

Yesterday actress Lynn Redgrave passed away. The stage and the silver screen have lost a shining star.

In the mid-90s, my mother took me to see Lynn Redgrave perform her one-woman show, Shakespeare for my Father at the Alley Theatre in Houston. We waited to meet her after the show, and she was gracious and kind to us strangers.

I remember how brilliantly she used Shakespeare's plays to revisit her relationship with her father (Sir Robert Redgrave, a giant of the English stage). I admired her vulnerability, as she laid bare her soul's deep desire to know her deceased father better, and I respected how she could be honest about her own emotions (a deep longing for a closeness with him that he wasn't really able to give) while still honoring her father and his legacy.

You might remember her turn as the wife of prodigy pianist David Helfgott in the film Shine. Sheer genius! She brought such joy to her eccentric character, and I remember it vividly, even though I haven't seen the film for over a decade.

Thank you, Lynn, for YOUR legacy that lives on in your writings and film performances. And thank you most of all for your performance in Shakespeare for my Father that lives on in my memory. Your vulnerability on stage touched something in my soul, and I'm grateful.

I like to think of you reunited with your father in Heaven, finally getting to know each other the way you'd always hoped.

Lay her i' th' earth,

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring!

~Hamlet