Judi leads chorus of protest

by LUKE LEITCH, Evening Standard

Thousands of miles from the front lines in the desert, some of Britain's best actors gathered at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane to voice their concern at the war.

A 1,200-strong audience was treated to a never-to-be-repeated West End performance - the London Concert For Peace.

Dame Judi Dench stole the show, belting out a rendition of Cabaret 35 years after she first acted the role of Sally Bowles. In a black satin gown, Dame Judi, 68, shimmied her way across the stage and won roars of approval from the crowd.

So too did Sir Ian McKellen - but with a very different performance.

The actor read Suicide In The Trenches by First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon - about the difference between watching war and being in the midst of war. Evening Standard Best Actor winner Alex Jennings read extracts from Fergal Keane's Letter To Daniel - a lament for children wounded and killed in wars.

He was followed by a song from 30 children from the Fox School in Notting Hill.

Singing

It was the singing that saved the concert - the brainchild of actress Janie Dee - from lapsing into pure melancholy. The cast of Anything Goes, led by Sally Ann Triplett, opened the night with a high-kicking routine.

Joanna Riding, whose run in My Fair Lady has just ended, returned to the theatre to sing I Could Have Danced All Night.

She said: "It may seem a strange choice, but this is a song about joy in life, and that's something worth seizing."

Donald Rumsfeld

There were then words from the Stop The War Coalition, and a series of quotations read out by five actors. One, from US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, had the audience lost in despairing laughter.

At a press conference last year, Rumsfeld said: "There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns ... things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

Speaking about the war after the show, Dame Judi said: "I feel very strongly about it. I think there are other ways of going about things."

Also over the weekend, more than 200,000 protesters marched through London in the latest public demonstration against the war.

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