The festival said the show was filmed and it hopes to secure the rights to share it publicly. When shows resumed this summer, Henry used a walker throughout rehearsal and early performances, but about a month into the run in September, she moved into a wheelchair.Įven as her health deteriorated, Henry never let the audience in on the parallels between her character and her personal struggles, commanding the stage through her last performance on Oct. She received her cancer diagnosis not long before the pandemic shuttered the 2020 Stratford production, the festival said. Henry upheld this devotion to her craft in her final role as an old woman facing her mortality in Edward Albee's “Three Tall Women.” And you felt it at every moment watching her,” said Dale, who performed alongside Henry in a 1986 production of “Pal Joey” at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre. “Every cell in her being, in her body, was alive and in the character.
#HENRY IV PART 1 VIDEO FULL#
Dale said Henry threw herself into every performance with the force of an “earthquake,” embodying the character's full physicality.
Her acting repertoire ran the gamut from Shakespeare to David Mamet. She also served as director of the festival's Birmingham Conservatory from 2007 to 2016, and mentored the next generation of artists as the director of the Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction from 2017 to 2020. In her 47 seasons at the Stratford Festival, Henry performed in more than 70 productions and directed 14 more. “She is the great Canadian actress, Martha Henry.” “It's everybody's loss that didn't get to see her,” said Cynthia Dale, a fellow actor and friend. Over more than a half century in the spotlight, Henry was revered as the leading lady of Canadian theatre whose transcendent performances and artistic stewardship helped solidify the Stratford Festival's success into its seventh decade.
The stalwart of the Stratford Festival died of cancer at her home in the southern Ontario town shortly after midnight Thursday - just 12 days after her final curtain call, organizers said. Martha Henry, considered one of the greats of the Canadian stage, lived and breathed theatre up until her dying days.
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