The self-professed “story of a theatrical revolution and how it shaped a nation,” Freddie Fox’s documentary “Into the Breach” attempts to chronicle the impact that British theater has exerted on art, culture and politics over the last century. Assembling a roundtable of acting legends that includes Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman and co-producer Kenneth Branagh, Fox injects anecdotes and insights into a history lesson written by Richard Fullerton that, for better or worse, invites more curiosity than it satisfies. Suffice it to say that these are performers who are not only full of great stories but know how to tell one. Yet the film’s obligation to historical detail renders slightly bland what could have been a tasty trip through 20th-century theater.
Backtracking to the beginning of the 1900s, Fox catalogues the major players who defined, and in many cases changed, British theater: Lilian Baylis, Derek Jacobi, John Gielgud, Paul Robeson, Claire Bloom, Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, Richard Burton — the list is considerable. Baylis, a producer and manager, pioneered Shakespeare at the Old Vic theatre in Waterloo, the eventual site of London’s storied National Theatre. Among the performers who became famous on its stage were Gielgud (an eventual EGOT winner) and Olivier, as well as Michael Redgrave and Ralph Richardson. Later came theater director Peter Hall, impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber and performers such as Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren and Stephen Rea.
