The worlds of Shakespearean theater and science fiction, among others, are mourning the death of the late Sir Patrick Stewart. The actor who created the roles of Captain Jean Luc Picard on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and Charles Xavier in the Marvel “X-Men” franchise died yesterday at the age of eighty six in Los Angeles. A role at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival paved the way for one actress to co-star with Stewart on Broadway.
Stewart also left an impression on an actor who just played “Ophelia” in a production of Hamlet at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in 1994. Carrie Preston, of the CBS TV series Elsbeth, co-starred with Stewart in “The Tempest” in New York in 1995. It was Preston’s Broadway debut in the character of Miranda, while Stewart played Prospero. The play ran at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, before opening on the “great white way.” Preston talked about that time on “APR Notebook.”
“I was in New York, I made my New York stage debut doing the Tempest, which was Shakespeare, obviously. With the great Patrick Stewart, and I played Miranda, and I really tried to do something different with that role than what is normally done, “” said Preston. “And I do, you know, and that was in 1995 and I do have people who still say, ‘Oh, I will never forget seeing that performance and seeing what you did with that role.’ And so, you know, I take that with a great amount of humility and a great amount of gratitude.”
One of the countless memorable lines that have tumbled out of the “Star Trek” universe over the years is this gem, originally from a 20th-century poet named Delmore Schwartz: “Time is the fire in which we burn.” It was uttered as an existential warning to Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in the 1994 film “Star Trek Generations.” But it feels equally apt this week after a one-two punch of loss that is hitting hard for devotees of the epic, six-decade science fiction saga.
First, on Sunday, Walter Koenig, who played Ensign Pavel Chekov in the original series during the 1960s, died at age 90. Then, on Thursday, the cosmos lost Patrick Stewart, a Shakespearean actor who in 1987 began to inhabit Picard, the poetic face of that show's sequel, “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and decades later the anchor of the darker streaming drama “Star Trek: Picard.”
For a fan base that has long signed on as acolytes of a brighter, more equitable future, recent days have given the present an unwelcome sting.
“What a heartbreaking week it has been,” said William Shatner, who played Capt. James T. Kirk in the original series from 1966 to 1969 and went on to star in six movie sequels. He is one of only two members of that long-ago cast still living; Leonard “Spock” Nimoy, his best friend on the show — and off and on in real life — died in 2015.
