Great dames think alike

But that scenario, once thought unimaginable, becomes reality this week when the two most bankable stage actresses of their generation (both are aged 67) take the stage together at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in David Hare's new two-hander, The Breath Of Life. Even in a theatre season awash with talented women (Elaine Stritch, Glenn Close, Brenda Blethyn), the Judi-Maggie show is sure to stand apart.

There was a time when Smith singlehandedly ruled the West End, sweeping all before her in hit after hit, from Peter Shaffer's eccentric comedy Lettice And Lovage in 1989 (in a role she triumphantly reprised on Broadway the following year) through to Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest in 1993, Edward Albee's Three Tall Women in 1994 (for which she was awarded the Evening Standard Best Actress award), Alan Bennett's Talking Heads (1996) and, most recently, Bennett's The Lady In The Van (1999). While the box office performance of the same generation's boys (Albert Finney, Derek Jacobi, and Michael Gambon) was more erratic, Smith always sold out - as any producer would gladly tell you, her name was guaranteed box office.

Then, about five years ago, something happened - Smith's long-time friend Judi Dench caught up. Not that she needed any introduction to British theatre audiences, who had been admiring her over the decades in Shakespeare and Chekhov, to cite just a couple of her credits. But it was her role as a stern-faced Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown, a small-scale film first intended for TV, that created an unlikely if bona fide British movie star.

Dench received an Oscar nomination for her performance in Mrs Brown and went on to become something of an Academy Awards regular, reaping an astonishing four nominations in the past five years - including the one, of course, for her eight minutes as Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare In Love, which brought Dench the statuette.

Not that Hollywood has forgotten Smith, who has found a valuable franchise in the Harry Potter movies to match that of Dench's deliciously deadpan M in the James Bond films. Already a two-time Oscar-winner (for The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969 and California Suite in 1978) Smith returned to the Academy Awards this year with a nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Gosford Park. As a result, she and Dench (nominated for Best Actress for Iris) could add Hollywood's annual orgy of selfsatisfaction to a list of shared showbiz experiences that includes A Room With A View (1986) and Tea With Mussolini (1999).

In some ways, they might seem like chalk and cheese - the evertart Smith, her inimitable way with a one-liner the byproduct of early years spent doing revue alongside the late Kenneth Williams, set against Dench, an actress whose reluctance to grandstand has meant that she is never more extraordinary than when playing ordinary women. It's difficult to imagine Dench playing the extravagant Lettice Douffet, the spinster fantasist that brought Smith a Tony Award in 1990 - the same trophy Dench would win for a previous Hare play, Amy's View, nine years later.

On the other hand, perhaps the two aren't as far apart as they may at first seem. (Both, for instance, have played Lady Bracknell.) As Laura in the Eighties TV series A Fine Romance, Dench made so convincing an English everywoman that she ultimately gave up the popular show because, she once told me, 'people kept shouting out, "How's your garden?î' But that ability to be instantly identifiable hasn't kept Dench from playing Shakespearean queens (a definitive Cleopatra opposite Anthony Hopkins's Antony in 1987). Nor does Smith, her Countess Of Trentham in Gosford Park

And at this point in their lives, both draw their power from reserves of very real pain, having each lost a husband in recent years. Michael Williams died early in 2001, while Smith's second husband, writer Beverley Cross, died in 1998, three years after the death of her first husband, the actor Robert Stephens. Both have actor children - Finty Williams in the case of Dench (she appeared as a young Lady Bracknell - as played by her mother in this year's Importance Of Being Earnest) and Smith's sons are the respected Shakespearean actor Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin (who appeared with his mother in Tea With Mussolini - a film that was a real family affair as Dench's husband also played in it).

And so it seems entirely fitting that the two should return together to the British stage as equals. I say 'return', since they last shared a billing as part of the Old Vic ensemble in 1959. The point is that these actresses are simply unique. As long as they are on hand to 'enlarge, enlighten, enliven' as Smith's Lettice Douffet was wont to say, a West End forever searching for its own breath of life should find itself breathing very easily, indeed.

The Breath Of Life, previews from Thur 3 Oct, first night Tue 15 Oct, Haymarket Theatre, Haymarket, SW1 (08709 013 356). Matt Wolf is London theatre critic for Variety.