Dear Joe, Time’s short, but before you pass that torch, how about a hands-across-the-water Presidential Medal of Freedom for British actress Imelda Staunton? Her frail but sovereign Elizabeth on the threshold of the Great Beyond in the finale of The Crown is up for an Emmy on September 15, and we’ll be cheering along with the rest if she nabs it. But it’s her four decades of service to the American theater on the London stage that blows us away. Starting with the gangster’s moll Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls in 1983, she proceeded to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Claire in A Delicate Balance, the Londoner Mrs. Lovett of Fleet Street in Sweeney Todd, Rose in Gypsy, Sally in Follies, Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and now the title role in Hello, Dolly! Petite of stature, Staunton contains multitudes, knocking off the iconic heroines of Albee, Sondheim et al. like Olivier marching through Shakespeare. She reanimates souls we think we know through and through, even as she delivers the ozone burst of cap-E entertainment. She honors our heritage. She’s one of us. Thanks for the memories. —Matthew Gurewitsch