by Antony Sher
CANTEEN Terry Hands [R S C Joint Artistic Director] suddenly at my elbow in the lunch queue. Is it because he's re-rehearsing Poppy at the moment that he seems even more oriental than usual? Dressed in black, smiling slightly and knowingly from hooded eyes, a sense of immense energy and power in repose.
He says, `We really ought to have one of our meals soon.'
`Absolutely. When?'
`Well, I'm busy with Poppy technicals till the week after next. Has Bill spoken to you?'
`No.'
`Bill hasn't spoken to you?'
`No. What about?'
`Oh, you know ...' He smiles. `Life and Art.'
`Ah. No. Definitely not.'
`We'll let Bill speak to you first.' He starts to go. Actors leaning towards us at forty-five degree angles quickly straighten, ear erections drooping. Terry turns back to me and smiles.
`Oh, and don't sign up for anything else next year. Yet.'
Friday 4 November
Bill Alexander rings. We arrange lunch for Monday.
MAYDAYS After the show, Otto Plaschkes comes round to my dressingroom. He's a film producer, the latest in a long line to try to finance Snoo Wilson's screenplay, Shadey. I was first approached about playing the eponymous hero (a gentle character who possesses paranormal powers and wants to change sex) over a year ago. I tell him I'm about to be talked to by the R S C, presumably about returning to Stratford. If he could be more definite about dates I could ask the R S C to work round them. He can't, but it's an encouraging meeting.
Sunday 6 November
Wake in the early hours. Meeting Bill tomorrow. It's got to be Richard III. Got to be. Alan Howard's was about three, four years ago, so it's due again. And it's the obvious one if they're going to give me a Shakespeare biggy. Sudden flash of how to play the part - ideas are so clear in the middle of the night - Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Very misshapen, clumsy but powerful, collapsed pudding features. Richard woos Lady Anne (his most unlikely conquest in the play; I've never seen it work) by being pathetic, vulnerable. She feels sorry for him, is convinced he couldn't hurt a fly.
The Nilsen murder case - the Sunday papers are full of the trial of this timid little mass-murderer. The sick, black humour seems to have a flavour of Richard III: Nilsen running out of neckties as the strangulations increased; a head boiling on his stove while he walked his dog Bleep; his preference for Sainsbury's air fresheners; his suggestion to the police that the flesh found in his drains was Kentucky Fried Chicken; even his remark that having corpses was better than going back to an empty house. The headlines squeal `Mad or Bad, Monster or Maniac, Sick or Evil?'
Spend hours sketching him, looking for some signs in that ordinary, ordinary face. The newspaper editors compensate for its ordinariness by choosing photos that are shot through police-van grills, or where the flashlights have flared on his spectacles to make him look other-worldly. But his ordinariness always seeps through. Isn't it that which makes him really frightening?
I ask Jim whether he believes we all have a Nilsen within us. He says, `Well, certainly not you. You can't boil an egg, never mind someone's head.'
Monday 7 November
TRATTORIA AQUILINO Over lunch, Bill offers me Richard III. Although I've been expecting it, my heart misses a beat.
I don't know whether Bill is any younger than the other directors, but he is somehow always regarded as such. After seven years with the company he is the only one titled Resident - rather than Associate - Director, his missing qualification being a Shakespeare production in the main auditorium at Stratford. In fact the only Shakespeares he's ever done for the company were the Henry IV's for the small-scale tour a couple of years ago. But after his successes this year with two classics (Volpone and Tartuffe) in The Other Place and The Pit this next step is inevitable.
We complement one another curiously, pulling in opposite directions - him towards the naturalistic, me towards the theatrical - and, I hope, stretching one another in the process. Almost the only thing we do have in common is a serious commitment to scruffiness. We both seem to find our days too short to waste time on shaving, brushing hair, or doing anything with clothes other than washing them and jumping into a familiar, unironed assortment hurriedly.
He is quite frank about next year's Stratford season. They did try to get Howard and McKellen, but failed. So they have resolved instead to introduce a new, younger group of Shakespearian actors. Roger Rees has been mentioned as well as one or two others whom he won't name yet.
I am flattered to be thought of in these terms, but am keen to know what else they have in mind for my season. Last year in Stratford convinced me it is no place to spend a whole year unless you're constantly employed or a devoted ruralist.
He says Henry V is being considered and wonders aloud what I feel about playing him. He stresses that this is not part of the offer, hasn't even been mooted at the directors' meetings. I reply that it's a part that would be challenging rather than wildly attractive. We also talk briefly about Othello (lago, obviously), Troilus (he mentions Thersites but, as he's deformed, that seems too close to Richard III; I steer towards Pandarus - does he have to be older?), As You Like It (Jaques? Yes please. Touchstone? No thanks), Merry Wives (Ford? Yes, absolutely).
We talk briefly about Richard. I feel he should be severely deformed, not just politely crippled as he's often played. Bill says one should identify with him: a man looki>ig in from the outside and thinking, `I'll have some of that.'
I mention meeting Trevor in Joe Allen's and how I'm worried by the immediate association of Tartuffe with Richard. He smiles. `I'm not asking you to play Richard like Tartuffe, or because of Tartuffe.' But it's a happy opportunity at last to discuss the inexplicable transformation that show made from the unhappiest rehearsal period (a major cast change, a mistaken lack of faith in the new translation, days of unremitting gloom) to this highly popular success we have on our hands. Have we just had a lucky escape? My own performance certainly feels like a survival kit rather than bricks and mortar. Bill feels that, although by accident rather than design, the mixture has turned out to be an exciting one - bourgeoisie invaded by gargoyle. I'm still not sure.
Coming to the end of the meal he asks, `So how would you like me to report back at the next directors' meeting?'
`Well, ideally I'd like to be in four shows, no less than three, the majority to be Main-House Shakespeares, let's say two biggies and one supporting, and then perhaps one new play at The Other Place.'
`And coffee to follow?' the waitress is saying at the next table.
We leave the restaurant and Bill jumps into a passing taxi. We've only had one bottle of wine, but I'm left standing unsteadily on Islington Green, my head spinning. All I can think of is Michael Gambon telling me about driving up the Mi to Stratford to do a show last year: `There's all these cars gliding past, Tone. Men in shirtsleeves, jackets hanging neatly from those little hooks in the back, eyes glazed, commuting back and forth like zombies. And then this thought suddenly hits me, like for the first time, and I say to myself, "Michael, you're driving up to Stratford-upon-Avon to play King-Fucking-Lear!" '
Tuesday 8 November
MONTY BERMAN SESSION He's pleased by the Richard III news, but as soon as I mention I would find Henry V more difficult to play he pounces on this and won't let go. By the end of the session I am totally convinced that unless I play that part my mental health will be in the gravest danger; then I remember and say, `But Monty, that's not the one that's been offered.'
Phone my agent, Sally Hope, who's very laid back indeed about the news. I know she wants me to leave the R S C, feels I've been there long enough.
So I'm left to rejoice on my own. Buzzing around the house with the text, doing the speeches. This is almost the best time with any part, when it's on offer but you haven't said yes. You can have an unadulterated, indulgent wallow in it.
An image of massive shoulders like a bull or ape. The head literally trapped inside his deformity, p
eering out. Perhaps a whole false body could be built, not just the hump, to avoid having to contort myself and the strain or risk of injury that would entail.
Already dropped the Laughton image. Or maybe that's how he starts - an unkempt mess. Then, after `a score or two of tailors / To study fashions to adorn my body', his grossness is transformed into some very impressive image - in the same way Nazi uniforms were so flattering that all sorts of odd-looking men, the undersized, the obese and the clubfooted, all looked sensational in them.
My copy of the play is rather irritating for a wallow like today's. It's full of scribblings and sketches. I've been in the play before, playing Buckingham to Jonathan Pryce's brilliant Richard (a natural, born Richard) in Alan Dossor's 1973 Liverpool Everyman production. Following hard on Brook's Midsummer Night's Dream, it was set in a circus lions' cage, everyone was in track suits (different colours for the different factions) and had white faces. We all had to learn acrobatics, aiming for back-flips and eventually settling for forward-rolls. In retrospect the production was vintage Golden Age Everyman. Anarchy ruled. After Tyrrel reported the successful murder of the princes, Jonathan used to slip in a `Nice one, Tyrrel' between some immortal couplet. In his tent at Bosworth he used to bring the house down by referring a line about `soldiers' to the strips of toast on his breakfast tray. Hastings' head was passed like a rugby ball, each of us screaming as it landed and passing it on. In the hands of brilliant, dangerous actors like Jonathan and Bernard Hill (who played a succession of murderers and mayors) the clowning was inspired, departing from the rehearsed scenes and taking cast and audience on a magical mystery tour which, more often than not, proved to be the highlight of that night's show. I had no such courage and remember feeling woefully inadequate. I settled instead for a careful, detailed caricature - Buckingham as a smooth-talking, suave aristocrat with a copy of The Times, a monocle and solidly sleeked-back hair which I relied on for my biggest laugh: `My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.'
Sunday 13 November
Dickie [Richard Wilson, actor and director] phones from Bangalore where he's filming Passage to India. So at last I can shout it halfway across the world -'They've asked me to play Richard the Third!'
`Good,' comes the polite reply, brimming with sub-text. Of all my friends Dickie has been the least reticent in suggesting that my work has deteriorated with the R S C - particularly in Tartuffe - and the most genuinely concerned that it shouldn't be allowed to continue.
Next, Mum phones from South Africa. But her response is muted as well. After all, she's known since August.
Monday 14 November
M O L I E R E An alternative future presents itself. In the audience tonight sit two film producers, one American, one British. They're going to make a film about Albert Schweitzer and are looking for someone to play the part. Tonight's performance was sold out, but I managed to have them squeezed in by selling part of my soul. Could this be my Gandhi? My Lawrence ofArabia? Sure it'll be tough spending two years filming in the leper colonies of Central Africa, but then there are the premieres, the Royal Command Performances, the Oscar ceremonies ...
I hurry to the stage door afterwards, a hue of mascara and stage blood still glistening around my hopeful eyes. The American producer looks exactly like an American producer, rather like Orson Welles. He steps forward to greet me:
'Bravura performance, Mr Shw ... Sht ...'
`Sher.'
`Yup. But let me give it to you straight. You are not our Schweitzer. The one thing that Schweitzer was, was tall!'
Tuesday IS November
M O N TY SESSION He sits looking at me, all folded round himself, long limbs so relaxed they seem to bend anywhere like elastic, a little cushion sometimes held within the spiral. A red sweater is sometimes draped round the shoulders. The face is long; it has great wisdom; the eyes are tired, doctor's eyes - they've seen a lot of what there is to see. I le works as a G P (at the age of sixty-one cycling daily from his Highgate home to the Lewisham practice), an acupuncturist and psychotherapist, is on the council of European Nuclear Disarmament, writes the occasional book, goes mountain climbing in the Himalayas in his spare time.
His phrases: `Let me posit ...', `Let me share with you ...'; `I hear you', to reassure; his favourite form of refutation - `Bullshit!' His toughest rule: you are never allowed to answer, 'I don't know.' And you don't half make some progress when you can't hide behind that one. At our first meeting back in March he said, `You'll go through various attitudes towards me. You'll mistrust me, then you'll love me like a father, then I'll be a guru, then you'll hate me, and then with any luck you'll see me as just another person.' I don't think I ever got past the guru stage.
And he's South African. Or was. Originally from good Communist Jewish stock, he was imprisoned after Sharpeville for distributing leaflets (in prison he claims to have given a notable Lady Bracknell), exiled and can never return.
It is South Africa that we discuss today. Recently I've had this yearning to go back to visit and see my family. But this feeling is most uncharacteristic - I've been back only once in the fifteen years away; that was eight years ago. For so many years I was a closet South African. Having to say `I was born in South Africa' stuck in my throat like a confession of guilt.
Monty is delighted. Thinks it is an excellent idea to go and have a grub round in my roots, rub that soil through my fingers; he sees it as an encouraging development in our work together.
I confess to him (so much of this is like Confession, I wonder if there's less call for therapy in Catholic circles) that another reason in the past for not returning is that I wanted to wait until I could step off the plane to the crackle of exploding flashbulbs. This seems silly now. He says it is a common syndrome - people who've left home to make good elsewhere want to return as heroes.
`Anyway,' he says, `maybe there will be photographers at the airport.'
`There won't. I'm not famous.'
`You're well known.'
`There won't be photographers, Monty.'
`So, all right, maybe one photographer.'
I leave the session very uplifted, very excited. Going home.
Wednesday 16 November
Halfway through the evening performance of King Lear. We'd done the first storm scene. I was alone on stage, coming to the end of the Fool's soliloquy. Goosestepped to the front of the stage, `FOR - I - LIVE - BEFORE - HIS - TIME', aware that I was slamming my feet down harder than usual ... swung into the little dance - BANG! My first thought as I fell was, `Fucking floorboards!' I looked round. No hole in the stage. No floorboard sticking up. Then what had hit the back of my leg? What had made that noise? A bullet? Dazed, I looked towards the audience for the assassin or some explanation. Realised I was sitting on the floor, had missed several cues, the music was unwinding round me, I tried to rise, fell again. Hopped off stage and fell. Lear, Kent and Fool have to go back on almost immediately. To Gambon (King Lear): `Mike, I can't walk!' He, thinking this was part of our patter, said, `Well then you'd better crawl, hadn't you? Stupid red-nosed tit.' Cue light. They ran on. I crawled after. The audience probably thought it was intentional - Lear, Kent, Poor Tom running round the heath, the Fool flagging, crawling behind ...
End of that scene. Crawled into the wings. A crowd of stage-managers had gathered. `Tony, what's the matter?' `Don't know, can't stand up.' `Are you in pain?' `Don't know, don't know what's going on.' The next entrance was from under the stage, down several flights of stairs. Mal Storry (Kent) picked me up in his arms and carried me like a child ...
For the Fool's death I had to step into a dustbin. Impossible to do without transferring the full weight from one leg to the other. This was the worst moment. For weeks afterwards this was the moment that I couldn't think about without going cold, the moment of stepping on to this soft dead leg, the nauseating pain as it took the full body weight ...
Interval at last. Carried into the wings. A St John Ambulance man from front-of-house said, `Might be the
Achilles tendon.' Ian Talbot, my understudy, was staring down at me white-faced ...
Carried up to the dressing-room on a chair. The St John Ambulance man and Steve Dobin, the stage-manager, puffing and struggling like Laurel and Hardy getting that piano up those stairs ...
Sat in my dressing-room with a crowd of actors at the doorway peering in, Sara Kestleman saying, `I think it might be the Achilles tendon, my darling, it happened to me at the National.' Left alone to change. Took off the red nose, saw myself in the mirror - my face a Francis Bacon smear of sweat and clown colours ...
Pete Postlethwaite [R S C actor] drove me to the hospital. At first we couldn't find it, then when we did, couldn't find Casualty. The little country hospital looked closed for the night. At last, a weary nurse on duty. She said no one could see me till lunchtime the following day, gave me a bandage, painkillers, two mogodons and an unofficial diagnosis: `Achilles tendon, I would have said.'
`The tendon has ruptured completely,' said the surgeon who operated a week later, `up the back of your leg like a venetian blind.'
A mysterious accident that befalls sportsmen in top condition, little old ladies stepping off the curb, and a surprising number of actors: Judi Dench, Tim West, Nick Grace, Brian Cox, Paul Hertzberg, Sara Kestleman and I, all part of the Achilles mythology.
Friday 18 November
An unsettling dream during the night: The first read-through of Richard III on the balcony of a Tuscan villa overlooking a town square. Roger Rees playing Clarence. The moment comes to start. Everyone looks towards me. I know the play begins `Now is the winter . . .', but cannot say it. Everyone waits, staring. A crowd starts to gather in the square below. Someone says, `Oh don't mind them, they're the same old assassins that gather every time a Pope is elected.'
