by Antony Sher
Walk across Highbury Fields. Slush and wind. The sky is a cold white with harsh bits of grey and black. A season of Shakespearian parts does not look likely. If I go back to Stratford I will end up spending four years wiei the company, during which time they will have done thirteen Shakespeares and I will have been in two - yet I joined the company to play Shakespeare. The situation is absurd.
A punk vagrant is stuck in a tree, having tried to climb into a deserted property. High off the ground, his long coat caught among the branches like wings. He tries to free himself occasionally, listlessly, then gives up again. His hair is a rainbow of the most vibrant colours. From a distance bright and beautiful. A tropical bird. But as I pass underneath, close to, the hair is matted and filthy. His eyes are closed. He seems to have fallen asleep.
Tuesday 29 November
M o N TY s e s s 1 0 N He talks about Fritz Perls and the Gestalt theory. The here and now is the only time that exists. And being yourself. Not accepting yourself, not taking yourself for granted. Being yourself. Your self. Monty defines `normality' as a contentment with who you are.
The sunlight is weird at this time of year - an insistent silver light. This morning as I shave it falls on the water and throws a strange light on my face. Instantly Richard III. I stare at him for a moment, then quickly fetch a sketchbook to put down what I've just seen. But it's a difficult drawing. The strange light can only be indicated by leaving one eye unfinished and beaming out of the darkish face. So difficult to avoid cliche. What I find myself recreating is straight out of Hammer Horror. And worse of all, the lips I have drawn are not my own, but Olivier's. Again that giant shadow falls across the landscape and I dart around trying to find some light of my own. My Richard is in its infancy; barely that, it is still struggling to take form, uncertain even whether to take form. And there's this fully formed, famously formed, infamous child murderer leaning over the cradle ...
DUO FRANCO RESTAURANT Lunch with Ron Daniels. I developed a great affection for Ron during Maydays, partly because we're both Anglicised foreigners - he's from Brazil.
`Servants do make life easier,' he says wistfully as we settle at our table.
`Oh God, don't they just? Being brought up with them finishes you for life. I find it impossible to do any domestic work at all. It just seems the most appalling waste of time.'
The restaurant is run by a swarthy brotherhood of Italians. They play opera instead of muzak and sing along loudly as they pass among the tables. The specialities of the day are told to you in aggressively thick Italian accents, followed by a dark-eyed stare which challenges you to ask them to repeat. This Mafia once-over is worth it for the calves' liver which is the sweetest in the world. I urge Ron to try it.
We are on to our desserts before he says, `Right, let's talk business.'
`Yes please.'
`Channel Four are interested in a mini-series of Maydays, possibly in four parts ...'
Clever tactics. I was expecting the Stratford season, get a Maydays telly instead. But I'm not going to bite: `Sounds wonderful. It's a pity negotiations aren't further ahead. It might help me sort out next year. I'm so disappointed you've all failed to find anything else for me.'
`Paranoia, PARANOIA!' Ron yells in delight, disturbing one of the waiters as he was reaching for his big moment in Otello; the man glares murderously, but Ron is still laughing, `We didn't even finalise the Main House season till last night.'
The plays will be Henry V (Adrian Noble directing Ken Branagh), Merchant of Venice (John Caird directing Ian McDiarmid), Richard, Hamlet, Love's Labour's.
`First of all,' says Ron, `I must urge you to have a play out after Richard.
I know you're a workaholic, but it is a terribly taxing part, vocally, mentally, physically. Richard is notorious for crippling actors. They spend years afterwards on osteopaths' couches. Trust me - you'll need a rest.'
`But isn't Roger going straight from Hamlet to Berowne?'
`Not the same thing at all.'
`Oh come on - Hamlet?'
`Not at all. Hamlet tends to stand there while things happen round him, to him. Richard is doing, doing all the time, making everything happen.'
`All right, let's say I have a play out. What then?'
`A Robert Holman play. To be written specially for you. In Slot Five. At The Other Place.'
I decline immediately. In the past I have not enjoyed having plays written for me. The process is nerve-racking and seems to cramp everyone's style. `Also,' I say, `I joined the R S C to do Shakespeare, not new plays. I've spent my whole career doing new plays ...' The old refrain, growing feebler by the day.
Ron thinks for a moment, then, `I'm wearing two hats now. One as RSC director, the other as the producer of this Maydays series. If that works out, we'll need every minute after Richard opens. We can film it up in the Midlands if necessary. If that works out -'
`If, Ron. It's an "if", not a reality. It can't enter into this discussion.'
He thinks again. `Tony, we are setting up a season to introduce the actors we believe are going to be the next generation of leading Shakespearian players. You must be there. Your Richard must be in that line-up.'
Not a lot I can say to that. Feel I'm losing ground all the time.
We leave the restaurant and Ron climbs into his car. `Well, I'll go back and report,' he says cheerfully. `Don't worry. It'll work out. Just keep reading Richard.'
`I'm resisting that actually. I haven't read it at all yet. Don't want to get all excited if -'
`Get excited, get excited!' He grins and drives off.
Back at home I look at this morning's self-portrait again. It's better than I thought. And it does have some of the oddity of that original moment. This is a familiar syndrome. There is a stage with every drawing or painting when it looks banal and clumsy. It's worth pushing through that, working through the cliche to find out what made it a cliche in the first place.
And the lips don't look even remotely like Laurence Olivier's.
Wednesday 3o November
All morning spent wrestling with myself: should I go and buy a new copy of the play and read it properly? The Liverpool Everyman copy is useless for anything other than dipping into. But buying a new copy is a kind of commitment. It means I'm definitely going to do it. Am I not definitely going to do it? I truthfully believe I could still forego it at this stage (and must if negotiations continue as non-productively as they have been so far) without it hurting too much.
Nevertheless ...
CANONBURY BOOKSHOP
`Do you keep plays?'
`We do. What are you looking for?'
`Shakespeare.'
`But of course. Which one?'
Speaking the title aloud, particularly to a stranger, seems like a further commitment. I play for time. `You do keep the Arden editions, do you? It must be the Arden edition.'
`Ah. No. We only keep Penguins. They take up less room.'
`Oh.)
I stand staring at the row of Penguins, Richard III pulsating ever so slightly among the Histories.
'Moving on from Moliere to Shakespeare?' asks the bookseller suddenly.
'Ye-e-es!' I laugh too loud, startled that he's recognised me.
`We could order an Arden. But I expect you need it immediately?'
`Uhm. Yesss ...'
`Which play is it?'
`Oh look, not to worry, thank you.'
I hurry from the shop. Reprieved.
Thursday i December
RUDLAND & STUBBS FISH RESTAURANT Yellow light, wooden panelling, sawdust on the floor. After Maydays, dinner with Shrap, Ali Steadman and the director Mike Leigh.
The head waiter tells us that after Richard Gere ate here a few nights ago many of the waitresses, and some of the waiters, made a bee-line for his chair - which has since disappeared.
Mike is just back from Belfast where he's been researching for his latest film. He looks tired and grey. `Northern Ireland bears as much relation to life here as ancient T
ibet.' We all get worked up about the recent attack on a church, where the congregation were mowed down by machine guns.
`Murder, murder!' cry Ali and I.
`It's not murder, it's war,' says Mike, with the weariness of one who's had it drummed into him for weeks and weeks.
`Murder,' says Shrap, `is a bespectacled civil servant walking his dog in Muswell Hill while a human head simmers on his stove. There is no cause, no logic. It's just loopy.'
I find myself drifting in and out of the conversation. Images from a recent television programme which featured interviews with Belfast teenagers, boys of about fifteen with puffy eyes and shorn heads. The first thing that struck you was that they didn't behave like other adolescents in front of a camera, they didn't blush or try to show off; they just talked very openly about death and looting, setting fire to buildings or cars. `It doesn't matter,' they kept saying, in those accents which are themselves like blades held gently against your cheek.
`Why not?' persisted the well-trained, well-spoken BBC investigative reporter.
"Cause we've grown up with it. It's what we know'- which could be Richard III talking. He's grown up in a period of fierce civil war, the Wars of the Roses, and has never known anything else. It seems very important this. Growing up watching street battles, people being maimed, yet another funeral passing. It takes the character out of the Hammer Horror world of ghouls, away from Mickey Mouse words like Evil, and towards something that is recognisable.
.. and that's the only relevant point that's been made so far in this discussion. With respect.' Mike Leigh is proclaiming, finger held in the air. He is an extraordinary man. Dauntingly articulate. A merciless sense of humour, reminiscent of his work. His large, bearded head is sunk into small shoulders, around which his little hands constantly dart, as if warding off insects and fools, or conjuring, or working puppets. A favourite word of his is `clairvoyant', and indeed he often knows what you're going to say as you start a sentence, which can make conversations a little one-sided.
But tonight he is subdued by Belfast. I ask his advice about the Stratford business. He hints that he doesn't think it a good idea. I know he didn't like the Moliere or Tartufe productions. `Look, Richard's clearly a part that you can play, that you will play, but are conditions right at this point in time?'
We leave the restaurant at about half one. Smithfield Market is coming noisily to life. Giant lorries trundle into the floodlights. Men in bloody aprons, breath steaming in the cold night air, carry carcasses into the great halls. Inside I glimpse the rows of meat hooks and a man stirring a boiling cauldron, stripping the flesh off a few heads.
Friday 2 December
BARBICAN Terry Hands, in black bomber jacket, kneading a piece of blue-tak in one hand, chain-smoking with the other, talking about Richard III:
`No one has really cracked the part since Ian Holm in 1964.' Terry has done four productions of his own, and believes it is the play in which Shakespeare made all his mistakes. `For a start he doesn't give Richard a rest. Macbeth has the England scene, Hamlet has all that Ophelia stuff, Lear's got the whole Edmund sub-plot, but Richard is on throughout. With the terrible physical strain, of course, of sustaining a crippled position all evening.' Tells me that when Robert Hirsh did it for him in his Comedie Francaise production, he limped on alternate legs from night to night, with two sets of costumes. `You might like to think along similar lines. I've been advised by an osteopath that irreparable damage can be done to the pelvis otherwise. It's a little known historical fact, but apparently after the original production Burbage said to Shakespeare, "If you ever do that to me again, mate, I'll kill you." '
`Terry, is this meant to help me decide about next season?'
`Oh but I love that play,' he says, suddenly serious (I think), `there is more pleasure in one broken-backed Richard than in ten perfect Hamlets. I hate Hamlet.'
It only occurs to me afterwards that it was all a dare. He was saying to me: never mind what else we might offer you, I dare you to try a Richard III. What a cheek. Especially because, as tactics go, it has been the most effective so far: I head off to the gym, determined to get myself even fitter than ever.
CITY GYM Oh, the puffing and heaving and clanging of muscles and weights, the bending and squatting and cycling and lifting and lowering. Squeezed eyes, bared teeth, streaming faces, matted hair, clammy clothes ...
`... eigh' ... ni' . . . te' ... elev' ... twel' ...' is the strained mutter from the man in the mirror.
An unfair contest between puny wet flesh and those iron bars, so sleek, so smooth, so cool.
`... twenny-si' ... twenny-se' ... twenny-eigh' ... twenny-ni' ...' as Hawaiian favourites play in the background.
And the row of sit-up contraptions where men clutch their ears and drag themselves forward to head-butt their own knees, heaving back and forwards. And those strange exercises for the elderly, little bowings and prayings and paddlings in the air and delicate steppings like stick insects.
And always that man in the mirror, thinking: I'll show you Terry Hands, I'll show you R S C, `... foy-fi' ... foy-si' ... foy-se' ... foy-eigh' ...'
Saturday 3 December
SAVOY TEA -ROOM Today is dedicated to thanking Charlotte Arnold, the physiotherapist who bullied me back to full strength and health after the operation. I treated her to the matinee of Tartuffe this afternoon, which she's loved, and now insist on buying her the Savoy's formidable Full Tea. `For giving me my leg back,' I say, having to use an American soap-opera accent, but meaning it with all my heart.
The Tea-room is high and wide, all in rose and beige, and full of chandeliers, mirrors, palms and nostalgia (although it doesn't actually relate to anything in my own past at all). An elderly violinist in white jacket and bow-tie, and a lady pianist in evening dress play old tunes. We should all waltz and quick-step, but instead sit heavily, working our way through these interminable and almost sickening Full Teas. Above us on the balcony, a Mediterranean gentleman of considerable years and poundage slumps into a cane chair and starts to spread over its edges as if there's yeast at work, while staring at Charlotte through sleepy oily eyes, a bubble of saliva popping on his slightly parted lips.
Charlotte is very pretty in a very English way. Blonde hair, large eyes, cheeks like Worcester apples, and a naughty turn to her smile.
We discuss Richard III. If I do it, will she help? Research the deformity and devise a safe way of playing it. I tell her I'm thinking of using crutches. She thinks I'm joking and laughs. (Perhaps the idea is simply ludicrous.) But she is keen to help. When she saw Moliere she was impressed by how thoroughly I'd researched his heart condition, so she knows I am serious about this aspect of the work. She has various contacts and says she could arrange visits to homes for the disabled. `I know this sounds awful,' she says, `but it all depends if they've got what you're looking for on the day we're there.'
Whenever the subject of research comes up I always think back to an argument with the playwright David Hare a few years ago, when we were both on the Royal Court Seminar at Louisiana State University. I had just finished playing the Arab in Mike Leigh's Goose-pimples. There had been strong protests from the Arab community and I felt I had betrayed those Arab contacts who had helped me research the part.
`I know,' David had said, `we all feel that. And yet we take what we need.' A smile that might have been self-parodying. `Perhaps it's a licence we have as artists.'
I argued that Mike Leigh was devising the play, that it was his responsibility, not mine, at which point David had suddenly lost patience and said, `Well, all right, if that's how you prefer it. He's the artist, you're just the actor. Passive and dumb.'
I reeled away from the encounter, stung and challenged by his honesty. Later that evening I resolved to research in the future with a new unsentimental rigour and ruthlessness, and thus reinstate myself as An Artist ...
The Full Tea lives up to its name. I stagger back to the Barbican for the evening show, several sizes larger than when I
did the matinee. A slight air of sadness in the dressing-room - it's Nigel Hawthorne's last stage Tartuffe, although Bill is still hopeful of persuading him to do the video.
The familiar routine. Put on the posing pouch, tights and smock. Into the small lift, squeezed into a cocktail of characters from French literature, Cyrano and Tartuffe, down six floors to The Pit (shedding Rostand's lot along the way) where the Orgon household are gearing themselves up for the first scene. Into the wings to do the Overture (an intoned Latin prayer duelling with a frivolous harpsichord) and to sniff the audience. Back into the lift, alone now. Always at this point, over the tannoy, Jacobi going `Balloon, buffooon, baboooon'. Into the dressing-room and the long wait now, almost an hour, for my first entrance: the most delayed first entrance of an eponymous character in the whole of Drama - until Beckett wrote Godot. Put on the wig and make-up. Warm up on a few speeches. Can't help noticing in the mirror that he's here again: the long black wig together with my own pointed nose have turned me into a first cousin of that famous crookback.
Out into the corridor, stooping into character, having to go down the stairs now, not the lift because it wouldn't have been invented yet, muttering Ave Marias, winding the giant wooden rosary like a knuckleduster round one fist, settling into a pious creeping stalk ... Over the tannoy, Cyrano has gone to visit some pastry chefs.
Into a corridor where neither show is relayed, imagining a silent crypt now, drifting along close to the side, one hand trailing behind on the wall, insect-like.
Through a door into a secret corridor, a back entrance to The Pit, where Ali Steadman waits in character and we do a brief Mike Leigh warm-up improvisation, never planned and never referred to, passing one another slowly, her fan nervously fluttering, my sighs growing more and more explicit.
