Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition

by Antony Sher

  Alone into Rehearsal Room One, adjoining The Pit, to do the distant Ave Marias which will herald Tartuffe's first entrance; the room is a surrealist's lair with dismembered giants strewn about, Louis XIV's head from Moliere over here and those colossal boobs from Custom of the Country over there.

  I can smell incense being lit. My cue-light goes red, green, my nerves go taut. Into the wings where John Tramper as Laurent, dressed and bewigged identically to me, slides alongside mirroring my walk and stoop. Stage-managers stand poised on either side of the curtains. We mark time, all the while Ave Marias looping endlessly. Another green light. They whip open the curtains, our marking time turns back into a walk and we slope into the light ...

  An excellent show. There's been a queue for returns all day so the audience are even more enthusiastic than normal; their hysteria is quite thrilling and occasionally catching. During the rape-on-the-dining-table scene (or the inter-course intercourse) everything just stops for about thirty seconds while Ali and I join the audience screaming with laughter. A most peculiar event, breaking all the rules. The more we laugh, the more they do. At last we struggle back on to the text and the audience seems as shame-faced as we are for having misbehaved so badly, which leads to further sporadic outbreaks.

  Why is an actor's unintentional giggling called a `corpse'? It seems to me quite the opposite. It proves that he's very much alive, and can still tell how silly this all is: him dressed up as someone else speaking words written by a third party.

  Speaking of whom, Chris Hampton turns up in the dressing-room afterwards, a little startled that his translation was subjected to that unscheduled interruption, but since he spends much of life on the verge of corpsing, not too bothered.

  As we're leaving the theatre we pass a group of Cyrano players trooping into the main lift which is huge; a neon-lit garage filled with Koltai's monochrome people. Black velvet and lace. White faces. The only colour: some gold, and red tongues.

  They look exhausted. It's 10.30 and they're only just starting Part Three.

  `Ta-ra, we're off to the pub,' I call into them.

  'PISS OFF!' they yell in unison.

  Chris giggles behind me.

  `Have you seen it yet?' I ask.

  `Life's too short to see Cyrano.'

  KING'S HEAD PUB, BARBICAN Interesting discussion about the difficulties we had in rehearsal with Tartuffe. It's going to be excellent trying it again now for the video, now that we trust the play more and our ability to perform it. The problem with Moliere's writing is the deceptive thinness of it. There's no poetry, no sub-text, just a very basic situation, like sit-com. Chris says, `All there is is what is there, but that happens to be brilliant.' He says the French find Shakespeare difficult for the opposite reason. Why is he so oblique? they cry in Gallic confusion, why doesn't he just say what he means?

  Norma, a girl who works in the Stratford box-office, comes over and says, `Congratulations. I hear you're coming back to play Richard the Third.'

  `Oh, but it's not definite.'

  Chris leans in. `What was that?'

  `Don't ask. It's a long story.'

  Monday 5 December

  OXFORD STREET A steady procession of Christmas shoppers: faces so determined, so concentrated, round and round we go, the Hajj in Mecca.

  Spot two disabled men and can't stop myself from staring. One has his pelvis so twisted that his feet point away at ninety degrees from his torso. Walks with two sticks. The impression is of a skier negotiating a difficult turn.

  Strange how, ever since Richard III was suggested, I keep crossing paths with the disabled. Did I just not notice before or are there vibes at work?

  The other day in Euston Road, a dwarf dodging through the traffic, one shoe massively built up like a clanging black anchor on his leg. He reached a traffic island and shouted at the world. My car passed close. The face was red, unshaven, in pain.

  And yesterday, a black couple leaving the local church. Both young and good-looking. In their Sunday best, but jazzy as well. He had one thin, very withered leg and had to hobble along on the tip of that foot, in its white patent-leather shoe. It made his walk seem even more dude-like. She strolled at her normal pace, making no concession. He kept up with her. They smiled at one another. After they passed, people stared.

  SELFRIDGES 'Hello Tony.' David Hare, towering above me. He always looks at me slightly sideways, as if not quite sure about me yet, and speaks slightly from the corner of his mouth. 'Congratulations. I believe you're playing Richard the Third.'

  `Thank you, but it's not decided yet. Who told you?'

  'Oh, someone . . .' He gestures vaguely, blaming a passing shopper, and quickly changes the subject. 'I'm Christmas shopping for my kids.'

  `I'm shopping for holiday presents. Going to South Africa on Sunday.'

  `You're going to South Africa. Blimey.'

  'I know. Very mixed feelings.' (I'm still doing it: apologising for where I was born. Must stop.)

  I ask him about his TV film Saigon, which has just been shown, and he says, `Well, of course it's been mercilessly hammered by the critics.'

  'Critics? But you don't read them.'

  'Didn't use to.'

  'Oh no. You're back on them?'

  ' 'Fraid so.'

  I stare at him, shocked. Along with Jacobi and Peter Gill, David has been a guru for me in my own new-found abstention.

  `But . . .' I stammer, `... but ... when we did Teeth 'n Smiles, if anyone so much as came near you with a newspaper, they took their life in their hands.'

  'I know . . .' he says, nostalgically.

  `What made you start again?' Gently, as to an alcoholic.

  'They get through somehow. So what's the point in not reading for yourself? I mean, after Saigon someone phoned and said, "How d'you feel about your battering?" I mean, you know, what does one do?'

  Later at home it occurs to me that he's the second outsider to congratulate me on Richard III. Who's broadcasting it? Someone at the R S C obviously regards it as a foregone conclusion that I'll do it.

  Is it?

  Tuesday 6 December

  Bill phones. `God, Tony, I didn't realise you were leaving so soon. We must meet. Tonight after the show?'

  nt 0 LIE R E There is a moment at the beginning of the show when Moliere's troupe are posed on the upper level, frozen in the backstage frenzy before a curtain-call. On the back wall little cardboard cut-out chandeliers light up through a red gauze, a sound effect of distant applause creeps in and a cello starts to play. It is a low-budget, small-stage compromise for Bulgakov's spectacular description: `We can see the stage now from one of the wings. Candles burn brightly in the chandeliers - we can't quite see the auditorium, the nearest gilded box is empty, only sense the mysterious watchful blue haze of the half darkened theatre.' Quite a sad compromise really, but it always moves me. The tattiness and magic of theatre are very close.

  And the lunacy ... During a break in the show I stroll into the Green Room. Caliban, wearing only a loincloth and red island mud, is contorted over the pool table aiming a difficult shot. Elsewhere around the room, Ariel's sprites sit reading the Standard or chatting to Louis XIV's musketeers.

  Moliere finishes long before Tempest. I am showered and changed and on my way out, heading down one of the long faceless corridors, when I suddenly hear Jacobi over the tannoy:

  'Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;

  And ye that on the sands with printless foot

  Do chase the ebbing Neptune ...'

  It can stop you in your tracks, those words in that voice, make you put your head back, close your eyes, and try, as with beautiful music, to hold it a moment longer. Cocteau talks about the speed of beauty ...

  I S L I N G T o N Bill comes back to the house to talk. Slot Five at The Other Place is now a play by either Nicky Wright or Peter Barnes. Adrian would direct - that's a plus. Bill wants to sound me out about both writers, but I tell him I'm more interested in reading the plays in q
uestion. He says these are still being written and he's not sure when there'll be anything to read. I ask whether Richard could be moved later in the season to enable me to do the Snoo Wilson film in the summer (Plaschkes has almost got the money together). Bill thinks not, because of Roger Rees' availability. He asks what plays I'm dying to do, suggesting we could make a deal for the Barbican '85 season. I can't see how that would help a thin time in Stratford '84, but trot out the old favourite, Arturo Ui, which is probably too close to Richard III to be a good double anyway.

  Bill leaves with the obligatory, `Well, I'll go back and report.'

  It is quite clear now - the offer is Richard III with one new play at The Other Place, and that having to be taken on trust. So far from what I wanted.

  For the first time I think seriously about not doing Richard. Apart from a vague notion that I could play the part, there hasn't been a single good sign for the project. Friends give it a hearty thumbs-down, the RSC appears not to want to employ me more than they absolutely have to.

  Lie in bed unable to sleep, these same thoughts plodding round and round the exercise yard. The darkness looks the same if you open or close your eyes.

  Wednesday 7 December

  But I can't leave Richard alone. Driving with Jim; he puts on a tape of Boris Godunov and the grotesque, baroque sounds instantly bring Richard limping out into the light again. We talk about how, after he is crowned, he could be carried around to this triumphant music. Borne aloft on a bier, the Henry VI funeral bier, this black lump on a tray, deified.

  And we talk about how he might get on rather well with the Princes. He could mimic his deformity and act an ape (I'm thinking of Brando's death scene with his grandchild in Godfather) to make them laugh. The famous insult from young York (`little like an ape ... bear me on your shoulders') is just part of their rapport; and so we by-pass the famous moment from the film - the leering turn, shot from the child's point of view. Only when they are gone does he show his true feelings for them. Presumably a true psychopath behaves like that. Presumably Nilsen's victims had no warning; they were sitting there happily drinking and listening to music, he was smiling and chatting, making them feel pleased to be there.

  As the music thumps about in the car I become very inspired again. It is more than just a notion that I could play the part. I know that I could do something special with it.

  And yet - the memory of last year in Stratford; one or two performances a week, endless days and nights to fill in between.

  What to do, what to do?

  Thursday 8 December

  KING'S HEAD PUB, BARBICAN Pete Postlethwaite: eerie wisdom, eyes like blue boulders.

  `I hear you might do Dick the Shit. Be a very brave move, very dangerous.'

  `Really? I think it's type-casting.'

  `Exactly. You can play the part standing on your head. But if you could go past that stage, eschew all that, go beyond, surprise yourself, that would be very dangerous. Worth travelling up to Stratford to see. Otherwise it'll just be, "Oh Tony's playing Richard in Stratford, I don't need to go all the way up there, I can just run it through in my head." It would be like me playing Iago.'

  Friday 9 December

  A thank-you card from Charlotte Arnold with this PS: `I have started the ball rolling re Richard III. Should have news in January about homes and centres for the disabled that we could visit. Did you mean what you said about crutches? It's just that I've been thinking they might actually be the safest way of you playing extreme disability. Can't think of anything else that would take the strain off you in the same way. It's what they're designed to do. But were you serious?'

  FOYLES Finally buy an Arden edition of Richard III, to read in South Africa. (And leave behind there perhaps?) The cover is very strange - hollow eye sockets and gaping mouths, all rather vaginal.

  BARBICAN CANTEEN Two of the directors, Adrian Noble and Barry Kyle, have a little light supper at my table before another planning meeting. Neither say anything about Stratford or the current situation. Instead Adrian starts talking about aeroplane crashes and the recent case of a woman suing one of the airlines for shattering her nerves. The plane had started to plummet and only at the last moment did the pilot regain control and yank it back up into the air.

  `So there are all these people,' Adrian says, munching at his supper, `who have felt what those last few minutes are like. That fall. Can you imagine? And who've lived to remember it.' He always discusses matters like this with a kind of bright-eyed, yet detached, fascination. Perhaps it's because he's an undertaker's son.

  They go off to their planning meeting and I sit viewing Sunday's flight in a new light.

  Saturday io December

  In this morning's Guardian a full-page advertisement for the Free Nelson Mandela Campaign. Hundreds of signatures, mine among them. Bad timing. Hope the South Africans don't go through this with a fine tooth comb, which of course they will. Image of being frog-marched out of the airport lounge and shot against the nearest wall.

  Howard Davies [RSC director] rings. He's doing the Nicks Wright play now and says there's a terrific part in it for me.

  `What's it about?'

  `Well, it's set in Cairo -'

  `Oh God. Another Arab.'

  `No, no. British Intelligence, Second World War. An officer with a Napoleonic complex ...'

  The play sounds very exciting. It's now scheduled for Slot Four. The Peter Barnes play is in Slot Five, with Adrian directing, and apparently it also contains a terrific part for me. `Adrian's been itching to talk to you all week,' Howard says.

  I tell him that Ron had advised me to have a play out after Richard.

  `Yes I know. He relayed that conversation to us and I got rather angry. I said to them, if we want Tony in the season, and we do, what's the point in having him do as little as possible','

  `Well actually Ron made some rather good points about osteopaths' couches ...'

  But this news is too good to start worrying about minor details like health. Two new plays are a decent compromise. I ring Bill to tell him, `It all sounds very promising.' He says that he's definitely going to offer Buckingham to Malcolm Storrv. It will be a powerful image: the small deformed Richard with this giant as right hand man. And our rapport as actors and friends will be a corner-stone for the whole production.

  Last minute packing, feeling very excited about everything, not least that now is the winter and on Monday the summer ...

  The thing I keep remembering is Monty seeing me to the door after our session on Tuesday. He suddenly said, `I envy you. I'd love to see South Africa again. Christ, I can't watch a programme on 'I'V about that bloody country without crying.'

  2. South Africa 1983

  Sunday r i December

  Sitting next to me on the plane is a ten-year-old boy. He looks up and says with great excitement, `We're going to live in South Africa!' He's called Leon and is from Manchester. Points across the aisle to where his parents sit, restraining lap-fulls of his little brothers and sisters. As the eldest he has volunteered to sit on his own.

  As we are about to take off, I offer him the window seat. He says, `Ooo, could I?' He has never flown before and the take off is intolerably exciting. In fact he can hardly bear to watch this miracle and keeps turning back to me blushing and grinning.

  Monday 12 December

  Dawn. The round window is a milky blur of pink, orange, blue. Gradually it focuses into one of these endless fields of clouds.

  `Is it ice on the sea?' asks Leon as he wakes and clambers over for a good peer. He stares in wonderment. `The air must be thin up here, so close to outer space.'

  An hour later the clouds are more mountainous, erupting. They break dramatically, disappear, and there below is a red land with soft black hills that look as if they're melting in extreme heat, and one long, white, perfectly straight road. Africa.

  I point it out to Leon who shouts, `It's Africa, it's Africa! Look Dad, it's Africa!'

  The father looks at me wetl
y and shrugs, apologising for his son. I've taken a dislike to this man, primarily because he's emigrating to South Africa.

  As we are coming in to land at Jo'burg I say to Leon, `Come on you'd better move over to the window seat.' He's looking glum and says, `My Dad has said not to bother you anymore.'

  `Oh don't be silly.' I turn to the father. `He must see the landing in his new country. Something for him to remember in years to come,' wondering if the man perceives any double meaning at all.

  Leon presses his face to the window again and remains glued there as we descend and South Africa turns into reality with a gentle bump from below.

  During the connecting flight to Cape Town I become very emotional. Different feelings and memories welling up, settling, welling up again. As the plane begins its descent they start playing schmaltzy music which makes it all much worse. Bits of me, dormant for years, coming to the surface. Excitement and fear.

  Stepping off the plane, the blast of dry heat, the baking afternoon with its brilliant blue sky, is all familiar and calming.

  Monty and I were both right about the photographers: there aren't any, yet there is one - my sister Verne clicking away on an Instamatic as I walk into the airport lounge. Everyone is there, brown and glowing: the men have taken the afternoon off work. Mum is presiding, looking glamorous in the simplest of summer frocks and with a film star's instinct for when the shutter is going to click. My older brother Randall says, `Hi, howzitt?' as if he saw me yesterday, and hugs me; he's rounder and greyer than I remember. Dad pops up from behind a group to go `Haah', which is his shorthand for `Hello and how are you?' Esther, my drama teacher (we called it `elocution') from way back, flies into my arms, crying. The nephews and nieces all come up shyly to shake hands and be kissed, grown into new shapes, new people. Everyone keeps saying, `You look terrible. Don't they feed you in England? So white, like a ghost.' They ask about my dreadfully short hair cut (to go under Maydays wigs). I tell them I'm thinking of catching up with some National Service while I'm here.