by Antony Sher
I get pleasantly pissed on a bottle of excellent white wine, put on the Sony Walkman and listen to that favourite tape of opera choruses. With the flick of a switch, full orchestras and choruses materialise on this beach for some exquisite brain-washing. Literally. My brain is washed with music. How is it that nobody else can hear? All around is my wonderful noisy family, arguing, wise-cracking, child-battering, parent-bashing, all in dumb show, carrying on as if everything was normal and the beach wasn't awash with these tremendous sounds.
The chorus from Boris Godunov. This is my Richard III music - instant delusions of grandeur. Brass and percussion, bells and chimes and Russian choirs. Unbelievably, I'm soon going back overseas, probably to do a play called King Richard III. Overseas. When I lived here that mythical place sounded so far away, so difficult to get to. Over seas. How many and how wide? I could never reach there. Now the thought of me going to play Richard III for the Royal Shakespeare Company seems as improbable. It's something to be dreamed about, half pissed on a beach.
Wednesday 28 December
A cool, grey day.
Breakfast is accompanied by Randall's record collection of old favourites: `Yellow Bird', `Chanson d'Amour', `Moonlight and Roses', `Let Me Call You Sweetheart'. People soft-shoe shuffle to the table, sit swaying in their seats, sing along between mouthfuls of steak and eggs.
I feel very energetic and dance around the room, Richard ideas tumbling out. It seems to me his face should look quite monstrous. Build a massive forehead and flat broken nose. To look at him should fill you with pity and horror. Karloff's monster in Frankenstein. Is there a way of making his head appear too big for his body? Also, Margaret calls him a `bottled spider' - a striking image, whatever it means (I'm not bothering to look up the editor's notes yet). The crutches could help to create the spider image.
Long walk with Mum across the cliff tops. Wonderful criss-cross rock formations, stacks and pillars; plateaus so cross-hatched it's like taking a stroll in a Hogarth etching.
We have one of our talks. A familiar pattern. She begins by interrogating me very thoroughly about life in England and in the theatre, savouring every detail. It's so clearly what she would have wanted for herself, had the choices been available. So she listens in wonderment - a curious reversal of roles - like a child hearing of the joys and thrills promised in adult life. But then she'll catch herself and her maternal instincts will return in force. She'll advise and criticise: this could be better, that could be worse. And bombarding me with choice pickings from her varied and sometimes off-beat philosophies - : he Power of Positive Thinking, Spiritualism, et al.
We sit on a bench high above the sea, thick pea soup bashing itself senseless on the rocks below. She says nobody believes there is a future for their children in South Africa any more. Her friends and relations are leaving in droves, many going to Israel, which seems like jumping from the frying pan ...
She talks about Granny and her late father escaping from Russia at the turn of the century. Only two generations later and everyone's on the move again.
The odd thing is that nobody here seems to make any connection between escaping persecution in Russia or Germany and supporting apartheid.
I sketch Richard's head from this morning's thoughts. Interesting how the melting-pot works - the drawing has the bulk of Lion's Head; Klaus Kinski's eye; and a harelip from the Coetzee book I've been reading here, Michael K Of course there's no way I could look like this. It would be very limiting to glue down so many of my features and wear so much prosthesis, for a part that long. But I love the thickness of this face; in a way, going back to the original Laughton image. With Brando's Godfather thrown in.
Thursday 29 December
Driving back into Sea Point late this afternoon, the scene looks so familiar. The end of a hot day: people trudging up from the beaches in flip-flops, towels draped over their shoulders. The joggers are out everywhere, heads bobbing up and down.
I stroll down to Queen's Beach, trying to store this feeling, this hot sea air, to take back to London. A black man is struggling to take off his shirt but is so drunk he cannot undo the last button. He leans back against the wall, his head thrown hack, mouth open, eyes sightless towards the sea, his fingers fumbling with that last button. Again and again he tries. He lets out a terrible moan.
I hurry back to the cool dark safety of the house. Blinds drawn against the strong sunset. The smell of furniture polish. The clink of ice in our drinks.
Friday 3o December
Last day.
I had given Katie twenty rand for Christmas. At breakfast she tells us, `I bought beautiful shoes, in cream, Lady Di-style. And my hat also I find is one of hers. I thought I couldn't wear those little hats she wears, so I bought this wide-brimmed one. Then I see she wears these also. You do look smart in a hat. After wearing a doekie all week it makes all the difference. Hell, Madam, I did look smart. At church all my friends commented.' She says all this laughing, an infectious bubbling laugh.
I want a photo of her.
Mum insists she takes off her working apron. When I say it isn't necessary Mum says, `Let her look nice too.'
`That's right,' says Katie, going into a panic but still laughing. `What's people in London gonna think of me if they see me like this?'
`Put on your other apron,' Mum shouts as Katie disappears into the maid's room, `the nice one!'
Katie reappears wearing a different apron. When we pose for the photo she becomes very serious and stands to attention. I tickle her and she screams to Mum, `Ooo Mommy, Ooo Madam help!'
Granny joins us for a farewell lunch. She can't hear too well, which either creates awkward silences when questions aren't answered, or else she doesn't realise a conversation is in progress and will start one herself. Again it strikes me how young and inexperienced Mum and Dad become in her company.
Afterwards I accompany her to the car to say my farewells. Her cheek, as I kiss it, is like very soft tissue paper. She says, `I wish you much good health and every success.'
I say, `Hope to see you soon. Maybe next time in London.'
She chuckles and the car pulls out of the driveway.
Now it's Katie's turn. I go into the dining room, the room cool and dark as always. She is bent over the table clearing up. I stand silently behind her, watching her work. At last she turns with the tray full.
`I've come to say my farewells.'
`No. Not already. Really, already?'
We hug and I slip some money into her hand. She has prepared a little speech. `Master Antony, may God grant you every happiness ...' but her eyes moisten and she can't finish.
`Thank you for everything . . .' I say and get no further myself.
At the airport the family farewells are more festive and chaotic, the kids all taking photographs, the hugs and kisses posed for the cameras.
In Johannesburg, it's pouring with rain, preparing me for England. But it's a warm rain, and the thunder and lightning are unmistakably African, reaching away into vast empty spaces.
The white police in the airport are armed, the black ones not. Presumably in an emergency the latter would be required to hurl themselves bodily at hijackers.
On the plane it's a relief to hear British accents again. Waiting for take-off I suddenly remember Richard's line, `Sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made up'. Maybe that's the solution to his appearance - foetus-like. Smooth, almost slimy baldness. Unformed features. What has made me suddenly think of this? Yesterday at Fick's Pool there was a mentally-retarded boy with no eyebrows. Also Yvette was talking about their youngest daughter being born three months premature, the nurse saying, `Go on Mrs Sher, hold her, she won't break.'
The plane lifts off into the storm, bravely plunging into dangerously dark-blue clouds, forked lightning in the distance. You think you're through it, the clouds lighten and soften and then it's like your head has been plunged underwater again - it's dark and murky and the plane rocks. Below there are glimpses of the
outskirts ofJo'burg, suburban homes with large lawns and swimming pools; now farmlands, the fields a blackish green in the stormy light. We break out of the clouds but a higher bank towers above us for what looks like hundreds of miles. You fear for your safety - we must be so tiny against this colossal wall. One of the wings keeps brushing the edge of the cloud and disappearing. Now we're engulfed again, thick grey-blue darkness, then light suffocating whiteness, and then suddenly we lift up out of it and we're climbing into a perfect evening in the heavens. Below us are the familiar calm fields of clouds, above space as high as we dare go.
3. Acton Hilton, Canary Wharf
and Grayshott Hall 1984
New Year's Day, 1984
A day in groggy limbo. Wake in the early afternoon after last night's New Year's Eve party at Dickie's. What with coming from South Africa to England, summer to winter, 1983 to 1984, and then waking up with jet lag and a hangover to find it already getting dark, my grasp on reality is not all it could be.
Evening. Caryl Churchill's party. Another party?!
Spend most of the evening with the actress Julie Walters and the designer Bob Crowley. Julie's just back from a promotion tour round the States for the film of Educating Rita and is in exhilarating form; being with her is like riding a spinning top. Bob tells me he's designing Henry V and Love's Labour's at Stratford and that Bill Dudley will design Richard III. When I tell him that I haven't decided to do it yet, he says, `Oh, but you must. It's like the Paul Simon song, "Something so right".' Bob's mouth always twitching towards a smile; his cheeks look as if he stores goodies in them, like a hamster does.
He points to Julie's handbag. It's a miniature violin case in plastic. Rather like the one he designed for me in King Lear.
Nicky Wright arrives and I make a bee-line for him. He says there'll be nothing to read till late January.
That settles it. The decision will have to be made on Richard alone.
Monday 2 January
Phone Bill. His manner is slightly impatient. `You must realise, Tony, that I'm the only one at the directors' meetings who keeps reminding them that you haven't yet agreed to Richard. Everyone else believes you will do it, that you must do it at this stage in your career. The character actor's Hamlet.'
Drive into the country with Dickie. Wind and rain. Low dark skies. The countryside looks like it's been dipped in blue ink. Callas singing the magnificent aria from La Wally.
We discuss the situation and agree that I'm just playing games, and they're not even proving effective as negotiating tactics. I'm obviously going to do Richard III. I'm totally obsessed by it, like being in love - this one person dominating your every thought. All day, every day, since it was first mentioned, I've been on the prowl for bits of Richard. Everything feeds the obsession - Lion's Head in Sea Point, disabled people Christmas shopping in Oxford Street. And alone in the privacy of my own home with curtains well drawn and doors securely locked, I try saying aloud, `Now is the winter ...'
Dickie suggests I reconsider playing Shawcross in The Party, thinks it would be good for me to play a less flashy part.
Evening. Joyce Nettles, the R S C casting director, rings. Says she doesn't want to put any pressure on me, but the first Stratford leaflet has to go to print tomorrow. I am about to tell her I'm on board but get side-tracked into a discussion about The Party.
She asks, `Is there any other part you'd consider?'
`Well yes, but it's spoken for.'
`Sloman?'
`Yes.'
She urges me to tell I Toward Davies. `He ought at least to know,' she says. I tell her I couldn't oust Mal in that way. She says he hasn't been offered it yet, and volunteers to talk to Howard for me. I make her promise not to. But the temptation has unsettled me. Go to bed very edgy. It's almost as if the holiday never happened. Winter howling at the window.
Tuesday 3 January
M O N TY SESSION lie's very taken with my description of the house in Sea Point looking like a shrine to me.
I outline the situation at the R S C. Like Dickie, he urges me to play Shawcross. `You know I never give you specific directives, but I'm breaking the rule. Play this part. It's important that you do.'
`But why? It's perverse and masochistic.'
`Bullshit! Playing all these showy parts is what's masochistic. You'll burn yourself out. Play this part, it'll be much harder.'
`It won't be hard. I can do it standing on my head. The only hard part will he seeing everybody else have all the fun.'
`Precisely. You still want to come home from school with prizes and say, "Look, Mommy, I'm best". You saw the shrine. Now bury all that.'
I promise to read the play again.
ACTON HILTON BBC TV rehearsal-rooms in Acton, where we'll adapt our stage production of Tartuffe for the telly. The building is so high it's like being airborne again. Way below are the factories, suburbs, railway lines and cemeteries of Acton and Willesden.
Steph Fayerman says, `Isn't it nice to get into a lift and go up for a change',' After months and months underground at the Barbican, at last a rehearsal room with windows.
Tartuffe read-through for the TV crew, R K O money-men, and our producer Cedric Messina, a one-man Roman epic in name and size. Not a single laugh from this assembled group. Reminiscent of those depressing early rehearsals at the Barbican. But we know better now. Chris Hampton sits at the end of the table grinning and corpsing.
Lunch with Bill in the canteen. I find myself saying, `Look, Bill, this is unofficial but I am going to do Richard, it's definitely on.' This comes as no surprise to either of us, but the relief of having said it is enormous. We're free to talk at last with all the enthusiasm that's been bottled up since November. He says that, while Richard might be a psychopath, he prefers to think of him as a product of his time: civil war has raged throughout his lifetime, the Crown constantly up for grabs, everyone somehow crippled by it all, guilty and neurotic about who killed who, why and when. I ask to meet up with Bill Dudley as soon as possible to devise the deformity.
Bill agrees: `Richard has lived with his shape all his life, so has everyone else at court. It is an unremarkable factor in their lives. So it would be good if we could have it for rehearsals and everyone can get used to it. Then we can forget about it and concentrate on his character, instead of whether this arm is shorter than that one, or the hump two inches higher or lower.'
Agony when lunch ends. We could go on talking for hours.
Stand on the platform, waiting for the tube; it's a bitterly cold day but I hardly feel it. I'm glowing with excitement and relief. Can't sit still on the tube, can't concentrate on my newspaper.
Ring Sally to tell her I've decided. She makes rather a good suggestion about The Party: bring it all out into the open, talk to Mal, get him to read the play and give him first choice of the two parts.
Thursday 5 January
Anxiety about not getting to the gym enough. I mustn't let it slip now: for Richard, I'll need to be stronger and fitter than ever before in my life.
ACTON HILTON The rehearsal-room is laid out with a forest of vertical poles to denote doorways and walls. Without my glasses I keep crashing into these on fast exits, suddenly finding one between the eyes like I've stepped on a garden rake.
Excellent rehearsal of the first Tartuffe/Elmire scene. Bill is tactfully scaling down my performance for the camera, keeping the good gags, helping me cut out the hops, winks and eyebrow dances - my survival tactics. He urges me to consider the brilliance of the arguments, points out how Tartuffe's proposition -'Love without scandal, pleasure without fear' - is a definitive statement on hypocrisy. `Tartuffe's brochure, right? If he were to print one to circulate round the ladies of Paris, what would the cover say? "We offer love without scandal, pleasure without fear." '
His imagery is very inspiring today. Talking about how much Tartuffe is getting off on the religious kick, he says, `He'd love to screw stark naked except for the giant rosary entwined around their bodies like a snake.'
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We try the scene again without all the business. I can feel the power of the words doing the work. Must trust language more.
Read The Party again - the second version which the National toured. The play gets better with each reading, but the part gets worse.
Friday 6 3'anuary
NATIONAL THEATRE With Susie [Susie Figgis, film casting director] to see Fugard's Master Harold and the Boys. Over drinks at the bar I tell her I've decided to do Richard. She is visibly unenthusiastic. Tells me that she's casting a film at the moment and was talking to the director about me. They had both agreed it was time I left the R S C. `He won't,' the director had said, `they're bound to offer him Richard the Third,' making it sound such a boring, predictable idea. Poor Susie: she just happens to be the last in a long line of friends who have not rejoiced in my decision, and it's the final straw: `I hate this inverted snobbery about the R S C!' I cry. `It only happens to be the greatest English-speaking company in the world!' Realising I'm in a bar at the National, I lower my voice and hiss through gritted teeth, `And I'm terribly, terribly happy there!'
The play is disappointing; maybe I was looking forward to it too much. It seems rather fey and cute compared to the South Africa I've just seen. Still, the last half hour is very moving. Susie has bought me a copy of Fugard's Notebooks which I start reading avidly. Beautiful sketches of South Africa.
Saturday 7 January
A beautiful day, a day of laying ghosts. Drive to Stratford to find a home for the season. A bright, English winter day; Elgar playing on the car stereo, the air so cold and clear you can see for miles.
