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

by Antony Sher

  Spend all day doing line run-throughs of Maydays. It's been nine weeks since we last did it. An awful lot has happened to us all since then - Peter Pan, Tempest, Much Ado, Moliere, Tartuffe video, and so on.

  KING'S HEAD PUB, BARBICAN Before the show, first meeting with our designer, Bill Dudley. An unexpected personality, but then all designers are the least theatrical, the least neurotic members of the profession. Or at any rate, their suffering is conducted in the privacy of their workrooms or the dark of the auditorium. Bill has an East End accent, a passion for playing his piano accordion in a band that tours pubs, and the hugest eyebrows I've ever seen. He says he thought so too until he met Denis Healey at a party. As they leant forward in discussion it was like two stags about to lock antlers.

  He's extremely well read and points me towards two accounts of the real Richard III: Robert Louis Stevenson's The BlackArrow and Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time. He tells me that next year is the 5ooth anniversary of Richard's death. He loves words. `Plantagenet,' he says, savouring it, `innit great he's called Plantagenet? It's a French flower and yet he's this deformed grotesque.'

  He is very taken with the bottled-spider sketch and says he could take it further by designing long hanging sleeves which would make the creature six legged. He doesn't like the thick, club feet in the drawing though, says they could be twisted but must remain quite delicate. `You should have a sense of him being able to move very nimbly at great speed, straight up the side of a wall if he wanted to.' I don't want the image to become too exclusively spider-like. There must be something of the bull as well. Bill A. points out that bulls have quite slender, delicate legs.

  I say, `At the moment I see him moving quite slowly, heavily.'

  Bill A. looks worried: `But with agility.'

  `Well no. Cripples aren't agile. We went through all of this with the Fool. Decided to make him crippled, yet he had to be very speedy with it. It becomes an enormous strain and isn't strictly feasible. I spent a lot of last week among the disabled and didn't see many of them whizzing about. What is it you fear if Richard was quite static?'

  `He'd lose the power to surprise.'

  This matter is left unresolved as we pass on to the drawings of the head. Bill Dudley is less keen on these, particularly dislikes the heavy forehead on the Hermanus head - `Looks like Marion Brando on a bad day.' And pointing to the Ronnie Kray drawing, `If you look like this, would it suggest a fine and brilliant mind?'

  `But isn't that a good thing?' I say. `He's got this battered boxer's face, this warrior's face. He shouldn't look cunning.'

  `You're making your job very hard.' He is keen to keep my face long and sharp, to emphasise it with a long wig. This is also left unresolved.

  Bill A. asks whether the hump could be made well enough to be shown naked. He's keen to use the church setting to stage the coronation, and in researching has found that Richard and Anne were stripped naked for the anointing ceremony. This is a very exciting image: Richard's back twisted and mountainous, Anne's perfect and beautiful. Beauty and the Beast.

  The nerves backstage for Maydays are almost worse than for the first performance. It's the closest real-life version of the nightmare all actors have: you're going on stage and the show is only vaguely familiar. But an enthusiastic audience sweeps us along and most of the lines are remembered.

  I used herbal cigarettes in the show tonight and will do so from now on. Maydays will no longer be able to pass as my excuse for remaining a smoker.

  Tuesday 14 February

  In Bernard Levin's interview with Ralph Richardson on his eightieth birthday, the great actor said: `A play always reminds me of an enormous roller at the top of some hill. Someone takes the blocks away and it begins to roll inevitably down to its end. Maybe its end is destruction or maybe it's brought to a halt by a beautiful finish, but it never stops moving and you're on it all the time ... Playing with time, which is the most precious yet the most mysterious element we know. Dear friendly water we know a great deal about. It's so simple and domestic. But time ... we don't know where it begins or where it ends. And to play with it is very thrilling. When that curtain goes up, time starts for you, you're moving with that roller and you cannot get off it ...'

  Tonight in Maydays the roller is stopped. During the second interval a power box explodes and the trucks, which carry the sets on and off, freeze in their tracks. The audience are sent back to the bars and plied with free drinks, while the stage staff desperately work to restore life to the machinery. People rushing around with torches trying to find the blown fuse. It goes on for over half an hour, the audience reassemble in the auditorium, but backstage they have to admit defeat. They can't find the right fuse.

  It's the job of the front-of-house manager to break the news to the audience, but he gets stage fright and refuses to go out and face them. Then I am asked, but the thought of stepping out there as myself is unthinkable. Finally the stage-manager volunteers to do the deed. The audience is understandably furious. They have seen three quarters of the play but will have to come back another night to find out what happens.

  They have their money refunded. The cast flock to the pub. An odd feeling - a cross between the joy of truancy and the frustration of coitus interruptus.

  Struggling into the car-park with the two pairs of crutches that Charlotte has sent me, when Alison Steadman drives out. She stops in horror.

  `Richard III,' I offer as an explanation.

  She nods wisely. `Mike Leigh will be proud of you.'

  Back at home I nervously experiment, fearing that they might instantly prove impractical. The elbow crutches are much better than the armpit variety, because you can let go and use your hands while they hang from your forearms. Swinging along on them, stretching like an animal on four legs, pawing the ground, rearing up on hind legs, I find they have a marvellous range of possibilities.

  Friday 17 February

  We're re-rehearsing Tartuffe - yet again.

  Chris Benjamin is taking over as Orgon and is going to be wonderful, a big baby, a bear ready to chase its shadow. As Dorine says in the play, `Tartuffe is a man who can spot a victim.' Chris is a .atural victim, Nigel never was - his inherent sophistication and wit got in the way. He was a hilarious Orgon, but it was always difficult to believe he could be so thoroughly duped - at any rate, by my version of Tartuffe. People want Tartuffe to be a subtle creature despite all the evidence in the text. The blatancy of his villainy offends modern tastes. And we have actually extended it - he's not just a villain but a demon.

  During the chase scene I pull a muscle in my neck. After last year's accident even the slightest injury fills me with terror. I try to ignore it and head off for the gym. Exercising makes it feel a little better.

  RIVERSIDE STUDIOS The Biko Trial. Strange to see this South African atrocity performed by a group of English stars, lead by Albert Finney. Rather like those Hollywood epics where you're constantly distracted from the storyline by some superstar popping in to do their cameo. However the story does come through and it's terribly, horribly, gruesomely funny. A black man in the front row doesn't see the funny side at all; he winces and glances round each time the audience bellows.

  Back at home, a video treat - two episodes of David Attenborough's The Living Planet. You can find any character by watching animals.

  Insects rubbing their front legs together - could do that with the crutches. Spiders move in a nimble dance, their legs going like fingers on a keyboard, they rotate on the spot. Too lightweight for Richard, I think.

  Weekend r8-ig February

  Beautiful winter days. Cold clear sunlight. Immobilised by my neck, I stay indoors and watch the three parts of Henry VI made for the BBC Shakespeare series. (Couldn't face reading them all; the boring homework side of acting.) Am expecting to fast-forward through most of it and just concentrate on the young Richard, but get hooked early on and end up watching all nine hours of it. Bernard Hill's performance is brilliant as York, Richard's father, glowing wi
th anger, a formidable soldier whom the young Richard worships. Fascinating having my character's background fleshed out like this.

  Depressing to see how much dashing around battlefields Richard has to do; unlikely on crutches and no evidence that he's always relied on a-horse-a-horse. But I suppose his condition could have got worse in later life. Crutches suggest war veteran as well.

  Monday 20 February

  A heavy week ahead - five Tartuffe's, three Maydays, rehearsing the telly Moliere at the Beeb during the days, and my neck getting worse.

  BARBICAN Meet Derek Jacobi in the lift. Tonight is his first Cyrano in twelve weeks and he's rather frightened. Says it doesn't help having won all those awards, there will be an added expectancy from the audience. `I feel like lining up all the statuettes on the front of the stage and letting them get on with it.'

  Lunch with Bill. Discuss the crutches in the light of what the young Richard has to do in Henry VI. Is the problem relevant? Does an actor playing Antony in Antony and Cleopatra have to cross-check his performance against the same character in Julius Caesar? But even if we justify it ourselves, is an audience going to sit there worrying? Bill is not a lot of help; his current worry is that he and the R S C musical director, Guy Woolfenden, are having to change all their ideas for the music because Merchant is using organ music and Henry V is using Gregorian chants. Very annoying when our set is calling out for that kind of music. Still, these constraints can sometimes lead to inventive solutions.

  Even more annoying is the news that the Gobbos in Merchant are being played as hunchbacks!

  TARTUFFE Chris's first performance. He does wonders. What a joy to do this show in the theatre again. The audience are completely hysterical and inevitably the laughter seduces me away from any subtleties I discovered for the telly version. It's back to tail-wagging acting.

  Anyway, as Cocteau said: `What others criticise you for, cultivate. It is you.,

  Tuesday 21 February

  Wake hardly able to move my neck at all. Ring Charlotte and make an appointment. A sense of defeat, having to admit I've injured myself again.

  ACTON HILTON Moliere's first day in the studio. Bill talks about the play as `a fairy tale going sour', taking the starting point from Bulgakov's description of `the spectral fairy tale Paris of the seventeenth century'. The new sets will evoke this - long corridors with false perspectives, the dressing-rooms with rows and rows of masks like a constant audience. Alice in Kafkaland.

  CANTEEN I'm having my lunch when I hear a familiar hoarse shout, `Oy

  - Tony!' I whip round, damaging my neck further, to see Michael Gambon in the lunch queue ...

  Alan Howard (a previous Richard III at the RSC) is standing in front of him, puzzled as to who is being sent up.

  Wonderful seeing Gambon again. He and Howard have been rehearsing a play here. They've just heard it's been cancelled because of the sceneshifters' strike. Everyone assures us that it will be over by the time we go into studio in four weeks.

  Gambon tells me the story of Olivier auditioning him at the Old Vic in 1962. His audition speech was from Richard X. `See Tone, I was thick as two short planks then and I didn't know he'd had a rather notable success in the part. I was just shitting myself about meeting the Great Man. He sussed how green I was and started farting around.'

  As reported by Gambon, their conversation went like this:

  Olivier: `What are you going to do for me?'

  Gambon: `Richard the Third.'

  Olivier: `Is that so. Which part?'

  Gambon: `Richard the Third.'

  Olivier: `Yes, but which part?'

  Gambon: `Richard the Third.'

  Olivier: `Yes, I understand that, but which part?'

  Gambon: `Richard the Third.'

  Olivier: `But which character? Catesby? Ratcliffe? Buckingham's a good part ...'

  Gambon: `Oh I see, beg your pardon, no, Richard the Third.'

  Olivier: `What, the King? Richard?'

  Gambon: `the Third, yeah.'

  Olivier: `You've got a fucking cheek, haven't you?'

  Gambon: `Beg your pardon?'

  Olivier: `Never mind, which part are you going to do?'

  Gambon: `Richard the Third.'

  Olivier: `Don't start that again. Which speech?'

  Gambon: `Oh I see, beg your pardon, "Was ever woman in this humour woo'd." '

  Olivier: `Right. Whenever you're ready.'

  Gambon: ` "Was ever woman in this humour woo'd -" '

  Olivier: `Wait. Stop. You're too close. Go further away. I need to see the whole shape, get the full perspective.'

  Gambon: `Oh I see, beg your pardon . . .' Gambon continues, `So I go over to the far end of the room, Tone, thinking that I've already made an almighty tit of myself, so how do I save the day? Well I see this pillar and I decide to swing round it and start the speech with a sort of dramatic punch. But as I do this my ring catches on a screw and half my sodding hand gets left behind. I think to myself, "Now I mustn't let this throw me since he's already got me down as a bit of an arsehole", so I plough on ... "Was ever woman in this humour woo'd -"'

  Olivier: `Wait. Stop. What's the blood?'

  Gambon: `Nothing, nothing, just a little gash, I do beg your pardon ...'

  A nurse had to be called and he suffered the indignity of being given first aid with the greatest actor in the world passing the bandages. At last it was done.

  Gambon: `Shall I start again?'

  Olivier: `No. I think I've got a fair idea how you're going to do it. You'd better get along now. We'll let you know.'

  Gambon went back to the engineering factory in Islington where he was working. At four that afternoon he was bent over his lathe, working as best as he could with a heavily bandaged hand, when he was called to the phone. It was the Old Vic.

  `It's not easy talking on the phone, Tone. One, there's the noise of the machinery. Two, I have to keep my voice down 'cause I'm cockney at work and posh with theatre people. But they offer me a job, spear-carrying, starting immediately. I go back to my work-bench, heart beating in my chest, pack my tool-case, start to go. The foreman comes up, says, "Oy, where you off to?" "I've had bad news," I say, "I've got to go." He says, "Why are you taking your tool box?" I say, "I can't tell you, it's very bad news, might need it." And I never went back there, Tone. Home on the bus, heart still thumping away. A whole new world ahead. We tend to forget what it felt like in the beginning.'

  78 H A R L E Y STREET I haven't been back here since my accident. The entrance hall with marble staircase. The old woman in a white coat sitting at the reception desk, who looks up and asks, `Mister -?' The grand waiting-room, freezing cold. One or two Arabs asleep, dreaming of warmer places. False books on the shelves. The same old copies of Country Life, Sotheby's Previews, South African Panorama.

  Completely different atmosphere in the Remedial Dance Clinic itself. Cups of coffee (sometimes champagne) and gossip from the dance world. The physios are attractive blonde girls in jeans or track suits, the patients are proud and beautiful dancers - their injuries seem to make them even haughtier.

  Charlotte diagnoses a sprained neck ligament. She explains: `You know when you eat oxtail stew, well those little horns that stick out the side ... I warn her that if she carries on I will pass out and I'm feeling inadequate enough surrounded by these beautiful people. I have a good old moan about being injured again. Charlotte suggests I should take it in my stride like dancers or sportsmen. They accept injury and repair as part of their jobs. Actors only think to train their voices properly.

  `But what's the point of all these months at the gym,' I winge, `if I'm still getting injured?'

  `If you hadn't been going to the gym, the injuries would be more frequent and far worse. This is the first since the tendon. Given that your performances are so physical, that's not bad going.'

  She attaches suction cups from the interferential machine and sets the various currents in motion ('This will be a gentle throbbing, this pins and needl
es, this like champagne bubbles ...'). I lie there being gently electrocuted, jerking and jumping, while she expounds her latest Richard III theory - polio. She does a very impressive impersonation on crutches. Her calves and feet soft and floppy, each step achieved by throwing the leg forward from the hip. It looks like Douglas Bader and could be misread as false legs. But an advantage is that the movement is quite variable and would avoid specific repetitive strain. A problem would be creating an illusion of the muscle wastage which, she says, characterises the disease.

  Friday 24 February

  Bill A. says he's been talking to Bill D. and they're both worried about my drawings for Richard's head. `The trouble is there's no relation to your own features. It's just another whole head plonked on yours.' Suggests I think about a boar's head, perhaps with a beard high on the cheekbones and a spiky wig. I seem to remember that Norman Rodway's image was boar-like in Terry's 1970 production.

  I think what's happened is that both Bills have taken the Hermanus head too literally.

  I try sketching another head alongside a self-portrait, giving it the minimum of prosthesis, and using my own hair, sleeked back. This is feasible.

  Thursday i March

  Dickie back for good from filming Passage to India. Lovely stories about Lean, Ashcroft, Guinness. I try out some Richard ideas on him. The usual reaction: `Would he be able to go into battle on crutches?' I trust Dickie's opinion so much this unnerves me. Am I trying to be too clever?

  Saturday 3 March

  Two Tartuffe's. Overhear that in Henry V Harold Innocent is playing Burgundy on two sticks. Henry using religious music and featuring a man on sticks, Merchant having a religious setting, organ music and featuring two hunchbacks ... all this plunges me into a terrible gloom.

  Hurry home to watch Lon Chaney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, hoping there might be something to steal. But it's appalling. Why is it that silent comedies have survived so well when silent drama has aged so pitifully? Our sense of humour more constant than our sense of tragedy?