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

by Antony Sher

  Monday S March

  Increasingly difficult to playMoliere in the theatre because we're rehearsing the television version during the day. Tonight I found myself reaching for props that weren't there and heading for a doorway that didn't exist. But the audience was our best yet, effortlessly able to switch from the comedy to the tragic melodrama, the laughter huge (like Tartuffe at times), the silences crystal clear. At the end cheers, and we were called back for an extra bow.

  Moliere has always been the runt in my litter - people unsure about the play, my performance not really commented on - and hence my favourite.

  Nice to have him cheered tonight.

  Tuesday 6 March

  A C T o N H I L T o N Mild grey weather. The Irish doorman says, `Isn't it a lovely soft day?' and Mal says, `You can just taste spring on the air.'

  Shows falling like flies because of the strike. Terra Nava cancelled last week, Titus Andronicus this. The pattern is becoming familiar. Each cast gets increasingly depressed as their studio dates approach; they are discovered spending more and more time in the canteen, muttering'Nuff to make you vote Tory.' Then comes the day when they're finally cancelled - at 11.30 in the morning they head off for the pub to get very pissed, drowning the memory of all the wasted work.

  With our own studio-dates ten days away, we're feeling rather apprehensive now.

  Exhaustion of the last few weeks catching up with me. And it could all be for nothing, this frantic commuting along Westway, rehearsing, performing, squeezing in visits to the gym.

  Thursday 8March

  KOTO JAPANESE RESTAURANT My dinner with Monty. We put Richard on the psychiatrist's couch and analyse him in depth.

  I say, `Tell me how you'd begin if he came to you as a patient.'

  `Oi vey! All right, I suppose I would have to start with that mother.' He points out that there isn't a single moment in the play when the Duchess of York talks of Richard without contempt and hatred. She shows no maternal instincts whatever.

  `What is it like to be hated by your mother?'

  `Very similar to being loved too much. In both cases the mother prevents the child from developing an accurate sense of self. She distorts his view of himself.'

  When Richard is in turmoil at the end of the play, in the speech after the ghosts, he keeps asking `Who am I?' Monty explains that, as Richard hasn't received love as a child, he won't be able to show any himself; hence his contempt for human life. `What would it feel like to be a mass-murderer?' I ask.

  `They feel very little. Each murder is an attempt to feel, if you like, an attempt to release anger, an attempt at catharsis, and each time it is unrelieved. It's like promiscuous sex, sex without love, without feeling. Each climax is less and less fulfilling so the appetite grows until it's insatiable.' Monty says that, reading the play again, there is less pain and anger in the character than he had originally thought.

  I ask, `Is that because Shakespeare has given him too pronounced a sense of humour? Does that make him ghoulish, inhuman?'

  `On the contrary. It makes him very human. He can make us laugh, yet commits terrible crimes. We don't like that. We want killers to be monstrous, inexplicable, inhuman. But how you go about making an audience cry for him as well as rejoicing in his humour, that I don't know.'

  `I don't either. But I think it's something to do with disturbing them. By not making his humour too comfortable.'

  `Good. I like the sound of that.'

  Interesting to compare Monty's view of Richard with that of Stopford A. Brooke in his collection of essays, On Ten Plays of Shakespeare, published in 1 goy. He describes very precisely the worst way (in my opinion) one could play Richard's humour: `a chuckling pleasure in his cunning'. Yet, strangely enough, he and Monty end up with a similar conclusion. Brooke: `He who has no love has no true sense of right and wrong, and the absence of conscience in Richard is rooted to absence of love in him. The source of all his crime is the unmodified presence of self-alone.'

  An absence of love. Caused by a hating mother. This is what I will base my performance on. But I will have to be quite secretive about it, because it sounds so corny - his mother didn't love him.

  Saturday io March

  Unusual encounter. A stranger wrote, asking to meet. He's an actor playing the little tomboy Cathy, the part I played, in Cloud Nine. I assume he will want to discuss the original joint Stock workshop we did before Caryl Churchill wrote the play, and agree to meet him between shows today.

  It quickly becomes apparent he has something else on his mind. He just needs to talk to someone and for some reason has chosen me. He tells me that he is a transsexual (I have to confess to him I'm not sure what that is; he explains it's wanting actually to change sex) and is finding the experience of doing the play traumatic. He's a man who wants to be a woman playing a little girl who wants to be a little boy. The current situation is only part of the problem. A change of sex is of course feasible, but would probably entail having to change professions as well. I'm very struck by his manner. Something beyond despair. He smiles calmly as he describes the hopelessness of the situation, his gaze is very trusting, open.

  Monty was quite wrong: I haven't learnt any of his skills. I feel unable to make any useful suggestions, except therapy which he's already done - apparently the therapist was more embarrassed than him and had to look away for much of the time.

  I was moved by the experience, inspired by his courage and grateful to have met him. If the Shadey film ever gets made and I play the part (which is a transsexual), this meeting will prove invaluable. As I write this it sounds vaguely exploitative, but I really don't believe it is. His openness was a revelation to me.

  Monday 12 March

  I'm reading one of the books which Bill Dudley suggested, The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. Although written as fiction it has become the bible of the Richard III Society (which is pledged to restoring his reputation in history). It would appear that the real Richard was a good king, a gentle soul, not at all deformed, and didn't kill the princes in the Tower. Richmond (later Henry VII) might have done it.

  Shakespeare's source was Holinshed whose source was Thomas More's History of King Richard the Third. But More was only five when Richard succeeded to the throne and and eight when he was killed at Bosworth. His source was Morton, Bishop of Ely (he appears as a character in the play) who in real life hated Richard. Also, More was writing for the Tudors who wanted their claim to the throne made kosher, Richmond being the first Tudor.

  An interesting read but useless for my purposes. Except that in the book a doctor studying the famous portrait of Richard diagnoses polio.

  Tuesday 13 March

  Last Maydays. I arrive at the stage door to find our author David Edgar and his wife there. David is so tall his head brushes most ceilings. He is chain-smoking as usual and wears a long grey scarf which itself looks like a giant curl of smoke from floor to ceiling. A joy to fall into the banter again.

  David says, `Ah, Sher. Why aren't you preparing for the performance? Doing aerobics or mirror-exercises with Alison Steadman or something. Shouldn't you be thinking your way into character?'

  `I find with your writing it is advisable to leave that to the last possible moment.'

  `Have you met my wife, my little wife? Darling, have you met this actor, this little actor? I am surrounded by all these little people. Oh, may I use your dressing-room? Make some adjustments to my person - not before time some would say.'

  The show is efficient, workmanlike. Faintly disappointing like all last nights. We want it to be a definitive performance of the play, the same thing that we strive for on first nights. But no performance is ever definitive - the phenomenon doesn't exist.

  I feel a sense of relief that it's over. I was proud to be in it and loved the rehearsals and early performances. But in these last few, hectically busy weeks it felt like climbing a mountain.

  At the party, David Edgar thanks me and says, `Although you were thirtieth or fortieth choice for
Martin I want you to know that on several occasions when I saw it, you were quite, quite adequate.'

  Wednesday 14 March

  ACTON HILTON Technical run-through of Moliere. A depressing, token affair because of the continuing strike. Everyone's heart out of it now. Only a third of the technicians turn up. They know and we know that it's not going to happen on Sunday. Have just to go through the motions until we're officially cancelled. Wig fittings next door; the hours spent stitching each hair into those things. Camera scripts arrive; the hours spent drawing up these. The infuriating, evil, sad waste of it all. Contingency plans discussed half-heartedly. Postponing is impossible. Many of the cast are off to Europe with Much Ado and Bond's Lear, Mal and Brian Parr off to Stratford to open in Henry V and Merchant, and then of course Bill and I start rehearsals for Richard next month.

  Friday 16 March

  ACTON HILTON Bill calls us into a circle. Cedric Messina stands up and announces that the strike has `delivered the mortal blow' to the show and we're cancelled. Apparently there is a faint hope of doing it at an independent studio, as the production company is RKO and not the BBC. We vote to try for this even though it's fraught with problems. I've bad flu to add to my misery.

  Saturday 17 March

  Incredibly, they've made it work! In twenty-four hours Cedric and the R K O people have found an independent studio and the unions have agreed to allow us to use the sets - although built outside, they were designed by the BBC and, had they wanted to be difficult, the unions could have stopped us - as long as not a single member of the BBC staff is involved. Sadly, this means losing a lot of people who've worked devotedly on Tartuffe and this project: Tom Kingdon, Harbi Virdi, Peter Kondal, Cherry Alston and others. A new crew is being assembled and we start tomorrow as scheduled. Moliere may be jinxed, but it's a survivor.

  All day at the theatre, people congratulate us as if we had worked this miracle ourselves. Thumbs are held high across the Green Room, actors whoop and rush into one another's arms.

  It's so beautifully American what's happened, so un-English: a refusal to be philosophical about defeat.

  Sunday 18 March

  LIMEHOUSE STUDIOS, CANARY WHARF, DOCKLANDS The day

  spent doing run-throughs for the new technical team, which includes one of the top lighting men in the country, John Treays. He's only agreed to do it on condition that he gets next Saturday off for his wedding anniversary, so a helicopter is being supplied to fly him between here and his country home.

  The studio is a converted warehouse in the docklands. The canteen is on a barge which, as everyone who works here will immediately tell you, used to be a floating brothel.

  Monday - Monday, I g - 26 March

  TELEVISING M O L I$ R E A strict discipline, no booze, no cigarettes. I need all my energy for a schedule that starts with a make-up call at 7.00 a.m., then televising all day and evening, or else a performance at the theatre.

  It's so sad that the BBC set designer, Cecilia Bereton, won't even be allowed a credit for these astonishing sets. She's understood the play perfectly. And Treays lights them like an Old Master.

  The new production team do wonders (they have learned the show in twenty-four hours), but are forced to resort to television's worst habit - every take is followed by the chorus `Absolutely marvellous!' Praise tossed at us like an anaesthetic; it creates a vacuum, makes one lose all sense of perspective. Once again the clock is uppermost in everyone's mind. The acting is snatched at and first takes are almost always accepted. I fear for my performance.

  Another problem is the make-up. Elaborate tests, which had been set up at the Beeb, got cancelled with the show. So the make-up team are working blind, not knowing the characters, style of the piece, anything. My first big make-up change into the old, dying Moliere (half his face paralysed from a stroke) happens mid-afternoon on the second day. While the studio waits with growing impatience, my poor make-up girl, Hilary, has to improvise her way through this complicated transformation. Envoys are sent, beads of sweat on their foreheads, teeth gritted into horribly calm smiles: `Can we say fifteen minutes?'

  `Say what you like,' says Hils, `we'll be down when we're ready.'

  I'm not happy with the end result - the wrinkles lie one-dimensionally on the skin rather than the face bunching and denting like it does in old age. This is becoming an increasing problem for me. I cannot perform with a face less good than I myself have sketched.

  We have a little pow-wow on the studio floor. Bill is frank with me ('We're running out of time, Tony'), others are more patronising: `Everyone in the control box thinks it looks absolutely marvellous. Would they let you go on if it wasn't absolutely marvellous?' Of course they would, anything to beat the clock. I say, `Look, never mind, let's just do it' - angry, disappointed, hating the idea that people are whispering, `Queeeeny Actorrr.'

  They are rushing so much now that they forget to tell us that we're doing a take and not a rehearsal. It's thirty seconds before we realise we're doing it for real. I'm so emotional by now that I act the scene rather well, cry for real, and for once am rather pleased when the take is glibly accepted and we charge on to the next scene. I just have to keep reminding myself that it's better doing it like this than not at all.

  So these are frantic, unhappy days. In the middle of all this, the Barbican season draws to a close. The last two stage Moliere's flit by, then the last three Tartuffe's. It's Saturday night, the last night of the season, and for many of us the end of the two-year cycle that started in 1982 in Stratford. It has been a magnificent company built on absolute trust and love. The chemistry has been unbeatable. And talent-wise, in one company to have had Gambon, Jacobi, Mirren, Kestleman, Steadman, Hawthorne, Godfrey, Postlethwaite, Storry, Cusack, Peck, Armstrong, Rylance, Bradley, Coleridge, Talbot, Troughton, Waller, Shrapnel, Bowe, Benjamin, Carlisle, Hyde, et cetera ... the list is astonishing and endless.

  There is a farewell party, but I have a make-up call at the crack of dawn (and the clocks go forward tonight as well) so can't stay. Try to find the Tartuffe cast to say goodbye, but they've all gone into the wings of the main stage to watch Cyrano's last curtain call. It has become legendary - one and a half thousand people rising to their feet as one. R S C veterans say, `Nickleby was like that.'

  The calmest, best bits of these mad days have been the drives to and from the studios on Canary Wharf. The docklands are a little known area of London: miles and miles of wharfs, wide channels of still water; warehouses, cranes, white luxury yachts in their moorings; and a smell of the sea. In the early morning no one is about, just seagulls circling. Once a man went by on skis. These drives have been accompanied by Mozart's Third and Fifth Violin Concertos played by Itzhak Perlman - so beautiful it almost hurts.

  Now it is Monday and the television recording finishes as well. Utter exhaustion and post-natal depression as these months of frantic work come to a pounding full stop.

  Richard has not entered my thoughts for two weeks now, but did in a dream one night. Olivier's face in extreme close-up. Viewing it in a slow circle, closer and closer, till I realise it's not on a cinema screen as I thought, nor carved on the side of a mountain as it next appears, but it's actually there. Circling the giant. Closer and closer it comes ...

  Wednesday 28 March

  Feeling much better after a good night's sleep on two mogodons. Lots of energy. Pop into the gym for the first time in two weeks. Doing the first exercise I hear something snap in my lower back. Try to pretend it didn't happen.

  Drive to Stratford with Bev Williams for the first night of Henry V. Ex-wardrobe mistress at The Other Place, Bev is a Stratford legend. Liverpudlian, her figure a diminutive roller-coaster of vivacious curves and circles from her hips to the round specs under a Rasta fringe. `I call myself the little darkie so that some other stupid bugger doesn't say it first and hurt me.' She has also been described as `the sepia sex sensation of Stratford on Avon' (attributed to the actor George Raistrick), but that is hard to believe as she sits nex
t to me in the car, sucking her thumb, wearing bib-overalls and looking all of ten years old. However, when we get to `Stratters' she disappears into a loo and then emerges in a stunning black trouser-suit, high heels, deep red lips. We go into The Dirty Duck pub, centre of R S C life. Everywhere she has ex-lovers to greet - they all seem delighted, no embarrassment or guilt, as she goes from one deep hug to another. Earth Mother and Baby Doll in one. Or Sally Bowles. I remember her room in the Ferryhouse with its window seat hanging over the Avon, stacked with cocktail mixes, scented orange candles, records of Piaf and Sam Cook.

  Last year, after six seasons working in the wardrobe, Bev finally summoned up her courage, changed her name to Beverly Hills and became an actress.

  We are sitting on the patio at The Duck. It's a clear grey evening, the Avon drifting calmly by - it's seen it all a hundred times before, this first night tension electrifying the atmosphere. Even outsiders like us tend to sit rather stiffly, grinning and nodding a lot.

  `Tony Sher, there you are! Come here for a hug.'

  I disappear into the ample arms and voluminous first-night frock of Pam Harris, The Duck's famous proprietress and Mistress Quickly lookalike. When the company impersonate her voice they sound like Frankie Howerd, but it's so much richer than that - marinaded in brandy and smoked in Piccadilly's untipped.

  She is furious with me. `Why are you living out in Chipping Campden? I know - to try and be good this year! They all try that. Give 'em a couple of months and they're in here till closing time, cars have to find their own way home, yessss. Are you eating after the show, shall I put some champagne to chill? Got all the critics coming in as well, don't know whether to put them in the back, you lot in the front, or vice versa, always such a problem keeping you all apart.'