by Antony Sher
`Well, I've done some. Not a lot. Not as many as you'll want. But some.'
Before I can say anything he launches into an attack on `lazy cutting, careless butchery'. He says the play is not just a comic melodrama; it might be the work of a young writer but it has considerable maturity; we mustn't keep the action going at the expense of the texture and careful structure of the play. He quotes the example of the Queen Elizabeth scene which is often cut in its entirety, but is a marvellous replay of the Lady Anne scene.
`Agreed,' I say, `we mustn't lose it. But it is too long.'
`We'll discuss that when Frances Tomelty is here. I'll just give your cuts for now, all right?'
`Fine. We certainly mustn't fight on the first day. And not in front of Charles.'
Charles shrieks, causing papers to fly off the table.
Bill says he'd like to use the New Penguin edition to rehearse with, and the Arden for notes - these are much better and wittier, but so profuse there are only about two lines of the play itself per page. Alison will crosscheck both versions and when there are discrepancies we'll choose whichever is more useful for our purposes.
The moment has come to start reading.
Nervously trying to delay, I suggest that we might think about the first two lines of the play as a potential cut, and thus avoid the most frightening part of playing Richard III. `Instead, it could begin, "And all the clouds that lour'd upon our House . . ." no?'
`Just read it,' says Bill grinning.
` "Now is the winter of our discontent ..."
I read badly, rather monotonously or else I over-stress. Mercifully Bill stops me after about ten lines and starts to pick at words and discuss meanings.
We have begun.
Bill D. shows me the designs for Richard's three costumes.
The drawing of 'Richard/Basic' is magnificent - a cross between a pirate and a slug, all in slimy black, wearing an ear-ring, hair spiked punkishly (modelled on Ian Dury who has polio), the crutches twisted and gnarled. The nightmare creature is there.
In the second drawing (after `a score or two of tailors to study fashions to adorn my body') he has Richard in bottle-green, toad-like, and with a heavily brocaded, multi-layered hat like the ornate heads of some reptiles. Somehow the green seems wrong. Black, although traditional, is so powerful. He agrees to change it and stick to black throughout.
The final drawing in black armour is another strong image - a fighting machine hurtling through battle.
Afternoon session with Mal, looking at the Richard/Buckingham relationship. Much easier reading, now there are two of us. Bill wants there to be a tension between them throughout, for their rapport to be dangerous and competitive.
Interesting discovery: one assumes Richard to have an instinctive respect for Buckingham, but early on he describes him as a `simple gull'. Buckingham hasn't got a genuinely criminal mind, however ambitious and ruthless he might be. He is astounded when Richard gives him the chop because he hasn't seen the inevitability of it: everyone surrounding Richard has eventually to be disposed of, on the principle that anyone Richard can trust must be untrustworthy.
Food for thought here - the loneliness of dictatorship.
A gym has opened in Stratford just in time for me. I enrol immediately. It's at the Grosvenor Hotel and is called Grosvenor Bodily Health (the initials are thus GBH).
Driving home, I fantasise the Richard III reviews. From the good ('The Best since Burbage') to the bad ('Haven't scoffed so much since O'Toole's Macbeth. After Richard on crutches can we look forward to Hamlet on a stick and Lear's iron-lung?').
Dinner with Jim at Lambs, Moreton-in-Marsh, an old haunt from History Man days, when I lived in Stretton-on-Fosse. The management have changed and the new man is a scoliotic. Interesting that he wears a thin shirt and yet you don't notice his back at first. Then, when you do, you wonder how you could have missed it. Must be a trick in the way he's learned to hold himself and move.
I am eager to talk to him about it, but am dissuaded by Jim saying that, if I do, he'll walk out of the restaurant. However, after the meal the man offers us a brandy on the house and asks where we work, and then inevitably, `What plays are you doing?'
`Richard the Third,' I answer, watching closely for his reaction; but there is not a flicker of recognition. `And Jim is doing The Merchant of Venice.'
He asks, `Is The Merchant of Venice lighter than Richard the Third?'
I think for a moment. `Yes, I suppose it is' (said the Jew to the Crookback).
Thursday 26 April
Wake early and lie thinking about this business of whether Richard has to be sexy. The other day Adrian was talking about the Rustavelli production and mentioned how sexy Chkhivadze was. `But then Richard's got to be sexy hasn't he? For the Lady Anne scene.'
And yesterday Eileen at the stage door whispered to me, `We've heard you're going to play him on crutches. You're not, are you? He's got to be sexy. You can't be sexy on crutches.'
And then there was Bev saying, `Richard the Third is the sexiest of them all.'
Why this obsession with him being sexy? How many severely deformed people are regarded as sex symbols?
Leafing through the Arden Introduction, I find that the ever-surprising editor Antony Hammond has included an anecdote from the original production concerning stage door groupies, which would seem to indicate that Burbage didn't stint on the sexuality either. It's from John Man- ningham's diary and also happens to be one of the earliest anecdotes about Shakespeare himself.
`Upon a time when Burbage played Richard III there was a citizen grew so far in liking him, that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard III. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained and at his game ere Burbage came. The message being brought that Richard III was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III.'
Making Richard sexy seems to me the same as making him funny; it avoids the issue, avoids the pain.
CONFERENCE HALL Our rehearsal room used to be hired out for conferences to the citizens of Stratford. One wall belonged to the original Memorial Theatre and survived the Great Fire in 1926. It is a beautiful room full of old things from old productions: a goblet, a sceptre, a throne. Theatre props age faster than their real counterparts. The cardboard shows, the plaster shows, they look crude and childish, reminding you of school productions.
There's an old wind machine on the shelf above the door, there's a sword rack, there's a horse you strap round your middle and jog into battle with. It's full of ghosts - one of them sits on an upper level looking down, a white polystyrene figure from some long-forgotten show, sitting intently forward, elbows on knees, keeping a watchful eye on this latest production. The Ghost of R S C Past.
It is the perfect rehearsal space, miles high, full of light and air. On the ceiling giant circular skylights; one sends a shaft of sun on to our table as individual members of the cast come in one by one to read their scenes. The light is soft but clear; it illuminates these new faces.
Roger Allam (Clarence) in beret and granny sunglasses, looking like a jazz musician.
Brian Blessed (Hastings) a small mountain, teeth he could hang from a trapeze with, a chuckling squeeze-box voice: `Such an exciting project, so thrilled, Tony how d'you do, so pleased to meet you, Michael Gambon tells me you're hell to work with ... Charles! Are you stage-managing? Charles is a sweetie, lousy in bed but what a cook!'
Penny Downie (Lady Anne), Australian accent when she isn't reading, striking classical profile, long blonde hair. Instant rapport - we look one another in the eye as we read. Whatever Richard's own sex appeal may or may not be, the sexuality in the scene is undeniable. The in-and-out rhythm of their last exchange.
Finally Frances Tomelty (Queen Elizabeth), eyes like black coals, a mane of hair, two miniature silver spoons for ear-rings. At one point Bill compares Richard to Macbeth - she instantly crosses her
self.
I say, `I don't think that superstition applies if you're just rehearsing.'
`It's not a superstition to me,' she says, `I've lived through it.'
Of course - she was Lady Macbeth in the O'Toole production.
The theatre is buzzing with excitement after last night's visit by Prince Charles and Princess Di to Henry V. They were Ken Branagh's personal guests and apparently had requested that their visit be unofficial. They said they would just slip in. How the two most famous people in the world thought they could just slip in to a busy public place is a puzzle. Inevitably, by the interval a crowd had gathered in the front of the stalls, staring up at the dress circle where they were sitting. The second half couldn't start for some time because the audience was pointing in the wrong direction. Afterwards, Branagh went to meet them and Prince Charles apologised for upstaging the show.
Friday 27 April
Awake early again. The text for this morning's thought is `lump of foul deformity'. After only two days' work on the text I've become less interested in the physical shape, and more in Richard's mind, his intelligence and cunning. I now feel encumbered by the monster image. But we are being pressurised to make up our minds - the wardrobe staff can't begin to make my costumes until the exact measurements of the deformity are settled. This seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Ideally, I would like several weeks working just on the text, then a couple of weeks experimenting with shapes and movements, and only then should we decide what he's going to look like. Of course that's impossible with the theatre system in this country. For instance Bill D.'s set designs had to be in by February. And however exciting they might look, they closed all other options long before rehearsals - and the real exploration of the play - had even started.
FIRST S C E N E Up until now we've been sitting round the table reading and discussing the text. Today we venture out on to the rehearsal floor. Pleased that my early idea about the harmless cripple sitting in the sun seems to work. I position myself over at the proscenium arch, very much on the sidelines, calling out and reaching for Clarence and Hastings as they pass, as if to say, `Forgive me, it's so much trouble to get up.' Then at the end of the Hastings episode, my line `Go you before and I will follow you' becomes `Oh please don't wait for me, I take hours.' Richard exploits his disability to lag behind, to plot and chat to the audience.
Both Roger and Brian seem to be terrible corpsers like me, so rapport is quickly established.
Lots of hump jokes already. Roger goes to pat my shoulder, remembers the hump, and asks, `Uhm, which side will you be dressing, Sir?'
LADY ANNE SCENE (Act 1, Scene ii) Penny has never seen the play or even the film, which is a terrific advantage. Bill says to her, `We associate grief with goodness. Grieving people get our sympathy, we automatically assume them to be good people wronged. This is not necessarily so.' He wants her cursing in the scene to be `a perverted form of praying, calling on an avenging God'.
He has a brilliant idea for the beginning of the scene. The procession with the corpse is illegal, not a state funeral as it is often played (Richard has murdered Henry VI after all). So Bill wants the pallbearers and guards to be nervous and edgy, eager to get it over with. Lady Anne, high on grief, does the famous `Set down' speech as a deliberate piece of street theatre. A little crowd forms - people already in the church either praying or screwing among the tombs. Richard is just one of the crowd. At the given moment he steps forward and so the wooing begins.
Before Penny leaves the rehearsal we show her Bill D.'s designs for Richard. I say, `Given that you have to be seduced by him, how important is it to you what he looks like?' Penny stares at the drawings open-mouthed - she is the first of the cast to see our idea for Richard's image - and finally she says, `I'll have to think about it.'
SO L U s I tell Bill how the whole monster/crutches image seems like an imposition now. He seems a little thrown by this, says, `Well, we must try it. We can't just abandon it.' We agree to set aside a session to experiment, to try it in action. I will have to learn the first speech over the weekend so that I'll have my hands free to use the crutches. And wardrobe will make a rough of the deformity we've discussed, for me to wear.
An excellent session, discussing Richard's soliloquies. Then, we discuss how to start the play. I describe the sequence from the Dwoskin film - starting the speech in darkness, slowly limping into a pool of light. Bill's idea is for the lights to discover Richard already there, but static. `If we use the crutches -' Bill prefaces this carefully - `I want to save the surprise of them for as long as possible.' He asks me to experiment sitting on them like a shooting stick. So the audience would think that was the shape: an armless lump. Then on, `But I, that am not shap'd for sportive tricks', whip out the crutches from behind and charge down stage. They do work terrifically well for a trundling bull-like charge.
We discuss another idea I've had, about the seeds of Richard's megalomania. Actually the notion comes from what Monty was teaching: learning to like yourself - in Richard's case it becomes a love affair. He begins the play full of self-loathing ('Deformed, unfinished ... half made up'), then after the wooing of Lady Anne there is a burgeoning narcissism ('I do mistake my person all this while!').
Bill rejects this. He feels that it's too early in the play for such a radical change of character.
THE DIRTY D U C K Bill and I are having supper when Pam dances up to our table, a kind of Hawaiian dance with the little fingers of each hand turned upwards. She tells us, `There are great expectations for the fruits of your partnership.' She knows more about what's happening in the RSC than anyone who works there. All of company life passes through The Dirty Duck. But her discretion is legendary and she prides herself on it.
She tells us about the pub. It was originally called The Black Swan. She says no one knows when or why it was changed. Some old-timers think it got nicknamed by Australian soldiers during the war, because down-under black swans are known as `mucky ducks'. At the moment the pub sign outside bears both names, one on either side.
She asks what time Richard 111 will finish; this crucially affects her trade.
`Hopefully before eleven,' says Bill, looking shifty. The touchy question of cuts again. When Pam goes, he says grumpily, `I didn't realise, along with all the other artistic considerations, drinking time had to be allowed for as well.'
I am still reeling from shock. `Hopefully before eleven' means three and a half hours. He says that he wants cuts to occur naturally as we rehearse scenes, for the cast to volunteer them, not for him to impose them.
I say, `I'm sorry, that is not a good idea. Nobody other than me is going to volunteer cuts. All the other parts are too compact already. It is always much less painful for a cast to have the cuts from the start. What you never have, you don't miss.'
`I know. Don't lecture me.'
This is said lightly, but startles me. Now that I think about it, I have noticed a new edge in our relationship since Wednesday, probably because we're both tense about the enormous task ahead. Earlier this evening I had been arguing for Richard's throne to be carried. It seems to me that if you are King and happen to be crippled, you don't walk, you get carried. I delivered what, I suppose, was a little `lecture' on how we have to create the paraphernalia of dictatorship, a display of megalomania. Bill suddenly said, `Yes, I have grasped that he didn't want to be King for the bookkeeping!'
But eventually he did agree to the throne-carrying and actually that led to a happy solution of the horse problem: they've decided against real horses because of the unpredictability of their bowels, and instead are going to create the image with horses' armour. The problem was how to get these monstrous skeletons on and off. Alison Sutcliffe suggested ritualising it even more and carrying the horses like the throne, with poles through the sides, and so continuing that image.
Lie in bed wondering about the opening speech, how to combine charm (which Bill feels is vital to the part) and pain (which I feel is necessary). One solution
would be to do it like the M C from Cabaret, a vulgar, circus presentation of his deformity: `Deformed!' ... drum roll . . . `Unfinished!' ... cymbal crash ... But the idea is too Adrian Noble-ish, and smacks of the Rustavelli version too. Another way would be to do it very Brechtian: come on completely normally and strap on the pieces of deformity as I describe them, so that only by the end of the speech is the image created. Richard as actor. But that's been done too - David Schofield twisting his naked body into the Elephant Man at the start of that play.
Somehow have to find a character whose charm is dangerous and whose humour is cruel.
Tonight I wanted a cigarette for the first time. Resisted it.
Saturday 28Apri1
Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations. A procession through town with the flags of every nation unfurled along the way. Last night at The Duck, Pam was telling us that the police had been wondering all week what to do about the Libyan flag while the siege in St James's Square continued. A shop next to the Libyan flagpole was asked, rather ominously, if they minded being used as a first-aid station. Luckily the siege came to a peaceful end yesterday, the embassy has been closed down and so the flag has just been removed altogether.
Reporting the deportation of the embassy staff, the Daily Mirror carries the headline, `Good Riddance!' Bill recalls similar examples of the tabloids slang-slinging and rabble-rousing during the Falklands: `Up Yer Junta!', `Barging the Argies', `Gotcha!' (when the Belgrano was sunk). He says it's useful to think about Richard's oration to his soldiers in these terms: `He should aim for a lofty style, a Times editorial, but it should instinctively come out on the lowest possible News of the World level.' ('A scum of Bretons ... these bastard Bretons ... shall these enjoy our lands? Lie with our wives? Ravish our daughters?') `Or to put it another way,' says Bill, really warming to his theme now, `he aims for the inspiring patriotism of a Henry the Fifth, "Once more unto the breach" kind of stuff, but all he can muster is, "Do you want some smelly dago sticking his dick up yer missus?" '
