by Antony Sher
London feels like it's on another planet.
Sunday 3 June
Impossible to relax without Richard, yet essential to leave him alone for the day. A long swim at Dickie's club, the RAC. The Victorian/ Egyptian swimming-pool is beautiful. Floating face-down at the deep end, hanging in space.
Monday 4 June
Only one week to go.
Evening rehearsals are interrupted by an emergency R S C policy meeting. There's a feeling at the top that shows are being over-designed, made over-elaborate. The Bills are rather nervous that some of our set might get cut as an example to the others.
WARDROBE FITTING-ROOM Normally the designer would be present at every fitting but because of the meeting I have this one on my own.
They have made a rough of the first black costume to try over the false back and arms. It is a shock to see how the deformity disappears under a black covering. Of course that colour is famous for its slimming powers. The muscular arms don't register at all, the hump only just. I dare not say anything, but watch with a growing sense of despair as the wardrobe ladies pin and snip round me. My first instinct was right - Tucker's scale has been too small, it's filmic. The costume itself looks good. The wardrobe ladies are delighted and hurry away to start some serious stitching.
I return to the Conference Hall with heavy tread. Something will have to be done. And tonight.
The Bills are looking relieved. Our set is intact. They got away with a light ticking-off. Their sense of well-being is about to be shattered.
`It can't be right!' I blurt. `We may have changed a lot of our early ideas, but we were still expecting something of the deformed brute. Instead we've got a man with a slightly bad back!'
Rehearsals are cancelled, the wardrobe staff are alerted and we hurry back across the road.
Maurice Robson, the head cutter, has a fearsome frown on her face.
`Well, here we are again,' I laugh nervously.
`Yes,' she says murderously.
`Right,' says Bill D., and like a sculptor sets to work on me. He calls for a spare pair of Tucker's arms and stretches them over the ones I'm already wearing, doubling their size. Grabs some grey foam rubber and shoves this between my back and Tucker's, trebling its scale.
The costume will have to be started again. Only six days to go. I suggest we ditch altogether the idea of a second, heavily brocaded costume. This will lighten the workload. Everyone agrees. Maurice smiles gratefully and I feel slightly safer now as she wields her heavy scissors round my neck and groin.
Afterwards, in the pub we give vent to our anger with Tucker, but also with ourselves. We knew it was too small and were too frightened to confront him.
`It was those wolves,' says Bill D.
Tuesday 5 June
QUEEN MARGARET SCENE We still can't agree on certain aspects of the scene and are very much the `wrangling pirates' Queen Margaret calls us. Bill suddenly says, `Right. We're obviously not going to agree, so you'll have to accept that I can see better from the outside than you can from in there. This is how it will be ...'
I've never seen him do that before. The problems are sorted out within five minutes.
FIRST FULL RUN-THROUGH Bill's brief is, `Tell the story, serve the story.'
I go at it lightly and softly. My aim is just to get through it.
For the Woodville dinner in the Queen Margaret scene, stagemanagement have set real food for the first time, but, forgetting how much the tables are thumped and jumped on, they've used oranges and apples. All our agonising over this scene is forgotten as it turns into a farce of rolling fruit.
In the Princes scene, when I bash the crutches together, one breaks. This is a sad development. The N H S crutches which have lasted six long weeks of battering are not, as we thought, invincible. Bill D. blames the Tory party and the NHS cuts. Another metal will have to be found.
The second half feels much better. I've always been more comfortable with the neurotic Richard rather than the supremely confident one.
It runs about three and a quarter hours. With an interval, that will be three and a half. At the end, Bill says there are only three people who can't go any faster - Mal, Frances and self - everyone else can and must. Yvonne Coulette gets very upset. She feels she can't go any faster and has been constantly volunteering cuts.
In the pub I am supported by Mal, Roger and Penny in begging Bill to cut. He stares at the carpet. The problem gets more serious with each day. Already people will be heartbroken to lose their favourite bits. Which is why it would have been better to cut before rehearsals began.
Bump into Harold Innocent who says, `Too long, too long. There are scenes in our production never witnessed before on the English stage. I've only ever seen the Queen Elizabeth scene once before and has anyone ever seen the Clarence children before?'
Wednesday 6 June
SECOND RUN-THROUGH Bill's brief is, `Go for the humour, the lightness.' He has done a few little snips and everyone does take it faster. In all, we cut about eight minutes off the first half.
I take a plunge at the part, well a gentle plunge, and the first half does feel better. But the humour of the character is still a mystery and one which only a live audience can solve.
Something happens early in the run to help me get closer to the character. For the Woodville dinner, stage-management have - unbelievably - set oranges and apples in the bowls again, and inevitably they start rolling around again. In the middle of some immortal couplet I break off and say, `Fucking hell, right, excuse me a moment', carry the bowls with the remaining fruit to the front of the rake, throw them off, and return to continue with the scene. I'm not really that angry but everyone thinks I've had a `turn', and the room has gone very quiet. For the first time I get some sense of the danger Richard should engender among those around him. It is very liberating for me, and the rest of my performance has an unpredictable edge as a result.
Bill has picked up one of the apples that I threw out, and sits munching it. At the notes session afterwards he says, `You won't be seeing fruit in that scene again. Something today convinced me that the Woodville family are exclusively meat-eaters.'
I am pleasantly surprised by the strength of my voice throughout the first half; then, on the big `If?' in the strawberries scene, I stupidly over-strain it and live to regret that piece of overacting - there's the whole of the second half to get through. But my voice holds. Just. A tin of Nigroid voice tablets is carried with me throughout.
Without my noticing too much, I sail through the lines with only one or two stumbles and generally the whole affair passes off without too much effort. A step forward. The part at least felt within reach today.
WARDROBE FITTING-ROOM Again the atmosphere is bright and good-humoured in the face of impossible odds. Today is the fortieth anniversary of D-Day after all.
A new rough has been stitched together to try over the enlarged back and arms. I could weep for joy - we're there at last. An image that goes back to the early sketches. The beast, the bull. And the massive upper bulk again creating that optical illusion of wasted legs and tiny feet.
The new weight of the enlarged deformity raises the problem of how to support it. The obvious way is attaching it like a parachute with the crotch as anchor, but I went through all this with the harness for the Fool and my manhood almost never recovered. They will try cross-fastenings on the chest.
THE DIRTY DUCK A thrilling discussion about Shakespeare, with the Avon drifting by at our elbows and the evening turning pink, blue, mixing to purple. Bill, Penny and I vow to do a production of Merchant in the future. Bill wants to try cutting the whole last Act. Who cares about those sodding rings after the trial scene? I'm delighted - imagine having no rows with Bill over the length of the play!
Thursday 7 June
Grateful for the bitty, matinee day.
NOTES SESSION On yesterday's run. Bill very skilfully finds a word of individual praise for everyone. He says the run was more thrilling than he thought possibl
e with a play he knows to the point of boredom.
The new crutches arrive, made of the metal they use for racing bikes and circus trapezes. The weight is comparable to the N H S crutches. We bash them together and they appear to be indestructible, not even denting slightly. But in appearance they are exceptionally ugly. Dead straight and rather thick. The shape has no movement or grace at all. I shall think of them as a last resort. Waiting now for the titanium crutches.
Doing bits with Ciss on stage. I love working in this huge space without an audience or the need to perform. The holy magic this place has in repose. A few working lights throwing shafts across the heavy red folds of the Merchant set, but mainly a feeling of darkness, of coolness.
We do some voice tests and then Ciss makes Penny and me do the Lady Anne scene running around the auditorium between the seats, me trying to catch her. Whenever Ciss does voice workshops in here she loves getting the actors off the stage and into the auditorium.
She says, `We have to give words space, let them float out. The words and ideas are more important than what anyone can do with them. They have to be allowed to live in the air.'
Back in her little office a solus voice call. I sense she is worried by my voice from the two run-throughs. Not its staying power, but my inexperience with the verse. But I also know she wouldn't be driving me so hard at this stage if she wasn't quite confident in my basic grasp of the role.
She talks about freeing the vowels. `Vowels are what we spoke first.'
`You mean as babies?'
`And as we evolved as human beings. Vowels carry the shape, the weight, the meaning of the words.'
She asks me to remember the first poem or rhyme I learned as a child, to recapture my first joy of musical language. My brain aches with the effort of going back that far. `Jack and Jill' is all I can think of. She makes me recite it on the floor, rocking. Then `Now is the winter' in the same way. She is sitting on the floor as well, cross legged, her head cocked, eyes alert, as if the sounds may actually be seen or scented in the air. She says, `We're on to something. Can you feel it?'
`Yes ... sort of.'
It sounds mystical as I write it down like this, but as Alison Sutcliffe says later, `Ciss is teaching something profound, not handing over some glib method.' If it is sometimes confusing it is because you are reaching inside for a new sensation. Try and define it and it remains elusive. Allow yourself to feel it and it will come. Not immediately, but suddenly without trying in a few days time. In a run-through or rehearsal, you are suddenly aware of the words coming out freely, `living in the air'.
It's happened in the past, will happen this time.
S O L U s Nightmare speech. Bill makes me do it very slowly, exploring each thought: `Let Richard think for the first time like an ordinary man, not like an express train. Like any of us asking "What do I fear?" ' He says if we can get sympathy for Richard at this stage it will be a considerable achievement, but it's a sympathy which should make the audience want him killed quickly. Not out of revenge for what he's done, but to have him put out of his misery. Bill says, `We enjoy the early Richard because, for most of us who aren't like him, it is such a strain being good!'
LONG LARTIN MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON Ciss does regular workshops here. I've asked if I could do one, hoping it might throw some new light on Richard. We've decided to do it on the Lady Anne scene. When we met this evening to drive out to the prison, Penny said, `You do realise that everyone in that room will have murdered or raped at least one person.' She is wearing very tight jeans which can only be removed, she assures me, with the latest laser equipment.
We are led through the prison grounds which look quite friendly in the sunny evening light, rather like a university campus. But eerily deserted. And yet the gates buzz and spring open just as you reach them. Big Brother is watching.
In the classroom the sunlight streams through the bars on the window as the prisoners file in, smiling and nodding at us, a bit awkward.
Ciss seems unusually nervous as she begins the session. She gets them on their feet. `All hum,' she instructs them. `Mmmmmm' go the hefty cons, `Mmmaaa ... Mmmooo ...' Ciss yells over the din, `Pat one another's backs!' Penny joins in gamely, bounding into the throng. `And chests!' calls Ciss. Penny disappears momentarily in the rush.
We read the scene. They are a wonderful audience. Our visit seems to be a form of nourishment to them. They listen with rapt attention, almost like blind people do, hearing each and every syllable.
Afterwards, a discussion rages. I find the arguments difficult to follow because they're all studying sociology, psychology or philosophy. One of them is particularly witty and charming. He is doing English Literature and talks about Brook's Midsummer Night's Dream.
The usual dilemma crops up: why does Lady Anne give in to Richard? `Easy,' says a quiet and rather beautiful young man. `Evil is erotic.'
Another says, `Shit, Richard the Third would have made a good crook, wouldn't he?'
As they're leaving, they each come up to shake hands. The charming man who talked about Brook's Dream asks Penny if she would do him a special favour. He wants her to send him a photo. Just of her hands.
He's the only one accompanied back to his cell by a special warder, who has been standing just outside the door throughout. The rest troop away noisily in a group.
I feel rather like I did after those visits to the spastics' work centre and disabled games evening. Uplifted by the courage on display.
Evil might be erotic, but, from the evidence of this evening, it's also quite invisible.
Friday 8June
VOICE CALL Ciss is inspiring as always, but her worry about my voice is beginning to communicate to me. I'm starting to listen to myself speak. Fatal.
THIRD AND FINAL RUN-THROUGH We won't be doing the whole play again until next Wednesday's dress rehearsal. Today's run is, in a way, the summation of the seven weeks' work in the Conference Hall. Next week we move into the theatre and a new phase begins.
Bill and I are alone, waiting for the others to come in. He says, `What should you go for in this run?'
`Can't think of anything. To tell you the truth, I don't really feel like doing it at all.'
`Good. We said you should get bored with it.'
And precisely because I am a little bored, we have the most extraordinary run-through.
Malcolm Ranson, the fight director, is watching for the first time. Perhaps because his job entails devising ways of maiming and killing, he has a rather dark sense of humour and starts giggling early on. This communicates first to Bill, who also starts, then to me and finally to the whole cast. I play the whole of the first half on the crest of a corpse. Sometimes I am able to control and use it - with this much hysteria in the room waiting to explode, one can achieve electrifying effects by holding it down or throwing it back in their faces.
But at other times the hysteria claims me as the most helpless victim and things get steadily worse until, half way through the Baynard's Castle scene, I'm unable to continue. The whole room is full of shrieking people, like an asylum.
The atmosphere is so dangerous. On many levels. Another director or one of the older, more `professional' members of the cast, could at any moment jump up and scream, `Will you stop it!' But the discovery is rich. The anarchy, the disrespect for the final run-through unleashes my performance from the caution of seven weeks' rehearsal and sets loose the character at last. Although I didn't realise it, or plan this to happen, I needed to behave this disrespectfully as an actor to make the final leap into Richard's amorality and discover the true nature of his humour - Stopford A. Brooke's `chuckling pleasure' and Peter Sutcliffe's highpitched giggle.
The consequences for the second half are valuable too. Gone are the soliloquies, the asides, the manipulations, the plottings, and Richard's delight in all this. As King, the man becomes serious, paranoid, starts to disintegrate. Our run-through audience are dying to enjoy themselves like they did in Part One, but there are few opportunities. T
heir regret that it's not as much fun as before is directly linked to Richard's own sense of frustration and nostalgia for those joyous days. Events move nervously and horribly towards the inevitable end.
I have understood something about the whole part today. At the end I am not too drenched, the voice tired but still there. Inside, I'm deeply, deeply happy.
Bill says to the assembled cast, `Well, we've done three good ones now. Don't know what to say ... I'm terribly excited really ... You're working together as a Company in a very generous way ... Christ, I'm not going to make a ra-ra speech. You can all feel the potential of what we've got on our hands. Have a good weekend, and thank you.'
The word spreads like wildfire and it's encouraging the way people from all around the theatre keep coming up to say, `I hear it went terribly well.' Jim says, `You're getting better and better each time. I think you might be on to something a bit special.' His eyes bright.
WARDROBE FITTING-ROOM The first costume is finished. A queue of people waiting to try their creations on me. Debbie with the crowns and hat, Julian with the gloves and shoes, and finally Pam with the hair-piece. This has been made to match my own curly hair and perfectly fills the gap between my head and the hump. It's rather flattering - light years away from the Hermanus head - but looks so natural we decide to leave it as it is and ditch the spiked, punky look.
With everything on for the first time, I rotate, feeling the new shape from every angle. Suddenly I spy my shadow on the wall and get a shock. As I tell Bill A. later: `Even though we've gone for a different shape, a different costume, different hair, the crutches, twisted knees, I looked at my shadow tonight and saw Laurence Olivier in the part.'
