Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition (13 page)

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.'

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.

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.

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.

Coming into Stratford I feel a little wobble. The last time I saw this place,
a year ago, I was making a hurried exit in a taxi to London for the operation
on my Achilles tendon. A few belongings packed, a canvas I had started
crammed into the back seat, it was drizzling, the future rather bleak.

But today the town is welcoming, it smiles. You can't drive over that
bridge, see that stretch of river, see that great ugly building floating on it,
flying the R S C flag, and not feel your heart leap.

The welcome at the theatre is wonderful in a totally matter-of-fact way.
Round every corner there is a familiar face that looks up and says, `Oh,
hello Tony, what are you doing here?' When I tell them I'm coming back
they say, `Oh good', and seem to mean it. Eileen knitting at the stage
door, Traude buzzing around the canteen, Vic from the props staff and
... Black Mac.

Mac was my dresser on King Lear. A fearsome army sergeant from the
camp nearby who, improbably, dresses at the theatre in his spare time.
Short, squat, glasses, no teeth and an impenetrable Newcastle accent. His
only softening feature is a floppy fringe of grey hair. When I first joined
the company, he terrified me so much I almost asked to be moved to
another dressing-room. His army slang is crude beyond belief and
brought back gruesome memories of my National Service. He seems to
re-invent male chauvinism every time he opens his mouth. Women are
known as `split-arses'; his own wife is known as `the Vampire'.

He divided actors into ranks: stars are known as Mark-Ones, supporting
actors are Boffins, and play-as-cast actors are Peasants and treated accordingly. He'll gleefully tell how in one company the Peasants finally revolted,
stuck a coat hanger down his back and hung him on the back of a door
for several hours.

Needless to say, all of this macho aggro is superficial. Mac has a heart
of gold, is a gentle vulnerable man, brilliant at his job and eventually we
got on famously. I was nicknamed Animal (or `Animil', as he spelt it on a
card) because of my wild curly hair. He used to ring me up in London
after the accident. `How's the fokkin paw then, Animil? Cushy, skiving
get-out innit? I'd've kep you working on it if you were under me down
the camp.'

We are delighted to see one another, stand there patting stomachs,
commenting on weight gained.

`What you gonna do here then, Animil?'

`Richard the Third.'

`Oh yeah? We haven't done him for a while. You'll be a fokkin Mark-One
then.'

`And I want you to dress me.'

`Righto. Well, you have a word with the split-arse upstairs.'

The theatre manager, Graham Sawyer, takes me to view various RSC
properties. Finding a decent place to live is almost as important as the
parts you play. I've decided to live outside Stratford this time. Instantly
fall in love with a cottage in Chipping Campden where the actor Dan Massey is living this season. He's pottering around with a mug of coffee,
classical music playing. Magnificent banked garden; I run across it, hail
plopping down, to peer into a glasshouse at the far end. Perfect to paint
or write in. Upstairs the bedrooms have low sloping ceilings, thick beams,
little windows in strange places. Dan says, `I know you're going to come
and live here, I know it.'

He's right. The others I look at don't compare. I tell Graham to book
it for me.

Sketching Ronnie Kray's face. It's a more feasible version of the head
I drew in Hermanus. It has the thickness, the strange heavy brow, the
eyebrows joining over the nose, a puffiness round the eyes (from boxing).
A bruised sadness in the expression.

BBC 2'S `Horizon' - an episode called `Prisoner or Patient'. Using the
Dennis Nilsen case to consider the whole question of psychopaths, a term
which divides the medical profession. A psychiatrist defines it as `a term
used to describe people who've behaved anti-socially from a very early
age. The core of their personality seems to be an extreme egocentricity,
a complete disregard for the feelings of others, and as a result they tend
to leave a trail of chaos behind them, in human terms.'

(Richard's mother, Duchess of York:

`Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy;

Thy school-days frightful, desp'rate, wild, and furious;

Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous;

Thy age confirm'd, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody:

More mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred.')

Another psychiatrist (who gave evidence for the prosecution at Nilsen's
trial) refutes the use of the term completely since it implies there can be
a cure, which apparently is not the case. Nilsen was sent to prison rather
than to a mental home because his condition was considered to be
untreatable, incurable: thus evil rather than mad.

Some mental patients are interviewed, filmed in ghoulish silhouette,
made more sinister by their voices thick with drugs. In talking about his
psychiatrist, one commits a spectacular Freudian slip: `He washed his
hands with me.'

`The World About Us' on the Great White Shark. Interview with Peter Benchley who wrote .lams. Asked why this shark has suddenly become
such an international superstar, he suggests that in appearance it is `a
nightmare creature' which touches a primal nerve in our subconscious.
This is made worse by the fact that it can cross over from our nightmares
to real life and commit the ultimate horror - it can eat us.

I like the phrase `nightmare creature'. It's an image I've got to find for
Richard.

BAR B I C A N Meeting with I Toward Davies about The Party. I tell him that I
believe Shawcross is underwritten and needs a personality actor (someone
naturally watchable) on whose shoulders the whole play could gently rest.

Howard: `That kind of actor will make it boring.'

`No, I'd make it boring. I need a character to play.'

I have made up my mind not to bring up the subject of Sloman unless
he does. fle does. I tell him I wouldn't consider playing it now unless
Mal has first choice of the two parts without knowing that I'm after one
of them. Mal is so selfless he'd do anything to keep everyone happy.

Howard says he isn't sure himself if he can see the casting the other
way round, but agrees to get Mal to read the play, looking at both parts.

CITY GYM In the changing-room I'm lamenting the fading of my South
African tan when I notice a middle-aged man limp in. Using the mirror I
discreetly watch him change. One leg is stick-thin. He limps off to the
shower, using his crippled leg only for balance; it has no strength, has to
be hoisted along by a hip movement, thrown forward to the next step.

Could be useful. But didn't somebody tell me that is how Alan Howard
played Richard? Lifting his bad leg with a chain and hoisting it along?

MONTY SESSION As it's drawing to a close, I mention the `Horizon'
programme and ask his opinion on psychopaths. He agrees with the
psychiatrist who refused to use the term, and says, `It's just a convenient
way for Medicine to sweep certain people under the carpet.' But he
doesn't accept that anyone is incurable.

I ask, `How do you explain Richard the Third then?'

`Well, how did you feel when you were on crutches last year?'

`I hated people staring at me.'

`What did you want to say to them?'

`Fuck offl What are you staring at?'

`Precisely. Anger.'

He says Richard is revenging himself on the world, destroying a world
he sees as hating him.

I mention the angelic-cripple syndrome of Quasimodo, Smike and the
rest. Monty says that's where Drama falsifies the world, romanticises it.
Like whores with hearts of gold.

`We treat the disabled appallingly,' he says, `they come up against
dreadful prejudice. For example, people in wheelchairs are automatically
assumed to have no sex-drive because the lower halves of their bodies
appear to be out of use. The disabled person experiences all this frustration
and given the chance, will lash out.'

`So are you saying Richard's behaviour is normal?'

`In the circumstances, absolutely normal.'

I suggest we set aside one of our sessions to discuss Richard's problems
instead of mine. Monty roars with laughter and says he'd rather do it over
dinner, after-hours.

The first Friday the Thirteenth in the year 1984, and the weather is
bizarre. A powerful wind. Driving through Regents Park, the car is
suddenly surrounded by thousands of brown leaves. Then the wind,
growing stronger by the minute, rocks the car along Westway, rips at the
door when I try to get out, wrestles with me rudely as I walk towards the
Acton Hilton, clutching at my specs. On the seventh floor a very uneasy
feeling. The windows seem to be taking a lot of strain. The sky is weird,
lit from underneath, it might boil over.

Evening. Watch a video of the South Bank Show Arts Review of 1983. I
recorded a speech from Maydays for them. Not a pleasant sight. For the
first time I understand why friends like Dickie warn me against staying
too long with the R S C. The speech has flair but is quite, quite empty. It
can happen so easily at the R S C given that we play to a relatively uncritical
audience who come along expecting to see brilliance. Also, you easily
develop a swagger from having to prowl those vast stages in Stratford and
the Barbican. Taken to the extreme (who shall be nameless), R S C acting
can cease to bear any relation to recognisable human behaviour.

News report - yesterday's wind reached hurricane strength. Several people
were killed, a concrete tower collapsed and, amazingly, a gargoyle was
torn off the side of York Minster and flew through the air.

Last run-through of Tartufe for the technical crew. An army of cameramen, sound men and other technicians follow the action around the
rehearsal room, their noses buried in large fold-out studio plans. Discussion with Cherry Alston, the make-up supervisor, about my bum. The
problem is that my legs are still very tanned from South Africa, my bum
very white. Bill giggles and says he rather likes the idea that Tartuffe has
been sunbathing on Orgon's patio. Cherry professionally jots down, `body
make-up for Tony'.