Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition (26 page)

Building the deformity is fraught with problems. How to design something that won't take three hours to glue on? Where to join it to me if it's
going to be revealed naked? How to make it strong enough to withstand
the Princes being carried piggyback?

Chris Tucker eventually says, `This is all getting frightfully theoretical.
I think we should stop talking, take a cast of his back and try some
experiments.'

It will all have to be built of latex. He looks with distaste at the huge
dimensions of our rehearsal `rough' and says, `I'll have to get a cement
mixer in.'

Dinner with Harold Innocent. He says, `I like my Richards funny. The
audacity. He keeps on saying to the audience, "Oo aren't I awful? But I
won't sav sorry."

I've discovered I have something in common with Richard; neither of us
can afford to indulge in self-doubt or fear. But in the dead of night, when
we're unconscious, these horrors creep into our beds. This morning I
wake terribly afraid again. No hope of getting back to sleep. Get up and
try and learn lines. Something's wrong: they're not sticking. Perhaps it's
still too soon. They're just words, there's nothing to hang them on yet.
The associations I will use to remember them by - the moves, the gear
changes in the scenes - they're not there yet.

Drive in feeling rather edgy. Yesterday I heard the Bills had decided
that the tombs on our set won't ever need to be climbed on. Apparently
a lot of money will be saved on the budget if they're built much lighter.
This seems crazy to me. How do we know yet that we won't want to climb
on to them? Again, it's shutting off options before we've started. With
them dominating the set like they do, surely they're crying out to be used
somewhere? It's not my business though. Do I just let the matter rest? Or
do I risk giving Bill A. another `lecture'?

I find him hopping around the rehearsal room on the crutches. We
each try out different walks, the other watching.

Then, just before the others come in, I tentatively bring up the subject
of the tombs.

He says, `Where are you thinking of using them?'

`I don't know. But I guarantee there'll be somewhere.'

`You're right. We must keep the option open. I'll talk to Bill Dudley.'

QUEEN MARGARET SCENE It's increasingly difficult forcing the text
to fit Bill's idea. Richard and Elizabeth are having a row. Margaret keeps
wandering around muttering. If we can hear and see her, what do we do
while she speaks? How do we sustain the momentum of a row? And if
we're that used to having her around cursing and swearing, why do we
bother to confront her this time?

Pat is doing very interesting things though. Her walk is very upright,
very barmy. She keeps directly behind my back a lot of the time, deftly
moving when I turn so I can never face her.

Rich discovery: once she confronts us all, we use mockery and jeering
as a defence, banging the tables (I clang the crutches together - another
use for them), drowning her out. And I play the court jester, doing mock
bows, or sticking my bum in her face. It feels tribal, un-English. Bill says,
`Remember that what is thought of as English behaviour is only one
hundred years old - people walking in straight lines from their front door
to Tesco's, not looking, not speaking.'

Mal has gone very quiet. I ask him what he thinks of the morning's
work. He says, `It's all wrong. It undermines Margaret's power.'

I'm rehearsing on the crutches today. For many of the cast it's their first
viewing. No one comments until after the rehearsal when Peter Miles
(Lord Stanley) comes up to me. `Are those crutches part of the production
or are you just getting into character?'

`No, we're thinking of using them.'

`Attack me, then.'

`Sorry?'

`Attack me. Say we're in battle. Attack me.'

`Well, I'd rather not, but I assure you they're formidable weapons.'

He looks unconvinced and goes.

Bill has witnessed this, and puts a comforting hand on my shoulder.
`Tony, it's a problem any production of Richard the Third has to face.
Shakespeare has written this severely disabled man who is supposed to
be a great warrior. The crutches only emphasise this contradiction.'

LADY ANNE SCENE Penny has learned the lines and is starting to take
off. I can't keep up; although I learned these lines this morning I keep stumbling over them now. Get increasingly angry with myself. What
unnerves me is that it's so untypical of me. Usually lines come easily. I
keep telling myself this is a good thing - stops me acting too much too
soon.

When Lady Anne spits at Richard it's a crucial moment. Bill suggests
I savour her saliva on my cheeks, my lips. But I think it has to shock
Richard more. It has to touch the centre of his being, the part of him that
first realised that he was different. He could kill her at that point. It releases
a charge into the atmosphere. Now he plays for broke. The crying that
follows ('Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears') comes
effortlessly. I don't mean he is genuinely moved, but the actor in him is
performing brilliantly and can produce real tears. It's not difficult for him
to bring off the impossible now.

Low and tired after the morning's work. It all stems back to the fear and
doubt that crept into my bed during the night. Go for a run round the
sports fields, across the river, relaxing in the exertion. A fresh, cold day.
The wet grass unrolling beneath me like in the dream I had. Feel much
better.

PRINCES SCENE (Act III, Scene i) For scenes involving children, the
R S C always has two alternating sets of child actors, and a chaperone in
attendance at all times. Vera has been the chaperone for twenty-four years
so the children give her no trouble whatsoever. Mind you, apart from the
evidence of school uniforms, there is nothing remotely childish about
these boys at all. They don't fidget or pick their noses, whisper or slouch.
They sit upright and alert and have already learned their lines perfectly.

The idea of Richard playing with the Princes is obviously going to work
well. The boy actors abandon their stiff professional reserve and gleefully
respond to the chance of punching and kicking me. Then at the point of
the famous insult (`... little like an ape ... bear me on your shoulders!')
Bill wants the young York to leap on to Richard, who gives him a dangerous
piggyback ride. Is it still a game or is he going to throw the child?

The problem remains - will the hump contraption be strong enough to
take this', Secretly, I'll not be too sad if it isn't. I have the Brando/gorilla
impersonation up my sleeve as an alternative. And Bill did say the other
day, `It would be good if somewhere in the play Richard parodies his own
deformity.'

As Hastings leads the Princes off to the Tower, I hear Blessed mutter
to them, `Come on lads, lots of fun in the Tower, video games and
everything ...'

QUEEN ELIZABETH SCENE (Act Iv, Scene iv) Richard is persuading
Queen Elizabeth to let her daughter marry him, despite the fact that he's
murdered most of their nearest and dearest.

When we're working on Richard's big speech to Elizabeth, the section
`Day, yield me not thy light, nor night thy rest!' comes out sounding like
King Lear summoning up the elements. Gambon haunts this rehearsal
room for me. I didn't realise at the time how much I was learning from
him. You plant your feet on the ground, you reach up or down, and you
drag the elements towards you.

At several points in the scene Richard refers to Elizabeth as `mother'.
This follows the cursing by his own mother - there is something crucial
here, linked to Monty's theory.

The R S C employs two local taxi drivers, Larry Adler and Bill Kerr. Larry
is German and Bill Kerr was in the RAF during the war. A fierce rivalry
exists between them, partly because of their work, but also because Bill
Kerr is convinced Larry was actually in the Bunker. Nothing could be
further from the truth. This morning it is Larry, with his quiet Continental
manners, who drives me down to Chris Tucker's home in Berkshire to
have the cast taken of my back. I use the journey to learn lines. On the
back seat the diving-suit is crammed into a cardboard box like a great pet
slug asleep in its basket.

As we drive south, the fields of rape are startling on the landscape. One
of the most breathtaking sights of the year. Unearthly yellow against the
surrounding green fields and the slate grey of the sky. You round a corner,
see it, and your mouth falls open at nature's chutzpah.

CHRIS TUCKER'S His home/workshop is a magnificent sixteenthcentury manor house in several acres of land near Newbury. He is much
friendlier on his own territory. His study is filled with awards, video tapes,
scrap-books, and his masterwork - Hurt's head from Elephant Man. It
stands on a little plinth in gruesome three-dimensional technicolour.
Convincing even to the touch. The bony bits are hard, the pendulous
sponges of skin soft and clammy. Next to it, equally whole and real, stands
Gregory Peck's head from Boys from Brazil, with dog bites in the neck.
`Looked much better when it was bleeding, of course,' says Chris.

Into the workshop where a bespectacled lady sits patiently sewing chest
hairs on to a limbless torso. The shelves are lined with face casts of famous actors - it's difficult recognising these white masks without hair or
distinctive colouring. For instance, a beautiful young girl's face turns out
to be Peter Firth. `People as they really are,' says Chris.

There are several of Olivier. `That's Sir about ten years ago, that one's
more recent. He wasn't at all well when we took it.' He removes this one
from the shelf, and I instinctively reach out for it. Rather reluctantly he
hands it over, as if it's a priceless antique. Strange to hold this face in my
hands. The expression rather grim as the plaster was applied. You can't
help thinking of a death mask.

`Is that Charles Laughton up there?' I ask Chris.

`Alas no, I haven't got a Laughton. A friend in New York has one. But
there aren't a lot about.'

The Plaster Room. I strip to the waist, wrap a plastic skirt round my
middle and lean forward on the crutches. Chris glues a rubber cap over
my hair and with two assistants, applies the algernate - a thick orange
jelly used by dentists to take tooth casts. It's icy cold and doesn't warm
with the body heat. That's the first shock. This iciness settling round your
neck, shoulders, back. Gallons of it are slapped on, heavy streams coursing
round my neck, globs plopping on to the newspaper on the floor. Stalactites
forming from my nose, chin, ears.

`Mister Sher doing his Oscar-winning performance as a candle,' says
Chris merrily. And the constant instruction: `Please try not to move at all.'

Now dusty white strips of plaster are dipped in water and layered on
top. Ile has to work fast now, forming sections with ribbed breaking
points. As the plaster sets a warmth mercifully permeates the
alginate at last. But it also gets heavier and heavier. I struggle to keep
still as the weight increases. My arms and hands on the crutches are taking
the worst of it. They start very slowly to go dead. You feel it happening
and can't do anything to relieve it. I go into a numb daze. Watching all
that's happening in a large mirror above the work bench: three people
working round my body with the silent, concentrated urgency of a heart
transplant.

A noise like ice cracking. I have almost been asleep. They are levering
off the hardened sections and laying them upside down on the table. A
huge white beetle trapped on its back. Next the algernate is carefully
peeled off and laid into it. The cast itself will be taken from this floppy
mould which contains details of every pore, hair and mole.

`You can move now,' says Chris. I look at the clock. I have been standing
here for one and a half hours. My forearm has swollen where the crutches
were digging in.

Salmon and pate sandwiches, apples from the orchard and coffee are
supplied to revive this torture victim.

Chris measures the diving-suit using a pair of pincers as if he can hardly
bear to touch so amateur a creation.

`Now are you sure you don't want a hump to one side like Sir had?'

`Quite sure.'

Driving back, dozing against the window, ticking, tapping, in its frame. In
and out of consciousness. The fields of rape luminous even on a cloudy
landscape. Astonishing. As if chunks of the sun have fallen to earth.

HASTINGS' HEAD SCENE (Act III, Scene v) Shakespeare doesn't specify
where this scene - Richard and Buckingham plotting their next moves
after the execution of Hastings - is taking place. Bill wants to set it on
the forestage. I argue for using the whole set.

I must confess to an ulterior motive. I'm keen to fly somewhere in the
play and this seems to be the scene. In the text, when the Mayor enters,
Richard and Buckingham intimidate him with lots of Errol Flynn acting
('Look to the drawbridge there!' . . . `Hark, a drum!'). I see Richard flying
through the air on a rope, crutches dangling, the spider image complete.
I've been going round for days suggesting it to whoever will listen - the
Bills, Jim, Mal, Eileen at the stage door. All greet the idea with blank
faces. One or two shake their heads gently. Bill A. uttered a disapproving
sigh. I've taken to sulking and muttering, `Adrian Noble would've let me
fly.'

Today, when I suggest it again, someone reminds me that there's a
memorable moment in the film when Olivier slides down a bell rope. I
drop the idea like a hot brick and will never bring it up again.

When we get to the bit where Hastings' head arrives I am irresistibly
drawn to suggesting business nicked from the Liverpool Everyman production: dropping the head into the Mayor's hands, passing it around like
a rugby ball. We must be careful though. This kind of Ortonesque excess
is tempting. You could do the whole production like this. (We did do the
whole Liverpool production like this.)