Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition (4 page)

And he's South African. Or was. Originally from good Communist
Jewish stock, he was imprisoned after Sharpeville for distributing leaflets
(in prison he claims to have given a notable Lady Bracknell), exiled and
can never return.

It is South Africa that we discuss today. Recently I've had this yearning to
go back to visit and see my family. But this feeling is most uncharacteristic -
I've been back only once in the fifteen years away; that was eight years
ago. For so many years I was a closet South African. Having to say `I was
born in South Africa' stuck in my throat like a confession of guilt.

Monty is delighted. Thinks it is an excellent idea to go and have a grub
round in my roots, rub that soil through my fingers; he sees it as an
encouraging development in our work together.

I confess to him (so much of this is like Confession, I wonder if there's
less call for therapy in Catholic circles) that another reason in the past for
not returning is that I wanted to wait until I could step off the plane to
the crackle of exploding flashbulbs. This seems silly now. He says it is a common syndrome - people who've left home to make good elsewhere
want to return as heroes.

`Anyway,' he says, `maybe there will be photographers at the airport.'

`There won't. I'm not famous.'

`You're well known.'

`There won't be photographers, Monty.'

`So, all right, maybe one photographer.'

I leave the session very uplifted, very excited. Going home.

Halfway through the evening performance of King Lear. We'd done the
first storm scene. I was alone on stage, coming to the end of the Fool's
soliloquy. Goosestepped to the front of the stage, `FOR - I - LIVE -
BEFORE - HIS - TIME', aware that I was slamming my feet down
harder than usual ... swung into the little dance - BANG! My first
thought as I fell was, `Fucking floorboards!' I looked round. No hole in
the stage. No floorboard sticking up. Then what had hit the back of my
leg? What had made that noise? A bullet? Dazed, I looked towards the
audience for the assassin or some explanation. Realised I was sitting on
the floor, had missed several cues, the music was unwinding round me, I
tried to rise, fell again. Hopped off stage and fell. Lear, Kent and Fool
have to go back on almost immediately. To Gambon (King Lear): `Mike,
I can't walk!' He, thinking this was part of our patter, said, `Well then
you'd better crawl, hadn't you? Stupid red-nosed tit.' Cue light. They ran
on. I crawled after. The audience probably thought it was intentional -
Lear, Kent, Poor Tom running round the heath, the Fool flagging,
crawling behind ...

End of that scene. Crawled into the wings. A crowd of stage-managers
had gathered. `Tony, what's the matter?' `Don't know, can't stand up.'
`Are you in pain?' `Don't know, don't know what's going on.' The next
entrance was from under the stage, down several flights of stairs. Mal
Storry (Kent) picked me up in his arms and carried me like a child ...

For the Fool's death I had to step into a dustbin. Impossible to do
without transferring the full weight from one leg to the other. This was
the worst moment. For weeks afterwards this was the moment that I
couldn't think about without going cold, the moment of stepping on to
this soft dead leg, the nauseating pain as it took the full body weight ...

Interval at last. Carried into the wings. A St John Ambulance man from
front-of-house said, `Might be the Achilles tendon.' Ian Talbot, my
understudy, was staring down at me white-faced ...

Carried up to the dressing-room on a chair. The St John Ambulance
man and Steve Dobin, the stage-manager, puffing and struggling like
Laurel and Hardy getting that piano up those stairs ...

Sat in my dressing-room with a crowd of actors at the doorway peering
in, Sara Kestleman saying, `I think it might be the Achilles tendon, my
darling, it happened to me at the National.' Left alone to change. Took
off the red nose, saw myself in the mirror - my face a Francis Bacon
smear of sweat and clown colours ...

Pete Postlethwaite [R S C actor] drove me to the hospital. At first we
couldn't find it, then when we did, couldn't find Casualty. The little
country hospital looked closed for the night. At last, a weary nurse on
duty. She said no one could see me till lunchtime the following day, gave
me a bandage, painkillers, two mogodons and an unofficial diagnosis:
`Achilles tendon, I would have said.'

`The tendon has ruptured completely,' said the surgeon who operated a
week later, `up the back of your leg like a venetian blind.'

A mysterious accident that befalls sportsmen in top condition, little old
ladies stepping off the curb, and a surprising number of actors: Judi Dench,
Tim West, Nick Grace, Brian Cox, Paul Hertzberg, Sara Kestleman and
I, all part of the Achilles mythology.

An unsettling dream during the night: The first read-through of Richard
III on the balcony of a Tuscan villa overlooking a town square. Roger
Rees playing Clarence. The moment comes to start. Everyone looks
towards me. I know the play begins `Now is the winter . . .', but cannot
say it. Everyone waits, staring. A crowd starts to gather in the square
below. Someone says, `Oh don't mind them, they're the same old assassins
that gather every time a Pope is elected.'

Unable to get back to sleep, I find my copy of the play and have a
proper look at the speech.

`Now is the winter ...'

God. It seems terribly unfair of Shakespeare to begin his play with such
a famous speech. You don't like to put your mouth to it, so many other
mouths have been there. Or to be more honest, one particularly distinctive mouth. His poised, staccato delivery is imprinted on those words like teeth
marks.

I sit in shock, in the middle of the night, staring at the text.

`Now is the winter ...'

God. It's as hard as saying `I love you', as if you had just coined the
phrase for the first time.

Has Olivier done the part definitively? Surely not. Surely the greatness
of the play is lessened if such a feat is possible? Surely contemporaries
thought the same about Irving, Kean, even Burbage? The trouble is,
Olivier put it on film.

To cheer myself up on the subject, I dig out my tg8o diary to read this
entry: 28 January. The Roundhouse. With Dickie and the actor Philip
Joseph to see the Rustavelli Richard III. A stunning production by this
Russian company. Ramaz Chkhivadze plays Richard like a species of giant
poisonous toad. And he touches people as if removing handfuls of flesh.
I will never forget the moment of Accession. As the crown landed on his
head it seemed to squash the face beneath it like in an animated cartoon.
You knew it was going to be downhill for Richard from then on. Dickie
thought it was a definitive production, but I'm not so sure. How can we
know when so much of the experience was slightly dream-like, that is, in
a foreign language? But Dickie was undeterred.

'It makes me very envious,' he said. `Mind you, they do have two years
to rehearse.'

`Yes,' said Philip Joseph, `but think of the two-month Technical.'

This letter has been pinned up on the Green Room notice board,
concerning the moment in Tartuffe when I pull down my tights to commence the assault on Elmire, and my bum is exposed; it's from a College
of Higher Education:

`Dear Sirs,

I attended a performance of Tartuffe with my Sixth Form pupils
last night and we were all rather offended by the totally unwarranted
nudity in Act rv. We have tickets for Cyrano de Bergerac on 2 December
and I would therefore be grateful if you could let us know if there is any
nudity in that, and if so, how much?'

They're lucky it wasn't more than just my bum: the rest is contained
in a posing-pouch hidden under the smock, following a conversation in
rehearsals that went, `Bums are funny, breasts funny-ish, but pubes,
penises, testicles and vaginas are definitely not funny at all.'

In several copies I've looked at it's called The Tragedy of King Richard
the Third. Yet a tradition has evolved of playing it as black comedy. I've
never seen anyone play Richard's pain, his anger, his bitterness, all of
which is abundant in the text.

Literature and drama are full of angelic cripples, deformed but kindly
and lovable: Quasimodo, Smike, the Elephant Man, Claudius in I, Claudius. It seems to me that Richard's personality has been deeply and
dangerously affected by his deformity, and that one has to show this
connection.

But the problem in playing him extremely deformed is to devise a
position that would he too per cent safe to sustain over three hours, and
for a run that could last for two years. Play him on crutches perhaps?
They would take a lot of the strain off the danger areas: lower back, pelvis
and legs. And my arms are quite strong after months at the gym. Also I
was on crutches for months after the operation so they have a personal
association for me of being disabled. They could be permanently part of
Richard, tied to his arms. The line, `Behold mine arm is like a blasted
sapling wither'd up', could refer to one of them literally.

The crutches idea is attractive, too attractive at this early stage. Must
keep an open mind on the subject.

Worrying silence from Bill. It's about two weeks since we met. I ring him.
He sounds evasive. I sense that something's wrong. He says that Richard
III is still the only offer. Roger Rees has been talked to about a Hamlet
and Ken Branagh about a possible Troilus.

But good news about the videos. Both Moliere and Tartuffe are to be
done. Bill will direct them himself with the aid of a technical director.

A DAY AT THE BARBICAN Walking through the foyers first thing in
the morning, it's like some futuristic city mysteriously depopulated. A pair
of automatic doors have quietly gone mad during the night and can't stop
opening and closing.

At the top of the main staircase there is a plaque unveiled by the Queen
at the Gala Opening on 3 March 1982. I was present and had an encounter
which now seems to have a curious significance.

I was leading a little group to this staircase for the arrival of the Queen.
Apart from Jim, the group consisted of R S C stalwarts Adrian Noble and
Joyce Nettles. They knew the building much better than I did, as I hadn't even joined the company, so why I should have been leading is something
of a mystery. At the time I put it down to drunkenness - champagne had
been flowing freely - but now I suspect it was more to do with A
Greater Scheme Of Things. Anyway, leading I was. The Royal arrival was
imminent. DJs and evening gowns shimmered and rustled; the lights
tickled over jewellery and hair lacquer; the smell of exclusive scents, the
sounds of sophisticated gossip and discreet champagne burps.

I turned back to beckon my flagging group and almost immediately
crashed into someone heading in the other direction. I say crashed, but
it was as soft and cushioned as befits a collision with Destiny. The recipient
of my careless shoulder was an old man with a white beard and rimless
spectacles. The face was vaguely familiar, the voice even more so.

`Are you trying to kill me?' he asked with the gentle humour of someone
who has looked Death properly in the eye.

`No,' I replied with certainty. And then as an afterthought, `Sorry.'

And that's all there was to it. That's all that was said. It was puzzling
that a little circle had cleared around us, me and Father Time, but not
unduly worrying. He smiled and passed on. I joined my group who now
stared at me with an assortment of strange expressions, as if they had
witnessed some miracle. I smiled, nonplussed, a little drunk, and made
to lead on.

`Do you know who that was?' demanded Jim.

The urgency of his voice caused me to swing round and stare after the
retreating figure. Suddenly I recognised him, or rather recognised his
wife - she was holding his arm now and steering him, to avoid further
collisions with drunken actors in hired DJs - Joan Plowright.