Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition (5 page)

The Queen arrived, but my encounter had so stunned me that I was
pointing in the wrong direction, expecting her to come down the stairs
instead of up them, and missed seeing her altogether.

It didn't matter, for I had just brushed shoulders with Richard III.

This morning, almost two years later, a cleaner is hard at work, polishing
the plaque. I arrive at the stage door. This is run like the reception desk
of a modern hotel. Usually there are a few people standing around
clutching briefcases (journalists, members of the government doing financial surveys) and a queue of members of the public who think they're at
the box-office.

I will be greeted either by Irish Shamus, large and friendly, `Hillo
Towni,' or by Cockney Ron with tomahawk head, `Aw'ri' Toan?'

Into the corridors where Radio 3 is piped during the day: it gets
everywhere. The uninitiated may be alarmed, going into a loo to find the
1812 playing. They pee, glancing nervously over their shoulders as canons
explode in the cubicles behind them. On Saturdays Critics Forum might
be on and if you've just opened in something, you might be under
discussion. You hurry along the corridors then, hands clasped over ears,
in an Orwellian nightmare, as disembodied voices tell you what they think
of you, and it's being broadcast all round the building!

In the evening the show is relayed, Main House or Pit depending on
which corridor you're in. It can change from The Tempest to Moliere, Cyrano
to Tartuffe, with the slapping of a swing door.

Today it is Maydays, so I move into the Number One dressing-room.
This involves carrying my large cardboard box (containing shampoos,
deodorants, aftershaves, vitamins, glucose, Rennies, Kaolin & Morphine,
dressing gown, towel and little cushion for the quick zizz) from the
communal Pit dressing-rooms down several floors to the individual Main
House dressing-rooms on street level.

The Number One dressing-room (its number is actually Fifty-One, but
that doesn't have the same ring to it) looks rather like something out of a
motorway motel. Characterless functionalism. Its main feature is a pay
phone fixed on to the wall in a plastic module of almost alarming yellow.
Otherwise there's a sofa, three chairs, work-surface, wash-basin and a
window. Through this you can watch legs and wheels going down the
ramp to the car-parks. You cannot see the sky, but by twisting down and
sideways you can just see a reflection of the sky in the glass building
opposite. This is not to be sneezed at when you're underground for most
of the day.

Despite all, I love it, the much maligned Barbican. In a hundred years
they will look on it with such affection. `Why can't they build theatres like
the Barbican nowadays?' they will sigh.

MAYDAYS Neil Kinnock in the audience. The play was very moving as
a result, like when George Harrison came toJohn, Paul, George, Ringo and
Bert (in which I played Ringo). This fiction you're playing is someone
else's reality, you hear the lines through their ears, as if for the first time,
and they suddenly come out quite fresh. I didn't want my character to
defect to the Right tonight.

Afterwards I'm summoned to meet Kinnock. The corridor is full of men - Secret Service? Surely not. He is small, has instant charisma, and
is very cheerful; in fact he positively glows with enthusiasm; the light he
gives off is orangey, from his hair, freckles and gums. His wife tells us
how she couldn't get twelve decent seats for the performance. `They
probably thought,' she says in a Welsh accent even stronger than his, `that
I was someone from the sticks bringing in a little charabanc for a night
on the town.' So they all sat right at the back. It seems they go to the
theatre a lot - they recognise Stephanie Fayerman from a feminist fringe
show.

Ron [Ron Daniels, RSC director] asks him whether he's enjoying his
new role as leader of the Labour Party. `Enjoying it!' he laughs, an
orange firecracker going off, `Enjoying it! Enjoyment doesn't come into it.
Enjoyment is for afterwards, when it's all over and you can discuss your
memoirs on television.'

When they've gone, Ali [Alison Steadman], Shrap [John Shrapnel] and
a friend of his have a drink in my dressing-room. We're all very star-struck,
like schoolgirls at the stage door.

`Wasn't he nice!'

`And so ordinary and easy to talk to.'

`And so little.'

`Seems much bigger on the telly.'

Discussion about power. Shrap's friend says that you can't want to lead
any party without desiring power, which actually makes you unsuitable for
the job. Like actors, politicians must have a basic flaw in their personality,
or at least a peculiarity, that makes them want to do the job in the first
place.

Richard III?

Moliere has always been a strangely jinxed play. Right from the original
1935 Moscow production when, in order to get it on, Bulgakov had to do
battle with everyone from Stanislavsky to Stalin. Last year it finally got its
British premiere, ran about three months, and then my accident occurred,
threatening to take it out of the repertoire - there are no understudies at
The Other Place. Pete Postlethwaite volunteered to take over and was
rehearsed into it. On the Saturday before he was due to open he hit black
ice driving out of Stratford after a show and found himself upside down
in a field, the car a write-off and his back injured. The show came out of
the repertoire for the rest of that season. Sadly, in the following months Derek Godfrey, who had been playing Louis XIV, has died. And now
David Troughton has to have a knee operation and will be out for six
weeks. We're rehearsing John Bowe into the part he plays, Bouton.

KING'S HEAD PUB, BARBICAN With Bill after rehearsals. Still no
news. I've made a private resolution not to discuss any Richard III ideas.
I must play down my enthusiasm for the part, even with Bill, if I am to
get a full season out of them. As casting now gets under way they will
have so many people to keep happy that I will quickly be put to one side
as soon as they think they've got me. This resolution lasts as long as the
first round of drinks. Then we both gleefully plunge into the subject
uppermost in both our minds.

A discussion about the play as Tragedy or Black Comedy. Example:
the line `Chop off his head' is bound to get a laugh, partly because of its
Medieval B-Picture associations. But would the line have been funny to
Shakespeare's audience for whom decapitation had a grislier reality?
Probably yes, possibly more so. To some extent a modern audience's
attitude to violence is similar to then, bombarded with maimings and
slayings (real and simulated) on television and in films. On the other hand
they faint nightly down in The Pit when Bob Peck's eyes are gently,
clinically removed by David Bradley's doctor in Bond's Lear. A score-sheet
is kept backstage.

I read Bill some extracts from an interesting City Limits article on the
Nilsen murder case: `The Yorkshire Ripper story is usually treated with
extreme wariness these days, even by the press. Not so with Nilsen. People
who would no more tell a racist joke than a Sutcliffe one can be heard
tittering over the latest Dyno-rod story.' The author suggests this is due
to the character of Nilsen himself: articulate and droll. Richard's own
tendency towards flippancy seems also to steer the gruesome events of
the play away from Tragedy. Bill believes a tragic element is reclaimable
in the play.

Against my better judgement I outline the crutches idea. He listens
carefully - he is an excellent listener - then at the end says, `But would
one be able to go into battle if one relied on crutches?'

`Well, absolutely. It could be rather moving. We bring on a real horse
and show him having to be lifted on to it. Then they take away his crutches.
The next time you see him the horse has been killed and he can only
crawl.'

`The trouble with bringing on a real horse is that is distracts an audience. They sit there thinking, "That's a real horse which might shit any
moment", instead of listening to the lines.'

`Not if you brought on one heavily armoured, like at the bullfight.'

`Like a tank.'

'A huge walking war-machine, a monster.'

`Of course the idea of lifting him on to it comes from Olivier's Henry
V film.'

`Does it? Oh ...'

The unmentionable. Bill leans forward now, and in hushed tones
confesses that he's never seen the Richard III film, and wonders if we
should hire it to have a secret look so as to avoid overlapping. I tell him
that I have already seen the film far too many times and that I would no
sooner see it again at this point in my life than play the part in a black
page-boy wig, long false nose and thin clipped voice.

`However,' I say, `I think it would be an excellent idea for you to have
a look at it to help guide us in a different direction.'

`Thanks a bunch. I think I'll remain in ignorance.'

M 0 L I E R E John Bowe's first night after only four days' rehearsal. He does
magnificently well. A very different Bouton from the sad-eyed peasant
that David Troughton plays; John's is like the fussy, bespectacled dwarf
in Disney's Snow White.

KING'S HEAD PUB, BARBICAN Another hushed conversation with
Bill, heads close together, while actors around us strain to eavesdrop. He
reports on the latest directors' meeting. To mark the tenth anniversary of
The Other Place the season there will be exclusively new plays. In the
Main House the plays in Slots Three, Four and Five are currently Richard,
Hamlet (Ron directing) and Love's Labour's (Barry Kyle directing, with
Roger Rees as Berowne). Apparently I am only available for these three
slots anyway, because the Tartufe and Moliere videos will happen at the
same time as the first two Stratford plays rehearse. Very disappointing
news. Nothing for me in Hamlet, nor, as far as I can remember, in Love's
Labour's. Bill says the latter could still change to Merry Wives.

`Ford would be of interest,' I say, `but is still not going to make it
worthwhile going back for another two-year cycle.'

`I know. Everyone knows. Nothing is settled yet. We're all trying to sort
something out for you. At the last meeting Terry said, "You know, this whole problem with Tony could be solved if it wasn't for the Moliere video
in March. What would you say Bill, if I asked you to postpone or cancel
it?" To which I replied, "I would say, Terry, get stuffed." And then Trevor
said, "Well that's the shortest and most effective statement anyone's yet
made at this meeting." '

Ron Daniels has asked me to lunch on Tuesday. That might throw
some new light. Is there a part for me in Hamlet?

A quick glance at Hamlet's Dramatis Personae confirms that there isn't.

Try to read Love's Labour's, looking for something in that. Costard?
God, Shakespeare's Fools are tedious. They joke in code and their
characters are all interchangeable. Costard could be Touchstone could
be Feste could be Gobbo could be ...

The thing that made Lear's Fool fascinating to me is that his unintelligible jokes add to the nightmare. In the comedies the Fools are usually the
least funny people on stage. The best Feste could never make you laugh
as much as the worst Malvolio.

Give up on Costard, look at the King of Navarre. Hasn't he been played
by character men? Jacobi at the Old Vic, Richard Griffiths in the last
R S C production. Don Armado?

Get nowhere. Abandon the play. Cross with myself for not trying harder
or understanding better. Reading Shakespeare is sometimes like looking
through a window into a dark room. You don't see in. You see nothing
but a reflection of yourself unable to see in. An unflattering image of
yourself blind.

Walk across Highbury Fields. Slush and wind. The sky is a cold white
with harsh bits of grey and black. A season of Shakespearian parts does
not look likely. If I go back to Stratford I will end up spending four
years wiei the company, during which time they will have done thirteen
Shakespeares and I will have been in two - yet I joined the company to
play Shakespeare. The situation is absurd.

A punk vagrant is stuck in a tree, having tried to climb into a deserted
property. High off the ground, his long coat caught among the branches
like wings. He tries to free himself occasionally, listlessly, then gives up
again. His hair is a rainbow of the most vibrant colours. From a distance
bright and beautiful. A tropical bird. But as I pass underneath, close to,
the hair is matted and filthy. His eyes are closed. He seems to have fallen
asleep.

M o N TY s e s s 1 0 N He talks about Fritz Perls and the Gestalt theory. The
here and now is the only time that exists. And being yourself. Not accepting
yourself, not taking yourself for granted. Being yourself. Your self. Monty
defines `normality' as a contentment with who you are.

The sunlight is weird at this time of year - an insistent silver light. This
morning as I shave it falls on the water and throws a strange light on my
face. Instantly Richard III. I stare at him for a moment, then quickly fetch
a sketchbook to put down what I've just seen. But it's a difficult drawing. The strange light can only be indicated by leaving one eye unfinished and
beaming out of the darkish face. So difficult to avoid cliche. What I find
myself recreating is straight out of Hammer Horror. And worse of all, the
lips I have drawn are not my own, but Olivier's. Again that giant shadow
falls across the landscape and I dart around trying to find some light of
my own. My Richard is in its infancy; barely that, it is still struggling to
take form, uncertain even whether to take form. And there's this fully
formed, famously formed, infamous child murderer leaning over the
cradle ...