Year of the Fat Knight

by Antony Sher

  I was hooked. Couldn’t wait for the next instalment, though I’d previously said I wasn’t sure I’d be able to manage it.

  Because this took place at 2.30 a.m. on Sunday morning. The main body of the play: in the woods, in the middle of the night. Greg and I slept for a few hours beforehand, but the actors hadn’t, and looked a bit dazed. And now they had to work. They needn’t have worried. There was a special energy in the packed Ashcroft Room – everyone had made such an effort to be here – and both the performers and the audience just got intoxicated on Shakespeare. Like last night, the utter simplicity of the exercise – no costumes, no effects – turned it into the most magical Dream I’ve ever seen. And of course the circumstances made it genuinely dreamlike. Never more so than when the black outside the windows slowly turned to blue, and as Puck said, ‘I do hear the morning lark,’ the dawn chorus started up – as if cued by the stage manager. By the time we got to the end of tonight’s section, which was Bottom’s waking-up speech – ‘I have had a most rare vision’ – we all knew what he meant.

  Out onto the Ashcroft terrace we went, for Buck’s Fizz, bacon butties, and the quiet spectacle of Stratford, the river, the spire of Holy Trinity, gradually taking shape out of the surrounding darkness. We all looked strangely aged – well, we never normally see one another at 5 a.m. – but beautifully so, as if graced by something special. Then Greg and I walked back to Avonside, marvelling at what he called ‘the oyster colours’ of sunrise – greys and pinks – and collapsed into bed.

  And now, at 11.30 p.m. on Sunday, we’re assembled for the last part. This is taking place in the open air, in the Dell next to the church. There was a rainstorm earlier, thumping down in big silvery sheets on the river, and we held our breath. But it cleared quickly, and now the sky is clear, with an amazing moon, known as a supermoon – enormous, thick and orange – perfect for tonight, which is officially Midsummer.

  The audience are in darkness, seated on blankets on the grassy bank, while the actors are on a little rise, lit by flaming torches, with the silhouette of trees and the bright disc of that moon behind them. They do Act Five: the Mechanicals performing Pyramus and Thisbe to the court. This is the funniest thing in all of Shakespeare’s Comedies, and tonight’s cast do it hilariously.

  There was one last surprise for us all. Just before Theseus says the line, ‘The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve’, the bells in the church alongside us begin to chime. (This was cued by the stage manager.) What a way to end.

  I have to admit that when Greg first outlined the idea of this Dream to me, I found it a bit odd, a bit unnecessary. But I was wrong. I heard the play afresh this weekend, and rejoiced in it all over again.

  As we’re saying our goodbyes, I give Joe Dixon a hug: ‘One of the best things in the world is to see a great performance of a great Shakespeare role. So thank you.’

  He’s chuffed, and says, ‘And which of them will you be doing next?’

  I smile for a long moment, as it occurs that he could play Falstaff, then I mutter, ‘Oh, I dunno’ – and change the subject.

  Monday 1 July

  Southern France.

  When Greg got The Job, people’s first response to me was odd. They wished me luck. Me, not Greg. I checked with the partners of previous Artistic Directors – Joanna Pearce and Caroline Boyd – and both gave the same small smile and said the same thing: ‘You’ll see.’ I braced myself, like someone who’d secretly been given forewarning of a tsunami, but at first nothing seemed to change in our lives. We’re both workaholics, so it wasn’t unusual to spend Saturday and Sunday mornings in our separate studies. Then Greg started doing the afternoons as well. He was waking earlier, to read through the growing stacks of manuscripts, memos and briefings. When we were in Stratford he’d have to go to London, and vice versa. And there was the machine. Greg has always said, ‘There are three of us in this marriage – me, Tony and Tony’s diary.’ Well, now there was a fourth. Greg’s iPad. Given to him by the RSC, and programmed by them, it gradually became permanently attached to his hands. Now even on Sunday evenings, with us flopped in front of the telly, I’d be watching a programme, and he’d be on the iPad.

  All this, and he hasn’t yet done his first production as Artistic Director. That’s about to happen – Richard II with David Tennant. Anyone who’s directed a play knows it’s an all-consuming task. So he’ll be doing that and The Job.

  Luckily, there’s his PA Jane Tassell – still determinedly finding and guarding time for a holiday.

  This is one of them. Just a week, so we’ve not travelled far. France – on the coast between Nice and Monaco. We’ll probably visit them both, but we’ll mainly stay at the hotel, Cap Estel, an attractive pink, beige and cream mansion above the sea. Our room is on a corner, with two balconies and a tremendous view.

  When we arrived yesterday, the weather was dull, and we were worried. It was bad back in England (of course it was – Wimbledon’s on), but would it spoil our brief stay here?

  Thankfully no. When we pushed open the big wooden shutters on our windows this morning, we found a perfect day outside. The Côte d’Azur presented us with three blues: the powder blue of the sky, the deep blue of the sea, the turquoise blue of the swimming pool.

  The pool is where we’ve spent the morning, and now we’re lunching at the garden restaurant. The food is good: a whole grilled sea bream between us and delicious rice flavoured with orange. And that most delightful of holiday treats: wine at lunchtime. And French wine at that. A well-chilled Chablis.

  Greg obviously doesn’t want to talk about work, but the Henries are far enough in the future to still seem more like pleasure.

  ‘Who have you known like Falstaff?’ he asks.

  I think hard. ‘Well… I suppose some of the actors in my first RSC season. Like Pete Postlethwaite. Be up all night at The Duck, on all sorts of things, then rehearse during the day, perform in the evening, and then do another all-nighter. It never affected his work, and he was tremendous company, at whatever stage of this sequence you caught him, a real-life force. Resting in peace now. But he wasn’t the only one. There was a whole group of them. The Dirty Duckers. Don’t know how they did it.’

  ‘But, sorry, weren’t you one of them?’

  ‘Oh… just a junior member of the club.’

  ‘An embryonic Falstaff. Maybe he’s closer than you think.’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean!’ I say, filling our glasses. ‘And then there was Alf’s pal…’

  Alfred Bradley is one of our closest friends, a schoolteacher (English and Drama), now retired. When he was a schoolboy himself, one of his classmates was a chap whom I shall call Roger here. He grew into a rich and powerful figure, the managing director of one of the big supermarket chains. Before Greg and I got together, I met Roger a few times – through Alf – and he was truly Falstaffian (except that he was gay): fat, drank like a fish, booming voice, very charming, in a slightly overwhelming way. He also shared Falstaff’s appetite for criminality, and, having got into serious financial trouble, fled the country, cutting all ties completely. Alf believed he’d chosen Thailand as his place of exile, and pictured him there living on a diet of booze and boys, now more of a crumpled, Graham Greene figure. But it was actually because Roger was a Tolkien fan, and through a Tolkien website, that Alf learned he had died last year.

  As I describe Roger’s excesses, Greg wrinkles his nose in distate.

  ‘Ah-hah!’ I say; ‘Is Falstaff one of those characters we relish onstage, but wouldn’t want to meet in real life? Like Richard III or Iago. Is he part of that syndrome?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Greg replies; ‘I’d be very happy to spend an evening with him in the pub. He’d be great fun.’

  ‘As long as you were buying the drinks.’

  After lunch, another holiday pleasure – a long siesta. And then we decide to revive ourselves with a dip in the sea; the hotel has a little private beach. It’s very attractive. The wash of pebbles up and down
the slope of the beach, and the water of the Mediterranean, which, when clean – like here – is pure pleasure.

  Growing up next to the sea, and having little access to it these days, I miss it terribly, and value it hugely. On a hot, calm afternoon like today, the immense expanse of water is in benign mood, yet you still feel its power. I become totally diminished as I enter it – just a little object to be freshened, purified, washed through and through. I don’t swim, I dip under and then surface, again and again, flopping about like an old seal, looking foolish I know (I’ve seen photographs), yet completely happy.

  I splash over to Greg: ‘Last weekend, I told Joe Dixon that one of the best things in the world is seeing a great Shakespeare performance.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘I want to nominate another – bathing in a great sea.’

  ‘Agreed!’

  Monday 8 July

  London.

  Natasha Harwood has died – she’s been ill for some time – and this morning is her funeral.

  In recent years, Greg and I have become close to the Harwoods. Ironically, it was the failure of a show in the West End – Ronnie’s play Mahler’s Conversion, with Greg directing and me playing Mahler – and the outrage that we all felt about its treatment which led to us bonding. Greg has to be in Stratford today, so I’m here to represent both us and the family in South Africa: Ronnie is my mother’s first cousin.

  The funeral is held at the Carmelite Monastery in Kensington Church Street. The place is bedecked with white flowers, and packed. Some famous faces among the mourners: Albert Finney, Tom Stoppard, and Antonia Fraser (Harold Pinter and Ronnie were young actors in Donald Wolfit’s company, and Natasha was a stage manager). The readings are done by Maggie Smith and Tom Courtenay. A choir sings beautifully. At the end, when they do Fauré’s Requiem, to accompany the carrying-out of the coffin, everyone is crying. In the procession, Ronnie walks with his eyes closed.

  Out on the pavement, in baking sunshine, I finally get to hug him. I say the Jewish thing: ‘Long life.’ He says, ‘Yes, that’s what we should all have – she was only seventy-five, you know.’ And they were together for fifty-six of those years – ‘a damn fine marriage’ as he once said to me proudly. God, how can he breathe without her?

  When I get to Stratford a few hours later, I hold on to Greg tightly.

  Wednesday 10 July

  Stratford-upon-Avon.

  I can’t believe it – I’m doing a photo shoot as Falstaff. This is getting serious. This is getting real.

  It’s for the RSC brochure – Spring 2014 – and brochures are little tyrannies, laws unto themselves, forever demanding attention long before it seems necessary.

  We had to think of an image. Neither Greg nor I were keen to attempt a ‘Falstaff look’. I’m growing my beard for Freud, but it’s not nearly big enough for Falstaff yet, and the idea of putting on a wig from stock and some generalised padding was out of the question. Greg came up with an ingenious solution. In fact it’s one we used before, for the Cyrano de Bergerac poster back in 1997. A distorting mirror. Previously, it was to provide Cyrano’s nose – today, Falstaff’s girth. A studio was set up in one of the Arden Street rehearsal rooms, and the mirror placed in front of the lights. Wearing my own clothes, I sat in front of it, on a bar stool, holding a glass of wine. So the image was a double portrait: me at my normal size plus me ballooning into a fat man.

  The photographer was Sasha Gusov, a cheerfully eccentric Russian, extremely gifted at his craft (he gave us a book of his work), who kept up a giggling commentary as he took the shots: ‘That’s it, Tony, a bit more cheeky, brilliant, eyes more open, that’s it, I’m liking this, more cheeky, brilliant, the best yet…’ It was helpful because it made me laugh for real.

  We’ll have to be careful in the selection though. We can’t just have a jolly Falstaff. Hopefully the mirror will add something else, something more complex.

  Saturday 13 July

  Stratford.

  A picture of our life together:

  Saturday afternoon. Jazz Record Requests on the radio. Our French windows opened wide to the sunny river. Me inside, standing in front of my easel, painting. Greg sitting on the patio, working on the script of Richard II. Both of us with glasses of our namesake drink: G&Ts.

  My painting is of the actress Kathryn Hunter. I’m a big fan of her work, and her performances in The Visit (playing the rich lady Claire Zachanassian, on crutches) and in Kafka’s Monkey (playing a monkey who’s playing a man) are two of the most inventive pieces of character acting I’ve seen. When she was with the RSC in 2010, she let me sketch and photograph her doing a warm-up for Kafka’s Monkey. I’ve done a series of drawings of it, and now this triptych in oils.

  Sunday 28 July

  London.

  I’m fitting in a small, low-budget film before Hysteria. It’s called War Book. The script, by Jack Thorne, is strikingly original. A group of civil servants gather to ‘rehearse’ what might happen in the event of a nuclear war. It mostly takes place in one room – like 12 Angry Men – yet is more gripping than most action films. The clever thing is that the apocalypse isn’t really happening, so you don’t have to try and create the massive drama, or even melodrama, of that, yet you get to imagine it in every grisly detail as the characters act out their daily meetings while the crisis develops. It’s immensely unsettling.

  My character, David, is the financial adviser (others are from the departments of health, security, and so on): he says very little for much of the film, and then has a huge, four-page speech towards the end, which influences the outcome. In terms of character acting, it’s a minimalist job. He’s a bit fussy, bit pedantic, bit reserved – very English.

  Despite the fact that the pay is peanuts, the director Tom Harper has managed to get a crack cast, including Sophie Okonedo, Ben Chaplin, Kerry Fox and Shaun Evans. Everyone’s doing it because the script is good, and you don’t often get that in the movies.

  The piece is as static as a stage play and as talkative as a radio play – yet it’s on film, so has to be carefully learned. We had a week’s rehearsal, and are halfway through the two-week shoot. This is in Brent Town Hall (which is deserted – they’ve moved elsewhere). Outside, the rest of the country is still enjoying the current heatwave, while we – both cast and crew – are crammed into a conference room, which grows increasingly airless and hot. Particularly if it’s your close-up, and you’ve got a lot of technical jargon in your dialogue. The pressure of two cameras and all your fellow actors staring at you is breaking the strongest of spirits. And of course time is ticking away too. Unlike a normal film, there’s no leeway, no contingency plan. We will finish next Friday, and guess what – that’s when my big speech is scheduled.

  Friday 2 August

  Did my big speech. It was fine. Thank God. Or my theatre training.

  Monday 5 August

  How nice to start a job without any fear. It’s simply a pleasure to be back with Hysteria again, and back at Hampstead again.

  There’s me and David Horowitz (playing Yahuda) from the Bath production, and two new members of the cast: Lydia Wilson as Jessica and Adrian Schiller as Dalí.

  Our writer/director Terry Johnson tells us about the genesis of the play. He’d struggled with it for a couple of years, trying different versions: one was set on a train (when Freud fled the Nazis), another in Jung’s lighthouse. ‘Then I decided to do some research,’ says Terry; ‘I prefer it that way round, or it can get in the way.’ He visited the Freud Museum (just up the road from where we’re sitting in Hampstead’s rehearsal space), and as he walked into Freud’s study, the thought struck him: ‘Now I know how to do the play – it has to take place in this room!’

  Of course.

  A room of dreams. Where patients would lie on the famous couch and disclose the secret stuff that bubbles up in their brains while they sleep. This was a place where you could take Freud’s preoccupation with the unconscious and Dalí’s passion for surrealism, those
two dreamworlds, toss them into the air, and juggle with them.

  ‘And best of all,’ says Terry; ‘That room in Maresfield Gardens is a set, it’s not real, it’s been reconstructed from his actual study in Vienna. It’s an illusion!’

  How very apt, how very Terry Johnson. [Photo insert, page 3, ‘Hysteria’ 3]

  I have an odd history with Terry, and it’s something of a miracle that we’re working together at all, never mind so happily.

  In 1999 I was cast as Sid James in Terry’s play, Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick. But after the first week of rehearsals, I had to leave. Terry (who was also directing) and I couldn’t agree on whether we should do impersonations of the Carry On actors, or just play characters called Sid, Ken and Babs. It all worked out well in the end – Geoff Hutchings stepped in to play Sid, and did it much better than I could’ve – but at the time it was an unpleasant and tense situation. If I was Terry, I wouldn’t have employed me again, but he offered Freud, we met and cleared the air, and it’s turned into a terrific experience.

  Something of a lesson to be learned there. This isn’t a profession in which to make enemies. Everything tends to come round in the great whirligig of theatre…

  Saturday 10 August

  Most enjoyable morning. Greg and I sat at our kitchen table, comparing the cuts we’ve both made to Part I of the Henries (Falstaff scenes only), and through a process of approval, refusal, and sometimes bartering, created a version which will be called the Rehearsal Draft, and which I can start learning as soon as Hysteria has opened.

  Over lunch, at The Draper’s Arms in Barnsbury Street, we discussed a way of doing the first Falstaff/Hal scene. Maybe set in some bawdy house (brothel). Hal is in bed with a whore, and then what we think is a pile of old blankets stirs in one corner, and it’s Falstaff: ‘Now Hal, what time of day is it, lad?’ The whore leaves, and the scene ensues.