by Antony Sher
The show was short: a couple of scenes from plays, a couple of musical numbers. It then needed a great tribute to RADA, but the man best suited to deliver it, the school’s President, Richard Attenborough, was too ill to attend, so instead his brother David just said a quick thanks on his behalf.
Helen Mirren finished proceedings by doing ‘Our revels now are ended’ from The Tempest, while the rest of us sat wondering whether the Queen had ever seen The Queen?
As we were leaving, we bumped into Terry Hands. He told us that when he directed the Henries in 1975, he offered Falstaff to Olivier, who declined, saying, ‘Oh no, it’s Rafie’s role.’ (Meaning R. Richardson.) Then, giving that slightly wicked smile of his, Terry assured Greg that I was up to the part: ‘After all, he’s one of the most inventive actors in the country.’ Which you could read in different ways…
Tuesday 18 February
The two boys who are to play the Page arrived: Luca Saraceni-Gunner and Jonathan Williams, both aged ten, both from Stratford. The law states that any child’s part has to be alternated, and they have to be accompanied by a chaperone at all times.
We put them into their scenes, which meant running each of these twice. With everything a bit mechanical, I felt exposed again: the Falstaff voice, and, worse, the Falstaff suit. I don’t know what to do about this. Wearing it, or rather seeing myself in the mirror, makes me dispirited – it looks bad – yet I have to keep rehearsing with it.
Working with kids is not my favourite thing – they can be distracting to an audience, and difficult to hear – but these two were good today. So at least that was heartening.
As was a letter that I received this morning – by complete chance, it was from someone who’d been one of the boys in Cyrano back in 1997. Now an adult, and a musician, he’d just finished reading my autobiography, Beside Myself, and was writing to say that he’d enjoyed it, and that Cyrano had been ‘a thrilling formative experience’.
I was touched by his letter. But it also brought to mind a terribly embarrassing incident during the tour of Cyrano. In Blackpool. I’d come into the wings, preparing to enter. Cyrano’s first scene is long. My tummy felt rather bubbly, so I went to the deepest, darkest corner of the backstage area, and adopting the classic stance – half-bending, making fists – let rip with a big one. Moving away, I glanced back, and, with my eyes now adjusted to the dark, saw the children’s chaperone seated there, her face exactly level with where I’d aimed my fire. Her expression was of shock. I realised that from her POV, my action might have seemed deliberate – seeking out that particular spot. There was no way of apologising or explaining. I imagined people asking her what I was like, and her answering, ‘Well, he seemed a decent enough chap, but then one evening…!’
Thursday 20 February
Costume fitting. I put on the rehearsal body suit for Stephen BL to see. He immediately detected the problem. They had accidentally removed all the weight, leaving it with the substance of a big feather pillow. Even tying the cord on the sweatpants caused the belly to bulge up, and now Falstaff’s chief feature was a barrel chest. Stephen promised to solve the problem with Bob Saunders. I changed into the actual body suit, and, despite the weight, it was a relief to see it looking convincing again. There weren’t many real items of my costume – they were trying out different cuts, shapes and materials – except for a great, dun-coloured leather coat. Broad, long, battered with age, it had something of the Wild West to it (the real one, not Hollywood’s version), and for me it was love at first sight. This will be Falstaff’s main silhouette.
In rehearsals, we did the final scene, when Falstaff approaches Hal after his coronation, and Hal rejects him: ‘I know thee not, old man.’ Greg staged a grand formal procession, with Hal being the last on. Alex tried a version where he broke out of the line, to shake the hands of onlookers. Afterwards, Greg used our visit to Buckingham Palace to talk about the power of majesty: how the Queen had silenced the Throne Room just by entering it, how there was an aura around her that was almost palpable – an unbreakable glass bubble – and although we had shaken her hand, the impression was of her being untouchable. We did the scene again, and now Alex was magnetically fixed into the ceremonial parade. It was infinitely better. Falstaff’s intrusion was seriously out of order.
Tuesday 25 February
Week nine.
I had most of today off. Used it to go through all the lines – both parts. I can rattle through them faultlessly, alone in my studio/study, but in rehearsals they still keep slip-sliding away. Not badly, just the odd word or two, but it bugs me. It’s like I said before: it’s not enough to know lines, you have to know them under pressure. And although rehearsals themselves aren’t real pressure, constantly alternating the two plays is.
Wednesday 26 February
Greg had to go in early for a meeting. I found this note on the kitchen table:
‘We are on! Rebecca very pleased.’
Translated, that means the Arthur Miller Estate have approved Greg as director of Salesman, and Miller’s daughter has personally endorsed it.
The irony is that Greg wasn’t supposed to do this one. Our favoured choice, a very prominent director, was rejected by the Estate. No reason given. They can be quite sinister, these Estates.
Anyway, so Greg has stepped into the breach, rather like I did with Falstaff.
When I got to rehearsals, preparations were under way for our first run – no, stagger-through – of Part II. I said to Greg that the Salesman news had given me a boost of confidence: ‘If we fuck up these shows, at least we know we’ve got another.’
The stagger-through differed from the previous one, in that, although we stopped briefly between scenes, we basically kept it going, and we were allowed to watch the sections that we weren’t in. Always a big moment. It can feel like your colleagues sitting in judgement on you. But ours is a warm and supportive company, and there was much laughter. Of course, rehearsal laughs are notoriously unreliable and misleading – a real audience might not find the same things funny at all – and some directors discourage them. (Nick Hytner came close to banning them during Travelling Light rehearsals.) Anyway, they were pretty encouraging today.
The play itself is a strange beast, very different from Part I, which has a much tighter, more exciting structure. In our discussion afterwards – our tribal conference by firelight – Jasper said that he found the piece Chekhovian: the drama being in the detail and the humanity, rather than the storyline. Others commented on how the lack of narrative drive reflects an England ruled by a sick, faltering king. Paola said it was ‘a hymn to individuality’.
Friday 28 February
Back in Part I, good progress on the big tavern scene, particularly the ‘play within the play’. We plotted in responses for the onstage audience: the named characters like Bardolph, Quickly, Poins, etc., and all the unnamed ones who are Boar’s Head guests or staff. They have to laugh, cheer, groan, echo some lines, ad-lib others, and all these have to be as fixed and reliable as any other cues in the show. This takes a lot of practice, but it’s worth it. Otherwise, they may be fine today, but when we come back to the scene in a week’s time, everyone will be a little hesitant, and leave it to everyone else to make some noise. Which can result in total silence.
I noticed a line at the end of this section, which relates back to Falstaff’s history (the story of his grandfather’s ring). The Sheriff is knocking at the door, breaking up the party – he’s accompanied by guards, and intends to search the premises. Do they let him in? The loot from the Gad’s Hill robbery is inside, as are the perpetrators. The danger of capture and punishment is real. Falstaff dares Hal to allow the Sheriff to enter, saying, ‘If I become not the hangman’s cart as well as another man, a plague on my bringing up!’ There’s an acting choice here. You could send up the line, with Falstaff playing at mock-heroics (in the manner of, ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do’), or you could play it for real, with Falstaff reminding everyone that he has bee
n raised as a gentleman, and if his time is up, he’ll go to the gallows with dignity.
I’m choosing this second way.
A good find.
Sunday 2 March
It’s here. An unmistakable new feeling in my body – in my belly mostly – connected to the new month, and the fact that over the next four weeks we’ll be doing run-throughs, dress rehearsals, and previews of the plays. The feeling is a curious mixture of excitement and dread. I think sportsmen and athletes must know it. Certainly any actor who’s played any of Shakespeare’s great roles will be familiar with it, while people who call us luvvies won’t have a clue what I’m talking about. I would luv to make one of those people learn a part like Falstaff, and I would luv to stand next to them in the wings before their first entrance – and I would luv to clear up whatever mess they leave on the floor behind them.
Monday 3 March
Week ten. (Our last in London.)
I’m let off rehearsals this morning for a special event at Westminster Abbey: the Memorial Service for Nelson Mandela.
The great and the good are here, including Prince Harry (the real one), the leaders of the Government and Opposition – Cameron, Clegg, Miliband – and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. Proceedings are led by the man who gave us a private tour of the Abbey a few weeks ago – the Dean, John Hall. But the show itself is stolen by two South African visitors. First, the Soweto Gospel Choir, who, dressed in T-shirts and jeans, sing traditional numbers – hearing them in this majestic British cathedral touches my heart. Second, Desmond Tutu, who gives the main address. A bit frail now and quite bald, he is still the most skilful of orators. He knows it’s good to begin with a laugh, so he tells us that in the bad old days of Apartheid, there were road signs saying, ‘Drive Carefully – Natives Cross Here’, and that, during the period of unrest which led to the new democracy, someone changed it to: ‘Drive Carefully – Natives Very Cross Here’. And he knows the power of repeating a key phrase – in this case, ‘Thank you.’ He whispers it, warbles it, praising various British figures who fought Apartheid, then says it louder, more passionately: ‘Thank you, God, for Madiba!’
The morning’s proceedings end with the South African anthem. I, who’ve stood silent during the singing of hymns – my excuse being that I’m tone deaf and Jewish – now join in gamely, being one of the few in this congregation who can pronounce both the Xhosa part – ‘nkosi sikelel’’ – and the Afrikaans – ‘uit die blou van onse hemel’. The latter rang like a Nazi marching song through my childhood. Today it brings tears to my eyes. Its inclusion in the anthem of the New South Africa typified Mandela’s spirit of reconciliation. The man himself would have been amazed and humbled, I think, by this service in this place – the first ever for an African leader.
Tuesday 4 March
Morning. Wig fitting. Sandra Smith in charge, down from Stratford. My longest friendship at the RSC is with her. Welsh, warm, funny, she joined the company just after me – as a junior wiggy (wig and make-up assistant). Today she runs the department. The Falstaff wig is a wild mass of grey curls, with a yellowish tinge (tobacco smoke or dirt?), and it’s very promising. It broadens my whole head. Stephen BL also produced a big-brimmed leather hat which was full of character: beautifully aged and bashed, curling at the edges, with a chunk missing, and greenish stains here and there. It’s a bit cowboy – so it’ll go perfectly with the coat – and also a bit Don Quixote. Which is apt. Falstaff – the old knight, the old fantasist.
Afternoon. Wore the body suit in rehearsals, the real one. It’s now about three kilos. There’s a definite discomfort factor – the heaviness and the heat – but the advantages outweigh it (no pun intended), and I could finally look in the mirror without cringing.
The wits were out. As I waddled past Simon Thorp, he said, ‘Tony, when are you getting your fat suit?’ And Keith Osborn (playing the Archbishop), to whom I’d just confessed that I’d had a McDonald’s lunch, said, ‘Tony, is that really just one Big Mac?’
Wednesday 5 March
Run of Part I. Did it in the body suit and it felt okay (you get used to the weight and forget about it), as did my performance. And the lines too – they were mostly there. I think I fret about them too much. Jasper’s attitude to line-learning is diametrically opposite to mine – he says he can’t learn them before rehearsals, or indeed before he’s fully understood the character. So a run-through situation like today was very difficult for him. But neither he nor Greg seemed remotely worried. It’s just a different work method.
Thursday 6 March
Run of Part II. Jasper knew his lines perfectly, and the Jerusalem scene was tremendous. The King is described as ‘the lion’, and that’s how Jasper is playing him, but an old, wounded lion, roaring against the dying of the light. And Alex has grown into the best Hal imaginable, effortlessly able to play the two conflicting sides of the character: the wild boy with his surrogate father, and the strong, heroic future king with his real one.
Meanwhile, for me, the unfamiliarity of the play – we haven’t done it for a while – suddenly made me feel uncomfortable in the role. It’s those early scenes, first with the Lord Chief Justice, then Mistress Quickly. We thought we’d solved them – put more tension into the confrontations – but the writing keeps pulling us back. Falstaff is simply not the complex character of Part I: he’s come back in the sequel to please audiences, and he’s doing a series of turns, holding forth about this or that, wriggling out of tricky situations, but he’s like a lightweight version (no pun again) of himself – more like the Falstaff of Merry Wives. Later in Part II, the real man emerges – as in the scene with Doll Tearsheet – a man frightened of ageing and death, but this came as a jolt to me today, my performance wasn’t ready for it; one minute I was in Merry Wives, the next King Lear. Those early scenes threw me. I was trying to be funny. Fatal. By nature I’m not a comic actor, so I just felt false. This is the worst thing – feeling false.
It’s the real challenge of character acting. You’re performing a magic trick: here before your very eyes, Antony Sher will vanish and John Falstaff will appear! This illusion will be achieved not by the voice I assume or the padding I wear, but by the strength of my own conviction. It’s a very powerful thing. I can make you believe that I am Falstaff – as long as I believe it myself. And today I didn’t…
This was the wrong time to have a crisis. Tomorrow is our last day in London, and we’re running both plays – running the marathon.
At the end of rehearsals, I asked Greg if we could stay behind for a talk. I outlined the problem. He responded in a way that he could only do with me – a frankness that he wouldn’t use with other actors:
‘You’re exaggerating.’
I bristled. ‘Oh, am I?’
‘Yes, you’re overreacting.’
‘Well, that’s in my job description.’
He gave a brief smile – it’s one of our old jokes – then went on: ‘It didn’t show, what you’re saying. You were good in those early scenes – though God knows they’re not Shakespeare’s best writing – and from then on you were more than good.’
‘So why did it feel like the opposite?’
‘Because you got off to a bad start, or you felt you had.’
‘So what do we do about me feeling I’m getting off to a bad start?’
‘We make you more comfortable in those scenes…’
We then had a discussion about finding more meat in them, more for me to get my teeth into, more than just the hot air of bluster. Greg pointed out that there were two aspects of Falstaff which I could explore further in the opening sections. One, his health – he’s worried about it, he’s had the doctor examine his urine, he complains of gout, he fears he has the pox. Two, his fantasy – he’s trying to play a new role, the Hero of Shrewsbury, he’s buying new clothes, a new horse, he claims to have some official post in ‘this land service’, and to be ‘upon hasty employment in the king’s affairs’. In his exchanges with the Lord Chief J
ustice, Falstaff is seeking to put himself on the same level as someone of real importance.
Greg did an effective job. By the end of our discussion, I was excited to try out these new things, eager to do the scenes again.
Friday 7 March
A big day. Running both plays. The summation of our work so far.
As we left the house, Greg quoted Falstaff before the Battle of Shrewsbury: ‘I would it were bedtime, Hal, and all well.’ But I sensed he was secretly excited.
In the morning, the run of Part I was terrific. One of those times when a company of actors is like a sports team, which has been in training, has grown totally fit, has finally to play the big match, and does so at the top of their form. From a personal POV, I was flying…
In the afternoon, Part II was not as terrific. Although I felt much better in the early scenes, nothing seemed to really ignite till the tavern scene, with Pistol and Tearsheet, and from then on it was a peculiar mixture of brilliant scenes (Shallow/Silence, the Jerusalem Chamber, Hal’s rejection of Falstaff) and some that were rather flat. It’s the play itself, I fear, and there’s not much we can do about that.
Anyway, generally speaking, we’re in extremely good shape, and the company’s work is first rate. Quite apart from what the principals are doing, there’s also some fine character acting going on: Josh’s double as Bardolph and Glendower, Sean’s deadly Douglas, Jonny’s seedy Rakehell, Martin Bassindale’s pipsqueak Peto, the wretched recruits in the Gloucestershire scene: Jonny again, Simon Yadoo, Leigh Quinn, Nick Gerard-Martin, Youssef Kerkour… I could go on and on…
As for myself, I got some nice compliments from the VIPs who were watching – Jeremy Adams, John Wyver, and Robin Lough (director of the Live broadcasts) – and allowed myself to briefly fantasise about this part turning out well for me. A success in a great Shakespeare part – there’s nothing like it.