Year of the Fat Knight

by Antony Sher

  And I haven’t yet tried going for a pee. With all the layers – the costume, the body suit, my own underwear – and a route of flies, flaps and fastenings, I’m not at all convinced that I’ll be able to find my willy. The stuff of trauma. Even if you haven’t just played Sigmund Freud. So I wait until the meal breaks, when I’m back in my own clothes.

  Greg is renowned for the speed of his techs, and gets a lot of Brownie points from the technical staff. (Some other directors use techs to rehearse the scenes.) By the evening session we’re well into the tavern scene, which finishes the first half. But today’s workload has been tiring, and it starts to show.

  We’ve just done the section about ‘three misbegotten knaves in Kendal green’, when Greg stops the action:

  ‘Tony, you can’t say that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You just said “knaves in Kensal Green” – that’s a stop on the Northern Line.’

  ‘Did I? Sorry. It’s very late.’

  Laughter from those assembled, topped by Paola:

  ‘At least he didn’t say Golders Green.’

  Saturday 15 March

  Yesterday Stephen BL and Head Wiggy Sandra Smith decided that my wig and beard were too white; apparently the lighting made it look like I just had a fuzzy glow round my face. So today the wig has some darker streaks, the eyebrows are darker too – better, fiercer – and I’ve let some of my own beard colour show through.

  More dramatically, Trevor’s hair has been dyed white-blond. He looks like a cross between Klaus Kinski and (when in the chain-mail armour) Max von Sydow in The Seventh Seal. There’s a vaguely Nazi look to him now as well, which is appropriate for a Hotspur who’s inflamed with war-fever.

  In the lunch break, Greg and I ate sandwiches in my dressing room, which boasts a view of the Avon that would do any five-star hotel proud. What other theatre in the world has this aspect? It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, people were boating on the river or strolling on the banks, and Joshua Bell was playing his violin beautifully on my CD machine. There was a sense of peace and happiness, which isn’t what the middle of techs normally feel like.

  Greg said, ‘Quite a lot of our life has been by this river.’

  For the rest of the day, we tech’d Acts Three and Four. I carry a piece of paper in my costume, making notes of everything: my entrances and exits, the 101 adjustments to what we were doing in rehearsals. It’s all so unfamiliar, even the backstage routes and areas (this is my first time in the main theatre since it was rebuilt), but the feeling will pass…

  Sunday 16 March

  It’s most unusual to have a day off during a tech, and most welcome.

  Monday 17 March

  All day spent teching the battle scenes. Which meant all day in the armour. And it’s heavy. Combined with the body suit, it was too much. I could feel the strain on my back. But it was just a case of getting through it. I’ll never have to wear the armour for as long again.

  Evening. First dress rehearsal of Part I. The job was just to remember everything – with the help of the crib notes in my pocket. It all went fairly smoothly. At one point the truck stopped moving – the raised platform which brings on different sets – but this turned out to be operator error which is much better than machine error. An operator will be more mindful in the future. A machine has a mind of its own.

  I was pleased by the amount of rest breaks that Falstaff gets – many more than the other Shakespeare biggies that I’ve played.

  But the best news was this: in the interval, I finally decided to try having a pee while wearing all the gear, and I did find my willy. Relief in every sense.

  Tuesday 18 March

  The sun was shining, so, before work, we took our first river walk into the countryside. The fields had just been turned – great expanses of rich, dark soil in glistening chunks and slabs. The trees were still bare, but there were buds on every branch, about to open. Any moment it’ll be spring.

  Afternoon. Second dress rehearsal of Part I. A chance to get to know the show better. A minor emergency: my wig shifted when Alex grabbed the cushion/crown from my head in the ‘play within the play’. Good for it to happen now, rather than in performance. The solution is for me to take the cushion off myself.

  Evening. First preview of Part I. I’m normally in a state of shock and disbelief at this point. What, the show is no longer ours – a crowd of strangers are going to come and watch it?! But not tonight. Falstaff has to have a strong relationship with the audience. I’m keen to know what that’ll be like.

  (As today’s workload accelerated, I could only make brief notes in this diary.)

  Addressing the company beforehand, Greg told us two things:

  • Preview audiences at the RSC are often overgenerous and wildly appreciative.

  • We’ll get some laughs we weren’t expecting, and not get others that we were.

  He was right about the second point, but not the first.

  The audience was hard work, not generous at all, barely appreciative.

  Were they just a ‘bad’ audience (i.e. quiet, flat, slow to respond) or was it us?

  They took a long, long time to warm up to Falstaff. In fact, it wasn’t till my very last scene (‘Embowelled?’) that they were thoroughly enjoying him.

  Was it them or me?

  I’ve got to admit the evening was a struggle, a disappointment. Had to give myself pep talk after pep talk.

  We’ve always said that we didn’t want Falstaff just to be a comic role, that we wanted him to be complex and dark too.

  Well, that seems to have been achieved.

  But it didn’t feel right.

  The rest of the cast thought differently. They were excited by the fact that there were cheers at the curtain call (I was indifferent by then), and Greg was pleased too.

  Back at Avonside, ignoring our house rule – no talk about work – I asked, ‘Have we taken a completely wrong turn with Falstaff?’

  He replied, ‘Absolutely not.’

  Wednesday 19 March

  I awoke feeling worried and whacked (yesterday was effectively a two-show day).

  We did notes sitting in a circle in the Ashcroft Room from 12 to 1.30, then lunch, then working notes on stage with full technical back-up.

  Afterwards, Greg came to my dressing room – to discuss how I should approach tonight’s show. He said, ‘Laughter cannot be the barometer of your performance.’ He was right. Last night was a classic example of the danger of rehearsal-room laughs. Every time one didn’t come, I felt a tiny sense of failure. These accumulated during the evening until I was seriously concerned by the end, seriously doubting my whole interpretation of Falstaff.

  Dear God, I’ve been an actor for four decades, and I’m still falling for that one: rehearsal-room laughs.

  In the event, tonight’s audience was much warmer: they got the nature of the play right from the start, they got Falstaff, and there were more laughs than there had ever been in rehearsals.

  So – last night we simply had a ‘bad’ audience. During a run, you can recognise these instantly, but at a first preview you have nothing to judge them by.

  Thursday 20 March

  The production photos have arrived. A camera is somehow more objective than a mirror, so this is when you get to see your character properly for the first time. I was pleased. The image we’ve devised for Falstaff really has worked. Who’d have thought I could be so happy to look so fat?

  If you keep drying or fluffing on the same speech, it’s necessary to find out why. My worst pitfall has been the soliloquy in the scarecrow-army scene. Looking at the lines again, I suddenly detected one of the problems. My script was the same one I’ve had since I accepted this job. The page was covered in pencil and pen scribbles: suggested cuts I’d marked out in New Zealand, real cuts we’d made later, a list of word meanings, and other notes. I’ve always said that the layout of a text helps in learning it. Well, the layout here was a complete mess.

  Sitting at
my make-up table, I wrote out a clean version.

  But will this solve it?

  The truth is I’m worried about the scene itself. Firstly, there’s that procession of desperate souls staggering across the stage behind me. I try not to look at them, but when I do catch a glimpse, I wish my fellow actors were doing less. The characterisations are still quite extreme, quite eye-catching. And the lighting isn’t as dim as I expected. Sometimes the audience become mesmerised by the trail of figures, and start giggling.

  Secondly, I’m also struggling with a lot of props. Falstaff has a little wooden cart with a fold-out stool and a picnic hamper. As he talks about his wretched soldiers, he brings out a roast chicken and prepares to feast. We’re using a real one, because I’m supposed to eat some. The props department half-cut the legs so that they’re easier to tear off. But in last night’s show, when I tried to lift the chicken, the whole thing just disintegrated.

  ‘This is too much,’ I said to Greg afterwards; ‘I’ve got the Ministry of Funny Walks behind me, and an exploding chicken in my hands!’

  We resolved to use a prop chicken – I never get a chance to eat it anyway.

  The irony is that people who’ve seen the dress rehearsals and previews say this is one of the most effective scenes. A chilling image of war. A fat man having a picnic while his troops march away to become cannon fodder.

  All of this is Greg’s invention. I’ve contributed no ideas at all, and am just doing what my director tells me to. Which isn’t the way we normally work. It’s an odd thought, but is that why I’m not comfortable with it yet…?

  In the surreal nature of theatre, characters from the Henries intermingle with those from Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies in the dressing-room corridors. So Falstaff had a chat with Henry VIII today, before their respective shows. I congratulated him – Nat Parker – on the phenomenal success they’re having in the Swan. Being an old cynic, I remarked that these only happen a couple of times in a career, so I urged him to enjoy it. There was no need. He said the experience had restored his passion for stage acting. We were talking during their break between matinee and evening performances, and he said he couldn’t wait to get out there again. Good God, that is true love. I haven’t felt that way on a matinee day for a very long time.

  Third preview. A dream audience. The show flew, I flew. (Lines perfect in the scarecrow-army scene.) Tonight I could be forgiven for believing again that we’ve got a success.

  Friday 21 March

  I love this process of using the previews to refine, adjust, and improve the show. The audience has become part of the creative team: they’re teaching us what works and what doesn’t. And inspiring us to new things.

  Today we made a small but exciting alteration to the section where Hal puts Falstaff in command of a company of foot soldiers. I’ve been accepting the document grumpily, muttering the next line: ‘Well, God be thanked for these rebels, they offend none but the virtuous. I laud them, I praise them.’ But we’ve become aware of a little shockwave going through the audience, and realised that the statement is more scandalous than we thought: it’s like declaring yourself to be a Nazi sympathiser in wartime Britain. So now I’m saying it boldly, defiantly, and not accepting the document. Hal has to force it into my hands, shouting: ‘The land is burning!’ Good stuff: Falstaff at his most subversive, and Hal starting to morph into Henry V.

  As part of this afternoon’s work, Greg also choreographed a proper curtain call (up until now, we’ve just been tumbling on in one big free-for-all), and then, like at the end of each of these sessions, he asked us to summarise the main changes we’re putting in this evening. Otherwise, these can surprise you in performance, trip you up.

  Ciss sits at the back during these afternoon sessions. She sees all the previews and even came to the tech. It’s a marvellous thing. While other people of her age (eighty-eight) would be going to their bridge club or game of bowls, she is simply doing what she’s always done: being at the RSC. The other day she was telling me that her eyesight is increasingly poor (‘It’s fucking embarrassing, darling’), but when she’s hearing a piece of Shakespeare her whole being lights up, including her eyes. She listens to language as if it’s music. [Photo insert, page 6, Ciss Listening 6]

  Tonight’s audience was as good as last night’s. Falstaff was getting so many laughs that I now began to worry whether the darker side of my characterisation was coming across. When I ran on for my solo bow at the curtain call, the noise was quite something to hear, quite primal – like I’d done a good kill at the Colosseum.

  Line-wise, they were pretty good – except for in the ‘Honour’ speech, when I rearranged them a bit.

  Afterwards in my dressing room, Greg was buzzing about the show. Then he said, ‘And I know you threw yourself in the “Honour” speech, but no one noticed – Tim Mitchell thought it was particularly good.’

  ‘I didn’t throw myself,’ I answered sharply; ‘I made a mistake, but I recovered well.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘So I didn’t throw myself. Sorry if it threw you.’

  It was a funny moment between us. Each time I stumble on the lines (which is very seldom, really), he must get a tiny fright.

  Saturday 22 March

  In brief moments of relaxation – usually on the loo – I’m reading a book of essays on Shakespeare by Peter Brook, The Quality of Mercy. He’s very eloquent. For example, here he is on the ten-beat rhythm of the iambic pentameter:

  ‘True thought has a feeling, and it is the feeling that has a music in its flow. Shakespeare, in the passionate velocity of finding words for the formless tumult within him, never counted from one to ten. This was a deep part of his consciousness, and so in his mature writing, when the pressure of feeling was stronger than correctness, he violated his own rules.’

  I remember that very thing from when we did The Winter’s Tale (one of the late plays) – the sense that Shakespeare had become a master jazz musician, able to improvise around the beat while keeping the melody going.

  One of the curious truths about theatre is that Saturday-night audiences are usually ‘bad’. Maybe because they’ve paid more for their tickets and come with an attitude: this better be worth it. Anyway, it was certainly the case with this evening’s crowd, but it didn’t matter. The show, and our characters, were soaked into us now, nicely marinated, and performing this great play was simply a pleasure.

  Afterwards, over supper in The Dirty Duck, and then walking back to Avonside – it was a cold, dark night – we had an inspiring talk about Falstaff:

  I was saying what a phenomenal creation he is. We know that Shakespeare writes villains well – Iago, Richard III – monsters who subvert the natural order, and here is someone who does the same, yet isn’t a villain (just a thieving, alcoholic, unscrupulous bastard), and the audience absolutely love him.

  Greg said, ‘He could only have been written after the Reformation, and in the Renaissance. When God is no longer the centre of the universe – Man is. It’s no longer the life to come, it’s life here and now. At Shrewsbury, Falstaff says, “Give me life!” It’s his battle cry, even if it means, in real battle conditions, he’s a hopeless coward.’

  And Greg was revelatory about Falstaff’s constant claim to being young. (In Part I, at Gad’s Hill, he says ‘They hate us youth’; in Part II, he says to the Lord Chief Justice, ‘You that are old consider not the capacities of us that are young.’) I’ve had real difficulty with this – it simply seems silly. But Greg said, ‘No – it’s not mutton dressed as lamb, he has a genuinely youthful spirit. The young don’t think about dying, they have no sense of mortality, they live life for the day – “Give me life”! Of course, reality creeps up on him in Part II, and he gets to fear old age more and more, but he fights against it, his subversive spirit fights on…’

  As we talked, I felt reassured about an aspect of my performance, which has had a mental question mark over it: the childlike aspect. As written, the part has a narcissism tha
t is positively infantile – he is the original enfant terrible – and moments of extreme, immature vulnerability (like the line Greg quoted before our double run-through: ‘I would it were bedtime Hal, and all well’). But I’ve added to it, by needing help to lift the bottle to my mouth in the first scene, and flapping my hand at Hal when I want my horse at Gad’s Hill, like a kid asking Daddy to lift him up. At these times, Falstaff is not so much Hal’s surrogate father as his adopted son. This feels more valid now.

  This conversation tonight was a wonderful thing, a thoroughly Stratford thing, when the great themes of the great plays are chewed over and digested along with a meal in The Duck and a stroll back to your digs in the writer’s home town.

  Sunday 23 March

  Dead man walking. That’s me today.

  Monday 24 March

  Twenty-three days to the opening.

  ‘Let’s see how it comes out of its box.’

  This is how Greg talked about revisiting Part II today. We were back in the Michel Saint-Denis rehearsal room – how strange, yet reassuring – working through the play, scene by scene.

  Some bits were refreshed by the break, and some were unfamiliar. Nia said that suddenly playing Doll again was ‘like bumping into an old, very needy friend.’ But other bits were positively enriched by the experience of performing Part I to an audience.

  Both Alex and I remarked on how we felt we owned our characters more than whenever last we were in this room. And the impact of Hal’s rejection of Falstaff was a hundredfold – having played the Part I tavern scene, where Falstaff jokes again and again about banishment, leading to one of the most famous moments in the play:

  FALSTAFF: …Banish plump Jack and banish all the world.

  HAL: I do, I will.

  The main sensation in today’s work was of delight. The same characters, but in different situations. It was like being in a posh soap – a soap written by Shakespeare.