I thought it was a shallow little comedy and it would be enormously successful. But I thought it would be purgatory doing a load of old shite with two actors like Albert and Tom, whom I really admire. But Matthew wouldn’t take no for an answer and told me to read it again and I decided it was probably a deep play masquerading as a shallow one.2
Even so, doubts persisted. About a week before the first preview, Stott was in despair:
I went to Matthew and said, ‘This is going very badly. Yvan is useless, hopeless, nothing like as interesting as I’d hoped he’d be.’ Matthew just smiled and said, ‘I had Tom telling me the same about Serge yesterday and I’m looking forward to Albert telling me the same about Marc tomorrow.’ [Actually Albert said he liked the script immediately.]
All three actors proved amenable to advice, according to Warchus. ‘Good actors like these three aren’t egomaniacs in rehearsal. They start from scratch. They’re groping uncertainly. However strong their technique, they’re always suggestible: they want to collaborate and be challenged.’
Art proved a huge success, a kind of runaway train that never stopped, although the choice cast grew progressively less starry and compelling as the years passed. Matt Woolf in Variety paid tribute to Finney’s performance, ‘The Marc who ends Art is a different person from the one who began it, and Finney’s strength is to suggest the imaginative rebirth of someone able to permit colour into a black and white life that had been defined by bluster.’ Benedict Nightingale thought the evening was the West End’s highlight:
Yasmina Reza’s Art, at Wyndham’s, is the play of the moment. It has already attracted attention all over mainland Europe. In London, it has been acclaimed in the conservative Daily Telegraph as ‘smart, sharp and wonderfully funny’ and attacked in the liberal Guardian as ‘old-style Fascist theatre, sly, slick, self-indulgent and passionately anti-intellectual’. As eloquently translated by Christopher Hampton, it is one of the hottest tickets in town and, in my view, by far the most satisfying entertainment.
The theatrical establishment, perhaps best personified by Richard Eyre, Peter Hall’s successor as National Theatre director, was sniffy. Eyre noted in his diaries:
I saw Art, which is a bewildering phenomenon. I’d heard it described in apocalyptic tones as crass, pernicious and philistine, but it seemed to me a slight, bland but good-natured after dinner sketch.3
That could be said to be a classic case of damning with faint praise!
Perhaps the most famous person to see Art was Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson. He tells how he was desperate for a pair of tickets and only got them by paying well over the odds:
When Cathy [Ferguson’s wife] and I turned up at the theatre we were surprised to be met by the manager and told that Albert Finney’s girlfriend, Pene, would like us to join her for a drink. How could she possibly know we were coming? Pene’s explanation was amusing. That morning Albert had answered the doorbell at his apartment and found himself facing his newsagent, a big United fan. The man was extremely agitated because he had picked up word that Alex Ferguson had been trying unsuccessfully to locate tickets for the play. ‘You must get them for him,’ he told the actor. Albert was as helpless as I have often been when landed with a similar request but the newsagent’s intervention brought Cathy and me the bonus of being asked round to the star’s dressing room at the end of the evening. Finney had always been one of my favourite actors and although I had never met him until then, I had heard enough about him, from his close friend Harold Riley, the Salford artist, to know that being in his company was likely to be a pleasure. It was indeed. Cathy and I both enjoyed Art but, to be honest, that little gathering in the dressing room was the highlight of our stay in London. Albert opened a bottle of Dom Pérignon to celebrate my ten years with United. We were joined by Tom Courtenay and Ken Stott and a surprise guest was Joan Plowright, who looked fantastic. What impressed me about all of them was how easily they dispelled the notion that people in their profession are forever calling one another ‘love’ and ‘darling’ and generally indulging in over-the-top behaviour. They were just down to earth.4
An acquaintance of Finney’s tells another story that illustrates the actor’s no-nonsense approach to art and indeed Art. He also went to see Finney backstage post-performance. The visitor recalls the conversation:
‘Can I ask you something?’ I asked tentatively. ‘Where did you meet Yvan?’
‘Who?’ asked Albert.
‘The Kenny Stott character. I mean, he’s a salesman. And you don’t like him very much.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘So I wondered where you met him.’
‘No idea,’ said Albert. ‘In a bar, perhaps?’
‘You’ve never thought about where you met him?’
‘No.’
‘So,’ I ventured, ‘you didn’t think about it when you first read the script?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I just thought it was a wonderful script. And when we started rehearsing it, it just got better and better.’5
So, none of this motivational nonsense for Finney!6
Finney was 60 when his run in Art ended in March 1997. It turned out to be his final stage appearance. At the time he told an interviewer he was reluctant to take the play to New York. ‘I don’t feel New York’s a theatre town anymore. It’s a show town, like Las Vegas … So I’ll take things easy for a while. Maybe I’ll go racing.’ Richard Eyre recalled a similar conversation with Finney and notes that Finney added,‘I did all that in the sixties.’
If Finney, at this point, still had designs on a major classical role, especially Lear, then 60 would have been an ideal age. By 70, let alone older, such a colossal part usually proves too much. Not that it can never be a success at a great age – Brian Blessed, at 78, was a recent example – but the demands of the part mean that 60 is about right. Even Burton, in his late 50s, baulked at Lear because, he said, his bad back would prevent him lifting Cordelia. Anthony Hopkins played Lear when he was only 48. He has not appeared on the West End stage since M. Butterfly in 1989 when he was just 51. O’Toole dodged Lear, perhaps mindful of his Macbeth fiasco. His final stage appearance was when he was 67 in a revival of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. Berkoff may have still been treading the boards at 78, Angela Lansbury at 88; yet these are exceptions. Michael Gambon, 75 at the time of writing, recently announced that he would no longer do stage work.
In subsequent interviews Finney said that he doubted he would return to the stage, ‘prancing around like an ageing juvenile’. All actors’ fears – forgetting whole sections of dialogue and simply lacking the stamina to deliver – become more pronounced after 60. It might simply have been too exhausting for Finney, an actor averse to long runs.9 Latterly, health considerations have ruled him out. And Finney likes to go his own way, a motif throughout all his public pronouncements.
But, even in 1996, Finney implied to Terry Coleman that Lear was beyond him:
Charles Laughton was 60 when he played Lear. I’m not saying I’m in peak condition, but Charles certainly wasn’t, and it wasn’t a great success. He’s got to pick up Cordelia at the end. I think it was Charles who called John [Gielgud] for a tip, and he said, ‘Get a very light Cordelia.’
And Oliver Ford Davies, while filming My Uncle Silas in 2000, recalled asking Finney if he would ever be doing Lear. ‘Oh God,’ he replied, ‘eight shows a week doing Lear – no, no, no.’
Perhaps Finney’s effective retirement from the stage reinforced the accusation that he had frittered away his career. Yet Finney, although discriminating, worked prodigiously and steadily until he was 75. And the flack comes from critics, not the public or other performers. Fellow actors are more understanding, perhaps mindful of the pressures involved. Take Anthony Hopkins, who said on Burton’s death in 1984 that he ‘didn’t agree with all the self-righteous pundits who said he should have done more things on stage’. Likewise, Richard Harris, who, also referring to Burton, asked the rhetorical question, ‘Why shoul
d he have lived his life for you? [The critics or the public]. Richard lived his life for himself.’ Doubtless this could apply to Finney too. He felt he was entitled to tread his own path. And, unlike Burton, who died aged 58, Finney was to prove durable.
Finney also made it clear that he disliked the auditoriums at the National Theatre, a likely venue for a production of Lear. Not that this had prevented him attempting some great classical roles at the South Bank. Yet experience had taught him that the Olivier’s acoustics were untrustworthy. He also believed that the Lyttelton stage was too wide, cutting the actors off from the audience. ‘It’s like reaching with your arm into a paper bag without ever being sure you get to the bottom,’ he said. He disliked all the concrete. ‘Not a natural sound box, is it? You don’t make musical instruments out of it, do you?’ Finney would say.
Richard Eyre’s diaries from 1988 recall a similar putdown from Finney about the National:
Met Maggie Smith and Albert Finney last week. Neither has much fondness for the building. They both want to work outside the West End and yet not get institutionalised. I tell Albert that Peter Brook says that a theatre should be like a violin; its tone comes from its period and age, and tone is the most important quality. ‘Yes,’ said Albert. ‘And who’d build a violin out of fucking concrete?’
In 1996, Finney was still busy. During the run of Art, he could be seen on the small screen as the alcoholic Doctor Monygham in a four-part adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel Nostromo, about the corrupting effects of a local silver mine. Set in a fictional South American country, it had a sterling cast, including Colin Firth, Brian Dennehy and Serena Scott-Thomas.
David Lean had originally set his heart on making a movie of Nostromo. But he had died (in 1991) before he could begin. In the end, the international television co-production was just as much work as a full-scale film. Six months of shooting began in May 1995, using sixty European technicians, mainly Italian and British, and 120 Colombians, as well as 15,000 acting extras.
Finney accepted what was quite a gruelling venture – and for less than his normal rate – because of his friendship with producer Fernando Ghia. ‘I liked the idea of going back to South America and being paid for it. And it’s a lovely character,’ he said at the time.
The Independent’s Terry Coleman noted how Finney nearly stole the whole production from the nominal stars:
Such is Finney’s power that the central thread of a complex story very nearly becomes Monygham’s devotion to the young wife of the Englishman who has come to reopen the silver mine. Dr Monygham shambles in to warn her and her husband to go home. She receives him alone, gives him tea in a shaded courtyard, and his adoration is instant.
Peter Kemp agreed: ‘One of its high spots is Albert Finney’s pained, bitterly sardonic rendering of Monygham, the doctor crippled and psychologically maimed during Gruzman Bento’s reign of terror.’
Journalist James Rampton describes one particular drunk scene involving Finney’s Monygham:
An Irish doctor who has seen better days sits dressed in a pith helmet, dinner jacket and a towel. Pathetically singing, slurring his words and swigging from a bottle, he hails a returning war hero by throwing his arms up in the air. The scabbard flies off the regimental sword he is holding and clatters across the room. This is a bravura boozer.
Executive producer Michael Wearing, in the same Independent profile, noted Finney’s skill in acting drunk:
It’s a masterclass in how to act drunk. But it’s just one scene. Albert has caught that mad English quality of those people who went all over the world and landed in the most inappropriate places, but still contributed something. Albert manages to understand that. He gives me the impression that he’s in control professionally of what he needs to do. He’s not at war with himself – the way most actors and indeed the rest of us are.
Finney said the heat during filming in Colombia made him lose weight, but joked that he was doing his best to put it back on: ‘I don’t feel I’m a masochist. I don’t want to put myself through the wringer. I just felt he was an interesting fellow and his problems were worth having a crack at.’
Wearing reckoned that Finney conveyed anguish so well because, ironically, he’s so much the opposite off-screen: ‘He’s not tormented in real life. He’s a tremendous lover of life. He’s not self-important, and he doesn’t hide behind a whole intellectual cage of nonsense, which some actors do. What he’s got is an endless curiosity about people and places.’
Writer John Hale, who adapted Nostromo and had first met Finney at the 1961 Edinburgh Festival, commented in a 1996 newspaper profile that he was ‘the most convivial of men … he allows nothing to divert him. He’ll always turn up on his mark, rock steady and DLP – dead letter perfect.’
‘Concentration is the secret,’ Finney said at the time. ‘You try to be there. When you do a scene, you’re there and nothing else is going on.’ Reportedly, Finney was in the habit of getting up to rehearse two hours before filming. ‘I like to go on set with the engine running,’ he said. ‘I like to be ready, it’s an explosive event.’
Yet Finney never took preparation to an extreme:
I think about the part but on Nostromo I didn’t walk into a bar in the evening with crippled feet and a hunchback. One does like to be obsessed, though, that’s one of the attractions of the work. But sometimes you get more ideas when you’re not poring over the script with a clenched forehead. When I played Scrooge I was switching lights off a lot because I was thinking about the part, but I didn’t become completely mean.
Rich character roles continued to come Finney’s way. There was perhaps a hint of eccentricity to Finney as he ‘matured’. He was rather like Trevor Howard yet somehow more intrinsically likeable. Ever since The Dresser, fans of Finney and Courtenay had looked forward to a screen rematch. It wasn’t just that they were good friends. Somehow their different acting styles complemented each other. Angela Lambert’s novel A Rather English Marriage proved a delightful ‘sequel’ to The Dresser, a kind of British version of The Odd Couple. Despite his working-class credentials, and role in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Finney also plays ‘posh’ convincingly. Perhaps it’s his natural gravitas and authority. Courtenay tends to play more subservient characters. So it was in A Rather English Marriage, in which Finney, playing at least ten years older than his age, was a widowed RAF veteran, Squadron Leader Reggie Conyngham-Jarvis. (American readers should note that a double-barrelled name usually signifies ‘upper-class’ in the UK!)
Courtenay played a widowed milkman, Roy Southgate. Roy was also ex-armed forces but a humble non-commissioned officer. Because they were both bereaved on the same day, Roy, heeding a social worker’s advice, moves in with Reggie. Roy becomes housekeeper to Reggie until he starts to tire of his master’s domineering manner. Matters get complicated, however, when Reggie courts a younger woman, Liz Franks (Joanna Lumley).
Finney’s Conyngham-Jarvis is a truculent taskmaster, a bit of a bounder. He even calls his new companion ‘Southgate’. Finney plays him with the effortless authority of those who think they are born to rule. A pompous old poop, perhaps, but Andrew Davies’s sassy dialogue sustains the interest. ‘You are a prissy tight-ass aren’t you,’ he tells Southgate. Or, after being cut off in traffic by another driver, ‘may your balls wither and drop like rotten figs, my friend’. (If only one encountered such inventiveness of expression on the road in real life!)
Although ‘squadron leader’ does not wear his emotions easily, there are poignant moments, as when he returns home and summons his wife, momentarily forgetting that she’s dead. And the scene where Reggie tries to bed Liz, suffering a stroke at orgasm, complete with flashbacks to his past as an RAF pilot, is a gem.
Joanna Lumley reflected on the production and, in particular, that love scene:
He [Finney] couldn’t have made it easier or more natural. Finney is loved by everyone who comes near him and I think it’s because he loves them back. He adores women and wome
n, me included, adore him. Women were jealous of me for my scene with Albert. Tom Courtenay and Finney were the stars of that film; it had taken ages to get it off the ground as the powers that be couldn’t see the value of a story involving two widowers and a middle-aged woman. It got all sorts of prizes and has been shown and reshown here and all over the world … When you play tennis with Tim Henman your game goes up and if you’re working with Finney and Courtenay the same thing happens. They were almost the reason I went into the business. You watch Albert Finney in Tom Jones or Tom in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and think ‘if only’. You think you’ll never meet, let alone work with these people.28 [Try with Andy Murray, Joanna!]
She later wrote that she cried when she saw it on transmission.
Finney also loved working with Lumley: ‘I have admired Joanna’s work for ages but I had no idea what to expect from working with her. In the event she was delightful, great fun and larky. I felt immediately relaxed and easy working with her. What more can you ask for?’
Reggie’s wooing of Liz is ultimately doomed and he is left, frail and lonely, with only Roy to look after him. As the film ends, the two dance to I’m Going to Get You on a Slow Boat to China – theatrical but a delight. The class-consciousness may be puzzling to non-British viewers, but it was a great actors’ piece. Predictably, A Rather English Marriage was rewarded at the Baftas, winning best actor for Courtenay and a nomination for Finney. ‘A Tony cast, led by Albert Finney on overdrive, chews up the scenery to entertaining – and finally moving – effect in this true-Brit comedy of manners,’ said Variety.
After success on stage and TV, Finney’s movie career now took a little dip. Breakfast of Champions, based on Kurt Vonnegut’s tale of American disillusionment, in which Bruce Willis played an ostensibly successful, but suicidal, car dealer, was dismally unfunny. It’s a (very) broad satire, taking aim at the American dream, clearly more of a nightmare to Vonnegut. Watching the film is like being in a rattling cage full of shrieking monkeys. Even the ‘rainforest’ opening credits are too busy and noisy and, just like the ensuing drama, fly in too many directions. For satire to work well, it has to be taken seriously. Director Alan Rudolph had no such plan.
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