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

by Antony Sher

  I go to bed depressed. A week ahead of virtual starvation and no cigarettes or booze.

  Breakfast is coffee and a slice of toast with honey.

  By lunchtime, after a morning's jogging and swimming, I have lost all sense of humour on the subject. I will now kill for food. Luckily, lunch is a salad buffet and you can help yourself. I notice that the experienced inmates have learned how to pile their plates so high it looks like they're carrying top hats. This skill is quickly acquired. You layer your plate with a foundation of solids (boiled eggs, tomatoes, tuna), then build on top with the runny, squashier salads (coleslaw, cottage cheese, vegetable mixes) which you can compress to make more space, and finally you lay the light flyaway stuff (lettuce, grated carrots) on top. I leave the dining-room bloated and ill.

  But by dinner, after hours of jogging, swimming, the gym, a real hunger has set in again, a meat-eater's hunger which no amount of salads will ever relieve. Glancing up from the pitiful smudge on my plate which they call roast beef, I notice that jacket potatoes are being carried to certain tables; the Israelis are having lots. Am I hallucinating? Is it possible in this place - jacket potatoes? I suffer from acute shyness in public places, especially hotels, but a suicidal courage takes over now and I find myself leaning over to the next table and asking one of the potato eaters whom they have bribed and how. Apparently the potatoes are freely available if authorised by your medical consultant. Which means waiting until tomorrow.

  I return to my room to face another night of hunger. A terrible battle with myself ensues, a battle of Faustian proportions for my soul: should I or should I not drive into Hindhead and get some fish and chips? Self-control prevails. I stay in my room counting the hours until morning.

  As soon as the front desk is open I rush over and, trying to keep the quaver out of my voice, say, `I'd like to have a jacket potato in the evenings ... please.'

  `Are you on a diet, Sir?' the receptionist asks.

  `No,' I answer weakly.

  `Are you sure?' I stare at her with incredulity. `It's just that we do have people trying it on sometimes.'

  `Well ... can't you check?'

  `Oh don't you worry Sir, we'll check all right.' She is smiling almost dangerously.

  I stand there with a growing feeling of guilt as she phones the sister-incharge to check my file. She listens intently, nods, thanks the sister and puts down the phone. `Yes, that seems to be all right Sir, we'll put you down for a potato this evening.'

  The day is easier to get through after this. And sure enough, at dinner, it arrives at my table, big and steaming. There is even butter with it.

  The days are happier from now on.

  I'm reading three books: Simon Callow's Being anActor, which is delightful and makes me laugh aloud and often, in recognition of an actor's life; Gestalt Is, essays and lectures by Fritz Perls and others (note for Richard - `Killing is always a sign of impotence'); and The Illustrated True History of the Elephant Man, which doesn't illustrate at all what it must have felt like to be Merrick. What comes closest is his own two page autobiography. It's childlike, servile, no sense of self - a deformed view of himself and the world.

  You get a daily sauna and massage as part of the tariff. In the sauna cabin one longs for silence as the men chatter endlessly about the heat, or how much weight they're losing, or golf.

  On the second day, I'm in the middle of a shower when the head attendant rushes up to me, says, `Forgive me Mr Sher, I didn't realise who you were', and starts pummelling my hand as I stand there naked and embarrassed. It turns out he's a theatre buff and from then on he follows me everywhere, talking and questioning, into the rest-room, plunge pool, sometimes in the sauna cabin itself.

  An announcement is put up on the notice board: `Cocktails will be served in the drawing-room before dinner.' The inmates flock to this event, hoping against hope that the management has gone crazy and ordered crates of rum and mixers.

  We are given Slimline Bitter Lemon with bits of mint floating in it.

  `Yuk,' says a fat woman in a loud dressing-gown, `thank God for the bottle in the room.'

  So she's the one. There is one room which always has an empty champagne or vodka bottle provocatively left outside the door.

  Dickie arrives for the last few days of my stay to suffer the agonies and share the joys of this place. I brief him, laying particular stress on the importance of getting a jacket potato written into the deal at your first consultation.

  On Wednesday morning I read Wardle's shocking review of Merchant in The Times. Sends chills down my spine. It's not a pleasant experience reading someone else's bad review. Of course there's also a feeling of relief - it wasn't me.

  Ring Jim (who plays Salerio) and he says the opening went well. He hasn't seen any reviews and I have to tell him how bad The Times is. But I refuse to read any of it out to him.

  Jogging alone across the common, an unusually ugly stretch of National Trust land. As someone said in the sauna, it looks like the kind of ground the army uses for practice manoeuvres. Low mean bushes and sandy paths. But plodding along, in my new track suit and joggers, is an excellent feeling - the cold air, the noise of my panting, my eyes blurring from the exertion - a feeling that at last I'm doing what Jim suggested ages ago: I'm in training for an Olympic event. The sun comes out and I rest in the hollow of a tree. There is an eiderdown of thick soft moss to sit in. Spring sunlight, the green of distant fields. It makes me realise how little I have been able to relax this holiday - Richard III is constantly ticking away inside.

  ISLINGTON Arriving home there is a pile of mail and a package - clearly a script. Puzzled, I open it: The Desert Air by Nicholas Wright. There's a special excitement just holding a new script you've been offered.

  It's a hot day so I take it outside to read. The garden, still grey from the winter, is just about to fold open like a fan and dazzle.

  The play is a puzzle. Begins with a wonderful piece of surrealism (General Montgomery viewing the latest secret weapon, an invisible tank) but then goes into long expositions about the war in Yugoslavia. Unclear what Nicky is saying or how he is saying it. The character Hippo is excellent though. He would obviously be fun to play, but would be more attractive if he wasn't going to have to be alongside Richard, and following a string of other aggressively ruthless characters: Tartuffe, Martin in Maydays.

  Physically, am I right for it? Could I ever be nicknamed Hippo? Anyway, unless I get to like the play more I won't do it. That has to come first.

  The dry week brought to an end with an excellent bottle of '76 Montrachet. No desire for a cigarette yet.

  Sunday is April

  Jim back in London for the weekend. He's much less affected by the Merchant reviews than I am. I suppose part of my reaction is selfish - I'm worried what this will do to company morale and how it will affect Richard III. He says he's still so thrilled just to be on that great and famous stage. Recalls his first visit there with his twin brother, in a school party from Bilston, to see Henry IV - Part One. `We were unable to speak on the coach going back, just sat staring out of the windows, programmes on our laps. We didn't know what had happened to us, but it was monumental.'

  Re-read Desert Air. It's getting better, but still a feeling of dissatisfaction and confusion.

  A new factor is this terror that's been put into the air by the Merchant reviews. It's absurd for me to put all my eggs in one basket and do just Richard III. I must do a second play. Yet this mustn't fog my judgement of Desert Air.

  Tonight Tommy Cooper collapsed on stage at Her Majesty's Theatre and died. When he fell, going on to his haunches, reports say that the audience thought it was part of the act and howled with laughter. He had a natural comic's face so the look of stunned surprise must have been hilarious. Precisely what I wanted for Moliere's death and never quite achieved. As he is dying on stage, Moliere cries, `Don't laugh, don't laugh.'

  Wednesday 18April

  Jim, Dickie and my agent, Sally, have all read Desert Ai
r and are not complimentary. The only way I could do it now is if Adrian Noble feels similarly dissatisfied and will encourage fairly drastic rewrites.

  KING'S HEAD PUB, BARBICAN It's my first proper talk with Adrian since King Lear. Brings back the exhilaration of working with him. Reams of ideas tumble out, his talent almost made visible, along with the twitches, spasms of eye-rubbing, the tuggings at his collar as if he can't breathe. A man possessed. Almost as if there is an excess of talent and he's having to get rid of the overflow. When he communicates ideas they are so lucid - the gift of a good director.

  We talk about Richard III and I mention my worry about the humour in the play - I'm finding it increasingly funny each time I read it - in terms of it being a tragedy. Adrian doesn't see this as a problem, in fact the reverse, points to what we did in King Lear, but says, `Richard can only have a tragic dimension if you can find the potential for good in him.'

  At last he says, `Well, what did you think of Nicky's play?' I tell him about my reservations. When I say that I find the style of the play confusing and inconsistent I touch on a tender spot for Adrian. He says, 'I don't understand this worry people always have about style. What's great about theatre is that you can do anything.' Of course, Adrian's signature as a director is freedom of style.

  He doesn't share my doubts about the play, says, `I got a buzz out of reading it, I can see it clearly.' But he promises to talk to Nicky about my reservations and hopes things will still work out. I get a feeling I haven't really communicated to him my thoughts on the play. It's terribly difficult communicating bad news to Adrian because his own energy is so positive. So, as we're parting I emphasise, `I don't think I'll be doing it unless it changes quite drastically.' He grins and nods cheerfully.

  I could still end up stranded in Stratford for a year playing only one part a couple of times a week. Nothing else they've offered has really excited. How absurd to be under-employed like this. How absurd that I should have agreed to it. Richard III has a lot to answer for.

  Thursday 19 April

  Horizon - two-part documentary on American mass-murderer Kenneth Bianchi ('The Hillside Strangler') who killed ten girls around LA. He is strikingly handsome, tall, well built, sexy, charming. Outwardly a lot going for him. A far cry from the Nilsens, Christies and Bradys of this world. Must re-think what Dickie has said about finding Richard's inner ugliness, inner deformity.

  Again psychiatrists struggle to define the term `psychopath': 'A history of lifelong, almost pointlessly lying ... habitual lying ... easier to lie than tell the truth. Lying is usually done to persuade a person or simply to make the psychopath feel better.'

  Another says, `Science doesn't really know. There may be genetic and environmental influences intermingling ... we don't really know for sure. He may simply be evil.'

  Outside In, Stephen Dwoskin's autobiographical film. Very useful for Richard. Dwoskin has severe polio in both legs and has to wear complete calipers, so the legs can't bend at all. He walks with crutches and even then has enormous difficulty throwing each leg forward. I must use this - the hip throw. Sexual area. Thrusting. In pain and pleasure.

  Dwoskin records his fantasies: beautiful women cleaning his room, dancing at a party, or stripping at the top of a difficult flight of stairs - out of reach. A naked woman puts on his calipers and tries out his crutches.

  The tone is light and frivolous - Dwoskin frequently falls over, like a cartoon man - but it doesn't take much to twist these images into something more perverse, more Richardian.

  Extraordinary sequence with a semi-naked woman lying on a black bed. She's bathed in a cool white light, her skin like porcelain against the black of her hair, bra, knickers. He comes alongside her, a dark silhouette, carefully props himself up on his crutches and stretches out a hand - it turns from black to white as it enters the light - to touch her. Again and again without ever making contact. The cripple reaching for a beautiful whole body.

  Another sequence of him limping slowly out of the darkness into a square of light.

  A way of starting the play? The stage in darkness except for a pool of light. Empty. You hear `Now is the winter' coming from the darkness, then he starts to limp into the light ...

  THE PIT, BARBICAN Volpone. A joy. Richard Griffiths and Miles Anderson are an inspired double act. A lot to learn from Anderson's portrayal of evil. He sits back in Mosca's immorality. It's as natural as breathing. And he's not afraid to shut off the charm and frighten the audience. But then the face is magnificent, it can change from beauty to ugliness. John Dicks (Corvino) understands the style so well; I will long remember the moment someone makes the sign of the cross in front of him and he frantically tries to claw it out of the air. Bill's production is brilliant but ... he plays it uncut. Four hours! Who wants to sit in a theatre for four hours? It almost alienates this devoted fan. Particularly since I know he will try it on with Richard and I will have to fight him to the death.

  Good Friday

  Last night I dreamed I was running. All the training, all the exercise had finally paid off. I was running without panting, without hurting, without fear of injury. My legs were stretching into long powerful strides. The lawns were passing beneath me like carpets unrolling. A familiar distance effortlessly covered.

  I woke with a terrific feeling of hope.

  Dickie and I go into the West End to see Scarface, the new Al Pacino film. The cinema is next to St James's Square where the Libyan Embassy siege continues. We round the corner into Waterloo Place and there's that huge sheet of blue tarpaulin which has been on the TV news all week. It looks like an avant-garde theatre curtain, and indeed a crowd of holidaymakers stand across the street behind barriers, waiting for the show to start. The mood is festive, hot dogs and ice cream, buskers with performing budgies and dogs.

  Suddenly a group of high-ranking police officers arrive, jumping dramatically out of their cars before they've stopped. They hurry across the road clutching briefcases and raincoats, and disappear through the blue curtain. The crowd stirs. Will the show start now that the leading actors have arrived?

  We go into the Plaza and watch a relentless, three-hour succession of slayings, maimings and coke-sniffings. Emerge grumpily on to the street at the end, Dickie remarking that it would have been more fun watching the blue curtain.

  Saturday 21 April

  Growing excitement now. Tomorrow I move to Chipping Campden. Dashing around all day, settling bills, last minute shopping, writing letters. The day is hot like summer.

  Try out bits of Richard now and then - a line, a hip thrust - keeping him near.

  RIVERSIDE STUDIOS With Dickie to Poppie Nongena. It's not awfully good. Like most political theatre it's over-intense and faintly embarrassing. And yet I sit in a state of tearfulness all evening, partly because of the show's anti-apartheid sentiments, but mostly because I identifywith these South African actors here in London. It must be tremendously exciting for them. At the end, the big black Mama leads them in a circle round the acting area and the audience rise to their feet and cheer.

  The most remarkable feature of the show is the singing. They have no instruments to give them the note. They just stop speaking, put back their heads and open their mouths. A sound comes up out of the earth, strokes your spine and goes straight to heaven. The audience holds its breath. Back home for the late-night film, a favourite, Everything You Always Wanted To KnowAhout Sex But WereAfraid To Ask. In the Haunted House sequence Woody Allen whispers to the hunchback, `Posture, posture!'

  And so farewells. Dickie has bought a bottle of champagne. We raise glasses.

  `To Richard the Third.'

  4. Stratford-upon-Avon 1984

  Wednesday 25 April

  ROYAL SHAKESPEARE THEATRE First day of rehearsals. Solus call. After waiting almost six months for today I manage to arrive late, having misjudged the drive from Chipping Campden. Charge into the Conference Hall, hurling apologies down to the other end of the room where a little group sit waiting: Bill A., Aliso
n Sutcliffe who is to be the assistant director, and Charles Evans the deputy stage-manager.

  I'm delighted to see that Charles is on the show; he did Tartuffe and Maydays. Charles has the looks of a disgraced cherub, blond curls over red shiny cheeks which seem permanently in a state of excitement. He greets me by sticking his tongue out like a gargoyle and flattening it on his chin.

  I say, `Oh God, Charles! You're not doing Richard are you?'

  He laughs, a cross between a squawk and a shriek. Exceptionally loud, it is achieved by opening the throat very wide and sucking the breath inwards with alarming force.

  Bill has been on holiday in Spain and looks brown and well fed. To my relief he explains that we won't be able to do a company read-through till next week because Romeo is still to open, and Merchant yet to have its understudy run; they get priority. So we'll work on bits and pieces till then.

  The Conference Hall has large Gothic doors opening out on to gardens, and the river - you can even see The Duck. Now Charles closes these, shutting out the daylight. Home for the next seven weeks.

  Bill says, `Right - cuts.'

  `Ah,' say I, `a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a fight.'