by Antony Sher
Tuesday 8 May
An oil slick on the river today, from the long weekend's abuse. In the morning sunshine it's as if a rainbow has fallen into the water and is being gently rubbed against the bank, washed and cleaned until it's transparent again.
Mal says, `Take no notice of me yesterday. I was just in an argumentative mood. I've got a lot on my mind.'
He's moving house at the moment. A relief to know it's that and not more personal.
A bitty day. A pleasure to be watching for a change (scenes which don't involve Richard).
Pat Routledge's working method is fascinating. She keeps up a running commentary, as if she's cooking: `I don't know, don't know yet ... never mind, we'll find it, we'll find it ... so I go over to them and say Ta-ra ...' GHOSTS SCENE (Act V, Scene iii) Bill gathers the actors concerned into a circle and encounters an immediate problem - the ghosts can't read it without corpsing.
Bill: `Why is this scene so notoriously difficult?'
Roger: `Could it be that the ghosts are usually drunk by this stage in the performance? I mean, Clarence has been dead for over two and a half hours.'
Bill attempts a rough staging and things get worse. The ghosts have slowly to gather in the middle of the stage and then swivel their prophecies from Richard at one side to Richmond at the other.
`It's not Wimbledon!' cries Bill. `And you're wafting! I don't want to see any wafting! No ghost acting!'
The ghosts are going to come up out of the tombs, which have secret back entrances, so each new ghost joins the group from behind. This means the others have to sense his presence and make a natural parting for him. Inevitably, ghosts crash, trip, get tickled and goosed, Blessed burps and farts.
`English actors,' laments Bill afterwards, `English actors are so selfconscious. There'd be no problem with that scene if you had continental or American actors.'
MOTHER SCENE (Act rv, Scene iv) We have a brief look at this vital scene. Bill has a nice image for when Richard calls for his drummers and trumpeters to drown her out: `A petulant boy turning up the hi-fi.'
PRINCES SCENE After further consultations with Tucker, we have decided to abandon the piggyback ride and go for the Brando/gorilla version instead. The young York says, `Because that I am little like an ape, he thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders!' ... Richard's face goes blank, he rises slowly, pauses, and then defuses the tension with the gorilla act.
One of the older boys, Rupert Finch, says, `Wouldn't it be better if you turned away so that we couldn't see what you're thinking? As if you were shunned. And then suddenly turn back and be the gorilla. It would be more surprising.'
He's quite right. It is much better. `So wise, so young, they say ...'
SOLUS The nightmare speech. Bill says, `It's about fear in a very personal way. We mustn't talk about it too much. Anyway there's not a lot I can say. I know what it means to me, but it's got to be your personal expression of terror. We must just let it happen gradually.'
A stocktaking on the disability. As I'm coming off the book I'm experimenting more and more with the polio walk.
`Oh it's polio, is it?' says Bill. `I've been wondering what you've been doing. Lucky we're having this discussion.' He feels it's too disabled, too extreme a difference from the speed and agility on the crutches. He'd prefer the disability to be less specific - he suggests bone damage caused by the difficult birth - but basically strong and capable.
I feel no sense of wasted research. Everything seeps together. The new walk, for example, immediately becomes slightly spastic, which I thought I had ditched as an option.
ARDEN HOTEL BAR With Bill and Roger Allam, who is a joy and one of the best verse-speakers in the Company. I call him The Voice Beautiful and he calls me The Body Busy (the other day he said, `I wouldn't like to see you in Whose Life is it Anyway!'). I outline Monty's theory about Richard and his mother. Bill is very taken with this.
Wednesday 9 May
A had day.
QUEEN MARGARET SCENF. This morning Bill comes in and talks to the cast about finding more tribaL'animal behaviour. Getting away from the stiff formality of history-play acting.
Bill has always been open about how uncomfortable he feels with improvisations, workshops and exercises. Unfortunately, for something like this, it's the only way. Instead Bill suggests running the scene, `trying to be more bestial'.
The result is a disaster. Behaviour not from the animal world but the world of pantomime. Cackling laughter, food being thrown around, sinewy `wicked' acting. Although I'm participating and probably responsible for some of the worst excesses, I can hardly bear to watch the others. Have to bury my head on the crutches for much of the scene. In one fell swoop there is a vision of how ludicrous this play can be if we don't get it right. The endless suffering, squabbling and cursing. Unintentionally, we've made it funnier than the Liverpool production, which was trying to be funny.
The rehearsal ends with extreme dishonesty. We all mutter the usual bullshit ('Well, we've got a good basic shape to work from') instead of sitting down and saving, `That was terrible, that was embarrassing, we must never be so had again.'
On to the King Edward scene (Act u, Scene i) and then the scene with Clarence's children (Act ii, Scene ii), and worse and worse it gets. These are difficult scenes - people are dying left, right and centre, news of death being broken to brothers and children; wives and mothers in grief. So much acting going on. We're only at the beginning of Act Two and already every emotion known to man (or rather those unknown to man, but loved by actors) has been laid bare on the stage.
Feel very shaken by lunchtime. I fear that it's partly my fault. I've been acting too much too soon, starting with all that shouting at the read-through. People might be taking their cue from me: emoting instead of investigating. But we have also uncovered a dangerous trap in the play; it gives many of the characters A Big Moment. And, as actors, we love this - our chance to do a mini-Lear, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Coriolanus, Volumnia. That must be resisted or the story won't be allowed to flow. And anyway, we'd be laughed off the stage.
Find Bill and pour out all of this. His eyes glaze over, the flesh on his face drops at least an inch and turns to putty. He says, `It wasn't that bad. You're over-reacting. You must allow everyone their own rehearsal process.'
I go away realising that this has been another symptom of the fear. The scenes were terrible, but there is no need for panic yet.
I must steady myself.
We are at that tricky stage: we're putting down the scripts, the lines are dragging in our heads rather than dancing. Everything feels exposed and faintly embarrassing. The scripts have been little shields up until now.
Blessed says, `It's the time to be brave.'
Thursday io May
Go into rehearsals determined to take things slower, to act less, to question more, particularly the moments of horror.
The result is a much better day.
STRAWBERRY SCENE (Act III, Scene iv) Long discussion about what Richard does here. He has to burst into the Council Chamber saying that he's suddenly been bewitched, produce his withered arm as evidence and accuse Queen Elizabeth and Mistress Shore of witchcraft. Shore is Hastings's lover and so in this roundabout way Hastings is implicated and condemned to death. It makes no logical sense at all. It's pure bravado on Richard's part. Ironically, this does demand acting of the most spectacular sort, all guns firing, so impressive and so fast that no one has a chance to say, `Hang on, you've always had that withered arm.'
It's generally agreed that the way we've found of doing this - smashing one of the crutches down on to the council table, Richard imagining this thing to be a withered arm - is effective in the way that the scene demands, and not ludicrous.
To increase the illusion of Richard being possessed, I suggest that he should come in vomiting - he's not above putting a couple of fingers down his throat for effect. But Bill feels that this would be going too far.
Thus we proceed with caution, step by
step.
HASTINGS' HEAD SCENE The budget cannot stretch to another Tucker creation, but we are assured that the Prop Department will excel themselves. It will have the correct weight and floppiness of a freshly severed head.
How to bring it on stage? Bill A. suggests it is stuck on a pike, covered by a cloth which is then whipped off. This will surely get a laugh. It will be like a magic trick. His next suggestion is that it be uncovered on the pike dripping into a large tray underneath. Bill D. feels this will be too much like a kebab. He suggests one of the soldiers carry it on by the hair. Better.
What about the business of putting the head into the mayor's hands, and passing it about? This will definitely get laughs. Are they valid? Not sure. All I know for certain is that we must be able to shock when we want, make them laugh when we choose. My fear from yesterday's terrible rehearsals is us being laughed at.
BAYNARD'S CASTLE Still tedious. Why, why, why?
FIGHT REHEARSAL I hate to say it but I'm losing faith in the idea of the crutches. They get in the way so much. I can't reach for things or carry anything. They are very disabling (which I suppose is the point, but also a drag). Will it get easier with practice? More to the point, are the sodding things a good idea and worth pursuing or not? The main worry about losing them altogether is the point Charlotte made about the disability: it's safer when played on crutches.
We have all agreed that if they are to work they must be employed early on in the play as weapons. The earliest opportunity is the beginning of the Lady Anne scene when Richard stops the funeral procession and is challenged by the guards. Shakespeare doesn't indicate a fight here but, with a tiny snip at the text, one is easily contrived. It needs to be short and vicious. Richard's blows must be sadistic beyond the call of duty.
Stage violence is one of my bugbears. You hardly ever see it done well enough. Because the fights have to be choreographed so carefully and the blows pulled or cheated, a kind of balletic stylisation takes over. Most stage fights are rather graceful. They lack the scrabbling ugliness of real violence. Also a shorthand develops in playing pain. We often forget to consider the agony that a mere stubbed toe or bumped head can cause. Actors will take bone-crushing blows, do a token `Argghh!', get up and stroll away.
But Malcolm Ranson is one of the best fight directors in the business. The usual problem - where to strike on the body? He devised a very effective metal backplate for Chris Hunter, as Oswald in King Lear, so that his back could be broken with a staff. One of the guards can have this. The target is large and I can swipe at it with full strength. With the other guard we devise a jerky scrabble across the stage - when animals fight those little charges and retreats are as vicious as the actual contact. But then the problem is where to hit him? We are face-on so all the targets are delicate areas. Eventually settle on a jab to his stomach. He can catch the crutch as I swing it and then control the impact of the blow himself.
The monks carrying the bier suggest that they could have crash helmets under their cowls and I could lay them all out as well. Bill says that he has no intention of playing the rest of the scene, one of Shakespeare's most famous, among a pile of dazed monks.
Malcolm Ranson is disappointed to hear we won't be doing a big fight between Richard and Richmond at the end. He wonders whether the structure of that last section of the play doesn't demand a piece of action. (Shakespeare does indicate a fight here.) But Bill is convinced that if we can find the right image for a ritual slaughter of Richard, that would be more effective.
LADY ANNE SCENE Excellent rehearsal. At one point Penny gets angry with herself and says, `I'm acting too much!' I could hug her. Bill being very helpful to me today, curbing over-acting. Yesterday's fiasco is proving valuable. He reminds me how dangerous animals are when they become very still and poised.
At the end of rehearsals he whispers to me, `Beware this scene doesn't peak too early.' The instant rapport Penny and I have as actors is causing things to fall into place too easily. What a pity there aren't more Richard/ Anne scenes throughout the play. He suggests we lay off the scene for a while.
Poor Bill is in agony. He's done something to his back - someone said it's the Richard III curse - and has to rehearse while clutching a hot water bottle behind him.
I'm very pleased with my work today. I'm using my uncertainty with the lines to be quieter, to investigate more, to think and feel. It's an unfamiliar way of working, but rather good. Will pay dividends.
Friday i i May
s O L v s Embarrassing doing these speeches sometimes. You feel like you're auditioning.
We work on `I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl'. Bill has a nice image - it is The Story So Far. A lovely idea, but a light and jokey one. Moving further and further away from the man's pain. There is still this basic contradiction to be solved.
KING RICHARD'S COURT SCENE (Act iv, Scene ii) This begins our second half. It's where Buckingham gets the elbow and Tyrrel is hired to kill the Princes. Bill's idea of having Lady Anne sitting there, white and semi-poisoned, is going to work marvellously. Shakespeare doesn't have her in the scene, but it will be a strong image - this silent, sick presence at Richard's side. Penny sits with eyes opened, but sightless. `Valiumed out of her mind,' as she describes it. She also talks about a practice in Australian aboriginal witchcraft - `pointing the bone' at someone to make them die (the power of suggestion). She says that Lady Anne has inadvertently done this to herself: in her first speech one of her curses against Richard was directed at his future wife.
Saturday 12 May
Driving into Stratford to meet the Bills for another visit to Chris Tucker's. A pink smoky dawn, mist billowing across an icy field of rape and up the side of Meon Hill where black magic killings take place.
Larry Adler is parked at the stage door. Bill A. hurries into the car with head down and jumper held over his face.
`What's the matter Bill?' I ask.
`I don't want Bill Kerr to see Larry driving me,' he whispers, `he made me swear allegiance to him.'
`I doubt if he'll be up at this hour.'
`You never know. He's fiercely possessive. He once caught Terry Hands with Larry and it took months for them to make it up.'
We exit from Stratford with Bill A. crouched low in his seat.
CHRIS TUCK ER's Great excitement as we're ushered into the workshop. Squatting on the floor is a white plaster cast of my torso. And built on to it in grey clay is the deformed back. Brilliant anatomical detail - the skin bunched at the twisted hip, the vertebrae straining through the surface as if trapped. A magnificent shape, but bearing not the remotest resemblance to what we've asked for.
Despite the last thing we said to one another ('Are you sure you don't want a hump to one side?' - `Quite sure') Chris has made the back scoliotic. When I ask why, he says that kyphotic humps are all much lower down. He produces medical books to prove it. I could produce the opposite evidence from my sketches made at Marylebone Library, but it's too late anyway. Or at any rate, he's not the kind of man to whom you could say, `This is all wrong, please start again.' The Bills are perplexed as to why this is so crucial to me. The fact is, a severely scoliotic back like this would cause a twisting of the whole torso, displacing the rib cage considerably and causing the `respiratory problems' so beloved of Tom `Poliomyelitis' Wadsworth. None of which I've been practising. Nor do I intend to. It would be painful and dangerous to sustain. Of course, the audience is never going to know all this - except for the odd orthopaedic surgeon - but I'm furious that my painstaking research has been swept aside like this.
The other alteration he has seen fit to impose is reducing the size of the deformity by about half and not building up the shoulders and upper arms at all. `It would be pushing reality,' he says, producing the medical books again and pointing to the thin shoulders and arms of the victims.
`But with respect,' I say, my voice beginning to shake slightly, `these people haven't devoted their lives to building up their strength and becoming dangero
us fighting men.'
Chris shrugs and looks to the Bills. They are standing hushed. I feel very confused; his sculpture is magnificent but it would mean re-thinking everything. Unless we have an approximation of the diving-suit bulk, the optical illusion of wasted leg muscles won't be achieved.
He finally agrees to build up the arms, but he feels that to build up the shoulders would be, as he's fond of saving, `pushing reality'.
He gets bored with the discussion and says, `Come upstairs and see Bert.'
We're all rather relieved to end the session and troop upstairs to view his latest monster creation. It's for the film The Company of Wolves in which Stephen Rea has to turn into a wolf before the audience's astonished eyes.
In a drawing-room of inappropriate grandeur and elegance stand four gruesome figures, life-size and lifelike, known collectively as Bert. Each represents a stage in the transformation which begins with Rea tearing off his outer layer of skin and the wolf snout pushing through his face.
The Bert figures are stripped of skin so the muscles and fatty tissue are exposed. `Looked much better, of course,' says Chris, `when they were all wet and slimy and covered in KY.' They are worked by a variety of means, some muscles are moved by handles like beer pumps, others by remote-control. He is an expert in electronics as well as being skilled in chemistry, engineering and sculpture.
He's in his element now, a relish and pride that hasn't yet surfaced for our modest commission. He steps back with his remote-control device and starts punching buttons, looking like a cross between a child genius and a mad professor, and the models start to move. The naked muscles, blackish red like bad meat, begin to ripple. The eyes blink and cry real tears, pulses beat in the forehead, lips flicker into those twitching halfsnarls wolves use to signal an attack.