Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition (22 page)

GRAYSHOTT HALL HEALTH FARM, HINDHEAD, SURREY Charlotte said it sounded like something out of a James Bond movie. Not at
all. A large, sedate Victorian house in vast grounds. Quiet pink corridors.
People drifting along them in dressing-gowns, smiling at you in a euphoria
of well-being or in the last stages of acute starvation.

On arrival you have a consultation with one of the medical staff. My
man utters `My, my's and `Dear oh dear's as he scans the list of injuries
Charlotte has drawn up. `Well Mister Sher, you are clearly reaching an
age when you're going to have to start taking things a bit easier.'

Next, there is an introductory talk by the resident director. All the
newcomers gather nervously in the drawing room. The director is a very
short, very old and, no doubt, very healthy little man. His manner is that
of a bank manager. Toothbrush moustache, and spectacles which magnify
his eyes alarmingly.

The men among us, we are told, are here because of the stress of
business - `either earning too little or too much' - the women because
`running the home isn't as enjoyable as it was before the war'.

He now launches into his main lecture on the Body and Health. His
metaphor is the automobile: we wouldn't dream of abusing our motor cars
in the way that we abuse our bodies. He expands this argument under the
headings of Overloading, Servicing and so on.

A group of Israelis in front of me, who speak very little English but
have managed to catch these constant references to motor cars, begin to
exchange worried glances.

Our little director concludes by listing the various medical services
available and mentions that there is an army psychiatrist who swims in the
pool every morning. How we are to avail ourselves of his services is left
unsaid. Presumably just by plunging in and swimming alongside: `Ah,
morning Captain, I have this problem with foreplay ...'

THE JACKET POTATO The medical consultant and I had agreed that I
should `eat normally' while I'm here as I haven't come to lose weight. I'm
ravenous by dinner time, after fifty lengths in the pool (no paddling
psychiatrists in evidence), and greedily order roast turkey while all around
me pale lips pick at lettuce leaves and sip at lemon juice. My smugness
turns to horror when the meal arrives. At first the plate appears to be
empty and I assume the meat will arrive on a separate dish. But the next
that arrives contains only a minute portion of carrots and sprouts. Puzzled,
I re-examine the first dish and discover that the soft pastel design on the
bottom is in fact a wafer-thin slice of turkey. This would appear to be
their idea of `eating normally'.

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.

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.'

Jim, Dickie and my agent, Sally, have all read Desert Air 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.

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.'