Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition (24 page)

Making Richard sexy seems to me the same as making him funny; it
avoids the issue, avoids the pain.

CONFERENCE HALL Our rehearsal room used to be hired out for
conferences to the citizens of Stratford. One wall belonged to the original
Memorial Theatre and survived the Great Fire in 1926. It is a beautiful
room full of old things from old productions: a goblet, a sceptre, a throne.
Theatre props age faster than their real counterparts. The cardboard
shows, the plaster shows, they look crude and childish, reminding you of
school productions.

There's an old wind machine on the shelf above the door, there's a
sword rack, there's a horse you strap round your middle and jog into
battle with. It's full of ghosts - one of them sits on an upper level looking
down, a white polystyrene figure from some long-forgotten show, sitting intently forward, elbows on knees, keeping a watchful eye on this latest
production. The Ghost of R S C Past.

It is the perfect rehearsal space, miles high, full of light and air. On the
ceiling giant circular skylights; one sends a shaft of sun on to our table as
individual members of the cast come in one by one to read their scenes.
The light is soft but clear; it illuminates these new faces.

Roger Allam (Clarence) in beret and granny sunglasses, looking like a
jazz musician.

Brian Blessed (Hastings) a small mountain, teeth he could hang from
a trapeze with, a chuckling squeeze-box voice: `Such an exciting project,
so thrilled, Tony how d'you do, so pleased to meet you, Michael Gambon
tells me you're hell to work with ... Charles! Are you stage-managing?
Charles is a sweetie, lousy in bed but what a cook!'

Penny Downie (Lady Anne), Australian accent when she isn't reading,
striking classical profile, long blonde hair. Instant rapport - we look one
another in the eye as we read. Whatever Richard's own sex appeal may
or may not be, the sexuality in the scene is undeniable. The in-and-out
rhythm of their last exchange.

Finally Frances Tomelty (Queen Elizabeth), eyes like black coals, a
mane of hair, two miniature silver spoons for ear-rings. At one point Bill
compares Richard to Macbeth - she instantly crosses herself.

I say, `I don't think that superstition applies if you're just rehearsing.'

`It's not a superstition to me,' she says, `I've lived through it.'

Of course - she was Lady Macbeth in the O'Toole production.

The theatre is buzzing with excitement after last night's visit by Prince
Charles and Princess Di to Henry V. They were Ken Branagh's personal
guests and apparently had requested that their visit be unofficial. They
said they would just slip in. How the two most famous people in the world
thought they could just slip in to a busy public place is a puzzle. Inevitably,
by the interval a crowd had gathered in the front of the stalls, staring up
at the dress circle where they were sitting. The second half couldn't start
for some time because the audience was pointing in the wrong direction.
Afterwards, Branagh went to meet them and Prince Charles apologised
for upstaging the show.

Awake early again. The text for this morning's thought is `lump of foul
deformity'. After only two days' work on the text I've become less interested
in the physical shape, and more in Richard's mind, his intelligence and
cunning. I now feel encumbered by the monster image. But we are being
pressurised to make up our minds - the wardrobe staff can't begin to
make my costumes until the exact measurements of the deformity are
settled. This seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Ideally, I would
like several weeks working just on the text, then a couple of weeks
experimenting with shapes and movements, and only then should we
decide what he's going to look like. Of course that's impossible with the
theatre system in this country. For instance Bill D.'s set designs had to
be in by February. And however exciting they might look, they closed all
other options long before rehearsals - and the real exploration of the play
- had even started.

FIRST S C E N E Up until now we've been sitting round the table reading
and discussing the text. Today we venture out on to the rehearsal floor.
Pleased that my early idea about the harmless cripple sitting in the sun
seems to work. I position myself over at the proscenium arch, very much
on the sidelines, calling out and reaching for Clarence and Hastings as
they pass, as if to say, `Forgive me, it's so much trouble to get up.' Then at the end of the Hastings episode, my line `Go you before and I will
follow you' becomes `Oh please don't wait for me, I take hours.' Richard
exploits his disability to lag behind, to plot and chat to the audience.

Both Roger and Brian seem to be terrible corpsers like me, so rapport
is quickly established.

Lots of hump jokes already. Roger goes to pat my shoulder, remembers
the hump, and asks, `Uhm, which side will you be dressing, Sir?'

LADY ANNE SCENE (Act 1, Scene ii) Penny has never seen the play or
even the film, which is a terrific advantage. Bill says to her, `We associate
grief with goodness. Grieving people get our sympathy, we automatically
assume them to be good people wronged. This is not necessarily so.' He
wants her cursing in the scene to be `a perverted form of praying, calling
on an avenging God'.

He has a brilliant idea for the beginning of the scene. The procession
with the corpse is illegal, not a state funeral as it is often played (Richard
has murdered Henry VI after all). So Bill wants the pallbearers and guards
to be nervous and edgy, eager to get it over with. Lady Anne, high on
grief, does the famous `Set down' speech as a deliberate piece of street
theatre. A little crowd forms - people already in the church either praying
or screwing among the tombs. Richard is just one of the crowd. At the
given moment he steps forward and so the wooing begins.

Before Penny leaves the rehearsal we show her Bill D.'s designs for
Richard. I say, `Given that you have to be seduced by him, how important
is it to you what he looks like?' Penny stares at the drawings open-mouthed
- she is the first of the cast to see our idea for Richard's image - and
finally she says, `I'll have to think about it.'

SO L U s I tell Bill how the whole monster/crutches image seems like an
imposition now. He seems a little thrown by this, says, `Well, we must try
it. We can't just abandon it.' We agree to set aside a session to experiment,
to try it in action. I will have to learn the first speech over the weekend
so that I'll have my hands free to use the crutches. And wardrobe will
make a rough of the deformity we've discussed, for me to wear.

An excellent session, discussing Richard's soliloquies. Then, we
discuss how to start the play. I describe the sequence from the Dwoskin
film - starting the speech in darkness, slowly limping into a pool of light.
Bill's idea is for the lights to discover Richard already there, but static. `If
we use the crutches -' Bill prefaces this carefully - `I want to save the surprise of them for as long as possible.' He asks me to experiment sitting
on them like a shooting stick. So the audience would think that was the
shape: an armless lump. Then on, `But I, that am not shap'd for sportive
tricks', whip out the crutches from behind and charge down stage. They
do work terrifically well for a trundling bull-like charge.

We discuss another idea I've had, about the seeds of Richard's megalomania. Actually the notion comes from what Monty was teaching: learning
to like yourself - in Richard's case it becomes a love affair. He begins the
play full of self-loathing ('Deformed, unfinished ... half made up'), then
after the wooing of Lady Anne there is a burgeoning narcissism ('I do
mistake my person all this while!').

Bill rejects this. He feels that it's too early in the play for such a radical
change of character.

THE DIRTY D U C K Bill and I are having supper when Pam dances up
to our table, a kind of Hawaiian dance with the little fingers of each hand
turned upwards. She tells us, `There are great expectations for the fruits
of your partnership.' She knows more about what's happening in the
RSC than anyone who works there. All of company life passes through
The Dirty Duck. But her discretion is legendary and she prides herself
on it.

She tells us about the pub. It was originally called The Black Swan.
She says no one knows when or why it was changed. Some old-timers
think it got nicknamed by Australian soldiers during the war, because
down-under black swans are known as `mucky ducks'. At the moment the
pub sign outside bears both names, one on either side.

She asks what time Richard 111 will finish; this crucially affects her trade.

`Hopefully before eleven,' says Bill, looking shifty. The touchy question
of cuts again. When Pam goes, he says grumpily, `I didn't realise, along
with all the other artistic considerations, drinking time had to be allowed
for as well.'

I am still reeling from shock. `Hopefully before eleven' means three and
a half hours. He says that he wants cuts to occur naturally as we rehearse
scenes, for the cast to volunteer them, not for him to impose them.

I say, `I'm sorry, that is not a good idea. Nobody other than me is going
to volunteer cuts. All the other parts are too compact already. It is always
much less painful for a cast to have the cuts from the start. What you
never have, you don't miss.'

`I know. Don't lecture me.'

This is said lightly, but startles me. Now that I think about it, I have
noticed a new edge in our relationship since Wednesday, probably because
we're both tense about the enormous task ahead. Earlier this evening I
had been arguing for Richard's throne to be carried. It seems to me that
if you are King and happen to be crippled, you don't walk, you get carried.
I delivered what, I suppose, was a little `lecture' on how we have to create
the paraphernalia of dictatorship, a display of megalomania. Bill suddenly
said, `Yes, I have grasped that he didn't want to be King for the bookkeeping!'

But eventually he did agree to the throne-carrying and actually that led
to a happy solution of the horse problem: they've decided against real
horses because of the unpredictability of their bowels, and instead are
going to create the image with horses' armour. The problem was how to
get these monstrous skeletons on and off. Alison Sutcliffe suggested
ritualising it even more and carrying the horses like the throne, with poles
through the sides, and so continuing that image.

Lie in bed wondering about the opening speech, how to combine charm
(which Bill feels is vital to the part) and pain (which I feel is necessary).
One solution would be to do it like the M C from Cabaret, a vulgar, circus
presentation of his deformity: `Deformed!' ... drum roll . . . `Unfinished!'
... cymbal crash ... But the idea is too Adrian Noble-ish, and smacks
of the Rustavelli version too. Another way would be to do it very Brechtian:
come on completely normally and strap on the pieces of deformity as I
describe them, so that only by the end of the speech is the image created.
Richard as actor. But that's been done too - David Schofield twisting his
naked body into the Elephant Man at the start of that play.

Somehow have to find a character whose charm is dangerous and whose
humour is cruel.

Tonight I wanted a cigarette for the first time. Resisted it.

Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations. A procession through town with the
flags of every nation unfurled along the way. Last night at The Duck,
Pam was telling us that the police had been wondering all week what to
do about the Libyan flag while the siege in St James's Square continued.
A shop next to the Libyan flagpole was asked, rather ominously, if they
minded being used as a first-aid station. Luckily the siege came to a
peaceful end yesterday, the embassy has been closed down and so the flag
has just been removed altogether.

Reporting the deportation of the embassy staff, the Daily Mirror carries
the headline, `Good Riddance!' Bill recalls similar examples of the tabloids
slang-slinging and rabble-rousing during the Falklands: `Up Yer Junta!',
`Barging the Argies', `Gotcha!' (when the Belgrano was sunk). He says
it's useful to think about Richard's oration to his soldiers in these terms:
`He should aim for a lofty style, a Times editorial, but it should instinctively
come out on the lowest possible News of the World level.' ('A scum of
Bretons ... these bastard Bretons ... shall these enjoy our lands? Lie
with our wives? Ravish our daughters?') `Or to put it another way,' says
Bill, really warming to his theme now, `he aims for the inspiring patriotism
of a Henry the Fifth, "Once more unto the breach" kind of stuff, but all
he can muster is, "Do you want some smelly dago sticking his dick up yer
missus?" '

It does help me to think of Richard's verbal style throughout as that of
a tabloid journalist, that brand of salivating prurience.