Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition Read Online Free PDF Page B

Enjoyment doesn't come into it.
Enjoyment is for afterwards, when it's all over and you can discuss your
memoirs on television.'
    When they've gone, Ali [Alison Steadman], Shrap [John Shrapnel] and
a friend of his have a drink in my dressing-room. We're all very star-struck,
like schoolgirls at the stage door.
    `Wasn't he nice!'
    `And so ordinary and easy to talk to.'
    `And so little.'
    `Seems much bigger on the telly.'
    Discussion about power. Shrap's friend says that you can't want to lead
any party without desiring power, which actually makes you unsuitable for
the job. Like actors, politicians must have a basic flaw in their personality,
or at least a peculiarity, that makes them want to do the job in the first
place.
    Richard III?
Wednesday 23 November
    Moliere has always been a strangely jinxed play. Right from the original
1935 Moscow production when, in order to get it on, Bulgakov had to do
battle with everyone from Stanislavsky to Stalin. Last year it finally got its
British premiere, ran about three months, and then my accident occurred,
threatening to take it out of the repertoire - there are no understudies at
The Other Place. Pete Postlethwaite volunteered to take over and was
rehearsed into it. On the Saturday before he was due to open he hit black
ice driving out of Stratford after a show and found himself upside down
in a field, the car a write-off and his back injured. The show came out of
the repertoire for the rest of that season. Sadly, in the following months Derek Godfrey, who had been playing Louis XIV, has died. And now
David Troughton has to have a knee operation and will be out for six
weeks. We're rehearsing John Bowe into the part he plays, Bouton.

    KING'S HEAD PUB, BARBICAN With Bill after rehearsals. Still no
news. I've made a private resolution not to discuss any Richard III ideas.
I must play down my enthusiasm for the part, even with Bill, if I am to
get a full season out of them. As casting now gets under way they will
have so many people to keep happy that I will quickly be put to one side
as soon as they think they've got me. This resolution lasts as long as the
first round of drinks. Then we both gleefully plunge into the subject
uppermost in both our minds.
    A discussion about the play as Tragedy or Black Comedy. Example:
the line `Chop off his head' is bound to get a laugh, partly because of its
Medieval B-Picture associations. But would the line have been funny to
Shakespeare's audience for whom decapitation had a grislier reality?
Probably yes, possibly more so. To some extent a modern audience's
attitude to violence is similar to then, bombarded with maimings and
slayings (real and simulated) on television and in films. On the other hand
they faint nightly down in The Pit when Bob Peck's eyes are gently,
clinically removed by David Bradley's doctor in Bond's Lear. A score-sheet
is kept backstage.
    I read Bill some extracts from an interesting City Limits article on the
Nilsen murder case: `The Yorkshire Ripper story is usually treated with
extreme wariness these days, even by the press. Not so with Nilsen. People
who would no more tell a racist joke than a Sutcliffe one can be heard
tittering over the latest Dyno-rod story.' The author suggests this is due
to the character of Nilsen himself: articulate and droll. Richard's own
tendency towards flippancy seems also to steer the gruesome events of
the play away from Tragedy. Bill believes a tragic element is reclaimable
in the play.
    Against my better judgement I outline the crutches idea. He listens
carefully - he is an excellent listener - then at the end says, `But would
one be able to go into battle if one relied on crutches?'
    `Well, absolutely. It could be rather moving. We bring on a real horse
and show him having to be lifted on to it. Then they take away his crutches.
The next time you see him the horse has been killed and he can only
crawl.'
    `The trouble with bringing on a real