Year of the Fat Knight Read online

  Tonight Greg says, ‘Obviously I can’t cast Henry till I’ve cast Falstaff, but I’ve got some good ideas. Can I tell you?’

  I feel uncomfortable. In the circumstances, I don’t want to play this casting game.

  Suddenly, the waiter Ifrahiem is at our side. ‘The monkeys!’ he announces with a grin.

  We’ve been enchanted by a family of colobus monkeys who come into the trees around our villa at about this time each day. Greg has been trying to photograph them – their black faces peering at us through the leaves – and runs for the camera.

  I’m relieved. Saved by the monkeys!

  Monday 4 March

  Back in London.

  I’m impressed by the NT. They seem to have scheduled Köpenick perfectly – giving it just a limited number of performances – and combined with the fact that they have a big, loyal, mailing-list audience, this has meant that we’ve played to full, warm houses (which is not always the case in the Olivier). This has allowed my performance to thrive. I’m very fond of my character, Wilhelm Voigt, a street rat, a Chaplinesque tramp, a little nebbish, who gets his five minutes of fame when he impersonates an army captain. It’s hard to believe now that I had as much doubt about my suitability for this role as I currently feel about Falstaff. I had a real crisis before rehearsals began, convincing myself that I was wrong for the part – it needed a cheeky Cockney chappie, a young Bob Hoskins – and that I’d be crucified. In retrospect, it was probably a subconscious insecurity about the play itself, for indeed it was the play and not my performance that has been criticised. [Photo insert, page 1, Self as Voigt 1]

  My agent, Paul Lyon-Maris, had to miss the opening, and came along tonight. We dined in the NT restaurant, the Mezzanine, afterwards. Paul is a neat, fit chap with a dark little smile, in his early fifties, a horse-rider in his spare time, and one of the most powerful agents in the business. He’d liked the show, liked me, and especially praised Adrian Noble’s production.

  We got down to business. Last year, I played Freud in a successful revival of Terry Johnson’s play Hysteria – directed by the author – at the Theatre Royal in Bath, and ever since then there have been efforts to give it a future life. A West End transfer was mooted, but hasn’t materialised. More excitingly, there have been plans to take it to Broadway, where Terry is better known as a director (La Cage aux Folles and the Judy Garland play, End of the Rainbow) than as a writer. It’s thought that New Yorkers would particularly relish this play, being about Freud and Dalí. These two legends are the stars of the show, but the main role is actually a young woman, Jessica, and the American producers have been trying to find a big name, a film actress, to play it. Tonight Paul said it was still on the cards, and that if it happened it would be in the autumn. Which would clash with the Henry IVs – they start rehearsals in December.

  We discussed Falstaff. I asked two questions: was the idea of me playing him ludicrous, and could Greg and I be accused of nepotism? Paul answered no, emphatically, to both. Which was good to hear – he doesn’t bullshit. On the other hand, he didn’t say, you must play Falstaff. But then, that isn’t his style either. As a good agent he knows that his clients have to make important decisions by themselves. He can advise, he can’t dictate. And in this case, he probably also feels a special challenge: tiptoeing around my relationship with Greg. It must seem like a bit of a minefield.

  He suggested that the RSC should make an official offer of Falstaff, through him. He could then use it to sharpen the concentration of the American producers of Hysteria. If it came to a choice between the two, we’d face that at a later date.

  As I travelled home, I thought that if it did come to a choice, Freud would certainly be the safer option. I’ve never had any doubts about my ability to play him, except that, ironically, I’m not thin enough: the play is set in 1938, when he was dying of mouth cancer, couldn’t eat properly, and looked skeletal.

  Friday 8 March

  With my decision on hold, in limbo, Greg suggested I do some reading about the role: ‘Have a look at Harold Bloom’s book, he’s got a whole chapter on Falstaff.’

  Harold Bloom, the Big Daddy of American Shakespeare Scholarship, and author of the tome, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.

  Diving into Bloom’s book, I find that he rates Falstaff very highly indeed – alongside Hamlet, as Shakespeare’s greatest creations.

  That comes as a surprise. It sends a prickle of excitement, and danger, up my spine.

  I jot some notes:

  • Falstaff is neither immoral or amoral, but of another realm.

  • He is ‘one of the lords of language’… ‘the monarch of language’… his is ‘a festival of language’.

  • How did Hal and Falstaff enter into their original friendship? Why choose Falstaff as your mentor?

  • Falstaff is an old warrior. A veteran soldier, turned drunk and highwayman. This makes a lot of sense to me. When Hal gives him a regiment to command, Falstaff’s behaviour is totally in keeping with someone who knows the reality of war and is thoroughly cynical about it: your soldiers are just cannon fodder.

  These are dark things. I like them. It’s more like the kind of stuff I play. I suppose it’s the usual problem of doing Shakespeare’s great roles: you have to see past what I call the Stratford-souvenir-shop image – in this case, a merry old buffer with tankard of ale – and look at what Shakespeare actually wrote.

  Sunday 10 March

  We went to a flat-warming party for Simon Callow and his new partner, Sebastian Fox, who is in his thirties, beautiful, charming, half-German, a management consultant. They’ve been together for about a year, and have now taken this major step of setting up home together. It was very touching, and we were delighted to raise a glass to them.

  A refreshing aspect of the party was that many of the guests were Sebastian’s friends, who knew nothing about theatre. When they asked what we did, I replied, ‘I’m an actor, and Greg runs the Royal Shakespeare Company.’ I still feel an enormous amount of pleasure saying that aloud. There’s a Jewish word nachas, meaning the joy that a parent feels in the achievements of their children. With Greg only ten years my junior, it doesn’t really apply to us, but I’m nevertheless getting an awful lot of nachas…!

  So, Simon and I both have younger partners now. Not that we’re in competition any more. Actually, it was only ever from my point of view. As a young actor, I regarded him as my arch-rival, and couldn’t be in the same room as him. These days, we’re the best of friends, and I think of him as someone who is especially knowledgeable about our business.

  Today, I was very tempted to take him aside, and say, ‘Listen, I’ve been asked to play Falstaff – just tell me the truth, is it a good idea?’

  (I need someone, other than Greg, to say it’s a good idea.)

  Trouble is, Simon has played Falstaff twice: in Greg’s production of Merry Wives: The Musical at Stratford, and in Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight (the stage version which Welles later filmed) at Chichester. I suspect he might regard it as his part, and might not be able to give the most objective advice.

  So I didn’t mention it.

  Monday 11 March

  The weather has become intensely cold, and little flakes of snow are falling.

  I feel a serious onset of the Monday-morning blues, what with Greg leaving for work and me stuck in the house for the day. I find refuge in Simon Callow’s thoughts on Falstaff. I may not have heard them from the horse’s mouth yesterday, but I can still read about them. Writing for the Faber series, Actors on Shakespeare, Simon did two small paperbacks (for Parts I and II) on Falstaff.

  Talking frankly of his experience of the Chimes at Midnight play, which compresses Shakespeare’s double into one, focusing mainly on Falstaff, Simon says that it ‘lumbers across the stage unhappily and unrhythmically, dangerously risking overexposure for the Fat Knight.’ That’s interesting. Falstaff may be a fabulous creation, but if he was a foodstuff he’d be an excessively rich pudding, and
you can’t have a whole meal of that. In the full version of the Henries, Shakespeare serves out the portions judiciously, intercut with other stories.

  Like Harold Bloom, Simon has some vivid descriptions of Falstaff:

  • ‘mighty pagan creature’

  • ‘his sense of self is so overpowering that he sees himself as the source of all things’

  • ‘a great escapologist… a Houdini of the mind’

  • ‘the world always seems a larger place when Falstaff speaks.’

  There’s a lot about the sheer size of the man, which makes me self-conscious again. The actor really needs to be tall as well as fat; Hal calls him ‘a huge hill of flesh’. Yet it’s ridiculous – I’m about the same height as the two Simons – Callow and Russell Beale – yet somehow they’re regarded as ideal and natural Falstaffs, and I’m not. I’m still scrabbling around for a foothold on this hill of flesh…!

  Tuesday 12 March

  ‘Hugh Griffith wasn’t a tall man.’

  This was John Barton’s response when Greg asked him this afternoon. Greg goes to visit John regularly in his London flat, and I think of the two of them as the Spirits of RSC Past and RSC Present, in wise consultation with one another.

  Hugh Griffith played Falstaff in the famous production of the Henries which John co-directed with Peter Hall at Stratford in 1964. I’m intrigued by the thought of Griffith in the part, because as a film actor he made a strong impression on me in my youth, as the Arab Sheikh who teaches Charlton Heston to ride chariots in Ben Hur, and the Squire in Tom Jones. There was, in those big eyes and even bigger eyebrows, a wicked glint. I didn’t know he was also a stage actor. What was he like as Falstaff? John told Greg he couldn’t really remember, apart from him getting drunker and drunker during the alcohol speech, and some business with a real donkey. (When was that, for heaven’s sake – one of the Gloucestershire scenes?) But maybe John was just being diplomatic, because when they revived the Henries in 1966, Griffith had left, and Falstaff was then played by Paul Rogers.

  It turns out I can judge for myself. An audio recording of Griffith as Falstaff exists. A few years ago, working with the British Library Sound Archive, Greg produced two double CDs for the RSC, called The Essential Shakespeare, featuring scenes from some of their most famous productions, with their most famous actors, including Paul Robeson as Othello and Olivier as Coriolanus. Recorded in performance, with the noise of the audience – laughter and coughs – and the clump of actors’ feet on the stage-boards, the atmosphere is so unmistakably live you gain a clear glimpse of this long-lost work. It’s so much better than a studio recording, and somehow even more vivid than photographs.

  And so I listen to Hugh Griffith and Ian Holm (Hal) doing the ‘play within the play’ in the tavern scene (Act Two, Scene Four in Part I), when Falstaff and Hal take turns to be King Henry in the act of remonstrating his wayward son. Griffith uses his own Welsh accent as Falstaff, which works well, giving him a rough-and-ready manner, both jokey and combative.

  So here is a very distinctive Falstaff, short and Welsh, tailored to this particular actor’s style, and succeeding splendidly.

  He was a personality actor – he makes the part come to him.

  I am a character actor – I go to the part.

  Can I go to this one?

  Wednesday 13 March

  ‘Piss or get off the pot.’

  Greg says this lightly, but I’ve heard it before – when actors keep him waiting to say yes or no to an offer – and I know he’s running out of patience. My inability to make a decision means that we’re both stuck to the spot. He can’t move on: find another Falstaff, or cast the other parts. If it was another director, I wouldn’t care about their problems – this is too important a decision for me – but it isn’t another director, it’s Greg.

  He’s driving to Stratford this morning. I’ve got three Köpenicks, and then I’ll go up by train on Friday. At the last moment, I put my drawing board and paper into the car for him to take along. I’ve an image in my mind, which I need to sketch out during next week, something which might help the situation…

  Sunday 17 March

  Stratford.

  ‘Greater love hath no man than this,’ I said grimly as we left our Avonside flat, ‘than to give up a Sunday evening to see a school play!’

  But it was a special occasion. And Greg wanted to attend.

  One hundred years ago, in 1913, KES (King Edward VI School in Stratford, where Shakespeare was a pupil) did Henry V as their annual play. A few years later, almost half of the school’s pupils (thirty out of sixty-nine) were dead, killed in the First World War.

  Tonight’s performance – of Henry V – was to commemorate them. We had drinks at the school, in Shakespeare’s classroom, with speeches and a poignant display of photos from the 1913 production – schoolboys in stage armour – then walked down Chapel Lane to the Swan for the show.

  The cast did well, aided by a professional actor as the Chorus: Tim Pigott-Smith, an ex-student (and head boy) of KES. But I’m afraid I always struggle with Henry V as a play. Hal has lost all the complexity which makes him so fascinating in the Henries, and is now just a rather heroic chap going to war. And apart from the Chorus, there’s no one else that really grabs my attention.

  But, but, but… there is Shakespeare. I was sitting back in a slight daze, when suddenly a minor character, the soldier Williams, did a speech which brought me to the edge of my seat:

  The king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, ‘We died at such a place’ – some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them… I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument?

  Jesus. Not only is it an eloquent and horrific image of war, but it’s like a piece of surrealism, picturing the gathering of dismembered limbs.

  Simon Callow says something similar in his book on Henry IV Part I. Writing about Falstaff’s bizarre behaviour on the battlefield, picking over Sir Walter Blunt’s corpse, and offering Hal a bottle of sack from his pistol holster, Simon describes it as a scene that could have been written by Ionesco: ‘At moments like these, Shakespeare seems to have within him the whole of the subsequent development of Western drama.’

  After the show, we said a quick hello to Tim Pigott-Smith. As we walked home, Greg said, ‘He’d be a fine Henry IV.’

  ‘Mm-mh,’ I replied, again refusing to play the casting game.

  Monday 18 March

  Beautiful sunshine. The Avon ablaze with light. And very high: a fast-flowing, coffee-coloured swell, spilling over the opposite bank.

  The French windows of our ground-floor flat are just three metres from the river, but the slope of the land is such that we never get flooded – it always goes over the other side.

  We’re in a red-brick block which the RSC built as company digs, after knocking down the original Avonside, a gloriously run-down old mansion, where I had some rooms during my first season in 1982, and which my dad described as ‘the ghost house’ when my parents visited that year.

  The flat itself is fairly basic, but the view from our front room is a source of constant inspiration. The river is mesmerising in any weather situation. Greg and I fight over this room, both wanting it as our study – the alternative is the back bedroom (which has a decent view of Trinity Church) – but it’s mostly not a problem: when we’re in Stratford together, he’s usually working in his office at the RSC headquarters on Chapel Lane, and the beautiful room is mine.

  As it is today, when I set up my easel, my drawing board, and a sheet of the thick, textured paper on which I like to sketch these days: it’s meant for watercolours, but I use Caran d’Ache crayons. It’s a self-portrait I want to do.

  I know the title. ‘A Fat Knight?’ Specifically ‘a’ rather than ‘the’, and the question mark is
also key. This is not to be an image of Falstaff, but of myself thinking about playing Falstaff. I want to try and capture the difficulty of the decision.

  In 1996 I was in a clinic for cocaine dependency, and one of the things that helped my recovery (which I’m happy to report is intact to this day) was art therapy. It’s like psychotherapy, except you create an image first, and then any words come second: how it makes you feel, how it depicts current anxieties. Today’s exercise is similar.

  I sit alongside a big, free-standing mirror, half turned towards it. The extra pounds which I’ve gained recently are at their broadest and ugliest at this angle. I emphasise the bulge of my stomach, almost as if wearing a fat suit. I want my face clear of my specs, so I hold them in my left hand, while my right reaches forward with the crayon.

  So here I sit: me in this room, and me in the mirror, and me on the paper. All of us in quiet contemplation of one another.

  As the drawing develops, I’m intrigued by the expression on the face. A slight frown – in fact, my short-sightedness – reading as a slight scowl.

  Something dull and sour. Boredom. There have been times here, some Avonside afternoons, when I’ve been out of work as an actor, and I have no writing project on the go, and I am suffering from painter’s block. Then I can feel a kind of self-disgust – the workaholic without his drug of choice, no hit, no quick fix, just time passing very slowly.

  Isn’t that reason enough to do Falstaff – a work project so big I’ll not be bored for years?

  No. It isn’t enough.

  Then what about the simple fact that it’s another great Shakespeare role? I’m proud of the Shakespeare notches on my belt, and here would be one more, a giant one, a fabulous one, and one I never dreamed of. How could I not do it?