Year of the Fat Knight E-Book

Antony Sher

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 308

Beschreibung

" 'Antony Sher's insider journal is a brilliant exploded view of a great actor at work – modest and gifted, self-centred and selfless – a genius capable of transporting us backstage' Craig Raine, The Spectator (Books of the Year) Year of the Fat Knight is Antony Sher's account – splendidly supplemented by his own paintings and sketches – of researching, rehearsing and performing one of Shakespeare's best-known and most popular characters, Sir John Falstaff, in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2014 production of both parts of Henry IV, directed by Gregory Doran. Both the production and Sher's Falstaff were acclaimed by critics and audiences – with Sher winning the Critics' Circle Award for Best Shakespearean Performance – and the shows transferred from Stratford to London, and then to New York, where Charles Isherwood in the New York Times described Sher's Falstaff as 'one of the greatest performances I've ever seen'. This fascinating book tells us how Sher had initial doubts about playing the part at all, how he sought to reconcile Falstaff's obesity, drunkenness, cowardice and charm, how he wrestled with the fat suit needed to bulk him up, and how he explored the complexities and contradictions of this comic yet often dangerous personality. On the way, he paints a uniquely close-up portrait of the RSC at work. Year of the Fat Knight is a terrific read, rich in humour and with a built-in tension as opening night draws relentlessly nearer. It also stands as a celebration of the craft of character acting. It ranks alongside Year of the King – Sher's seminal account of playing Richard III – as a consummate depiction of the creation of a giant Shakespearean role. 'Antony Sher's insider journal is a brilliant exploded view of a great actor at work — modest and gifted, self-centred and selfless — a genius capable of transporting us backstage' - Craig Raine Spectator (Books of the Year) 'A fascinating book, whether you love Shakespeare, whether you love theatre, even if you don't... unfailingly honest... a brilliant portrayal of a character actor' - Claudia Winkelman BBC Radio 2 Arts Show 'A brilliantly full-bodied account that mixes the practicalities of a performance with artistic ambitions. You learn as much about Sher himself as you do about Falstaff... far more instructive about acting than any number of how-to guides' - WhatsOnStage 'A vivid account... Sher has an artist's eye... filled with etacy' - The Times 'Far from simply a primer on the art of acting... [Sher's] tone is relaxed, intimate, even confidential, open about his personal foibles and relationships... a book about life as well as about acting' - The Spectator 'One of the most compelling non-fiction books I've read in a long time... chatty, frank, funny and enlightening... anyone wanting to know exactly how a show is created from beginning to end will find it all here... I enjoyed Sher's earlier book, Year of the King, about his journey to create Richard III, but this is even better' - The Stage "

Leseprobe

Antony Sher

YEAR OFTHE FAT KNIGHT

The Falstaff Diaries

with illustrations by the author

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

For VerneMy dear sister (1945-2016)

Contents

 Dedication 1A Fat Knight? February–March 2013 2Character Acting April–September 2013  Colour Illustrations 3All Those Lines September–December 2013 4Three Rehearsal Rooms December 2013–March 2014 5Fat Knight – First Night March–April 2014  Epilogue April 2014  Praise for Antony Sher’s Falstaff  About the Author  Copyright Information

1. A Fat Knight?

Monday 11 February 2013

It’s all Ian McKellen’s fault.

A month or so ago, Greg (Doran; Royal Shakespeare Company Artistic Director, and my partner) was talking to Ian about whether he’d like to come back to the company, and what parts he might play. Greg mentioned that he was directing Henry IV Parts I and II next year, and what about Falstaff? Ian said it wasn’t of interest to him, and then added, ‘But why are you looking for Falstaff when you’re living with him?’ Ian was making reference to a performance of mine that he’d seen at the National Theatre: Jacob in Travelling Light. Nicky Wright’s play is about the early days of film-making, set in an East European shtetl, circa 1900, and Jacob is the local timber merchant (and embryonic movie mogul), described in the stage directions as ‘a big and ebullient man, a Tolstoyan peasant’. As a character, he is what is called larger-than-life. And yes, looking back now, I suppose Jacob could have been Falstaff’s Jewish cousin.

Anyway, Greg told me what Ian had said, and we smiled at it, and didn’t take it seriously at all. Falstaff has never been a part I’ve remotely thought of as being mine.

Casting it has preoccupied Greg for a couple of years now, and I’ve been his sounding board from time to time. All sorts of names have been mooted – including Patrick Stewart, Jim Broadbent, Brian Cox – but Greg eventually decided his first choice was Derek Jacobi. The offer is presently with him.

Today we drove from our home in Islington up to Oxford University, where Greg will be this year’s Humanitas Visiting Professor of Drama. The first event takes place this evening, an In Conversation with him and me, chaired by Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate.

In the car, Greg mentioned that he suspected Derek was going to say no to Falstaff, because of other commitments. Greg said he’d found himself really taking stock. I thought he’d changed the subject when now he suddenly started talking about my two performances at the NT – Jacob in Travelling Light and Voigt in The Captain of Köpenick (which opened last week):

‘Both times you’ve surprised me, and it’s nice that can still happen – I would have thought I knew your full range. But there was something about the size and earthiness of Jacob, the mischief of Voigt… well, they were things I hadn’t really seen before. I think Ian might be right. I think you could play Falstaff. Why don’t you read it?’

I stared out of the car window at the countryside around the M40, familiar from a thousand drives to and from Stratford – there had been snow during the night and it was still falling lightly. I didn’t know how to react to Greg. I had no problem about not being the first choice for the part – if you live with a director, you understand the nature of these things – but the idea was still baffling. Me as Falstaff? Short, Jewish, gay, South African me as Shakespeare’s gigantically big, rudely hetero, quintessentially English, Fat Knight? It made no sense.

But this is an ongoing problem for the character actor. He never feels ideally right for any part.

I said, ‘Well… let’s talk about it again… if Derek says no.’ And we moved on to other things.

In Oxford, we were given an attic room overlooking the quad in one of the colleges, Brasenose. At 5 p.m. we did our event, which was really quite easy: talking about three of our Shakespeare collaborations – Titus Andronicus, Winter’s Tale and Macbeth – illustrated with clips from the filmed versions. Then drinks in the college with the principal, and dinner at High Table. It’s another world…

Tuesday 12 February

Greg stayed in Oxford (he’s doing a series of talks and masterclasses over the next few days) while I returned to London.

Köpenick has been out of the NT repertoire for a few days, so we had a line-run this afternoon. Must say I went into the room with a heavy heart. We had some mixed reviews last week, and a real stinker on Sunday. (I don’t read reviews, but I get told the score – the star ratings – and the Sunday Times gave us only two.) I felt vaguely embarrassed in front of the company; as the leading actor, I was involved in the whole gestation of the show. But I needn’t have worried. Actors are a buoyant breed. I don’t know if any individuals were disappointed by the reviews, but as a group they were full of energy and laughter today, and full-throated in the big sing-songs, and passionate about keeping the fights and dances in tip-top shape. The session really lifted my spirits.

And the show itself was good this evening, with a big, warm audience.

So far, touch wood, no real damage from any of the negative reviews.

But the experience has unsettled me. I saw the 1972 NT production of Köpenick, with Paul Scofield as Voigt, and Frank Dunlop directing John Mortimer’s very witty adaptation of Zuckmayer’s original. It was a fine piece of theatre, and much acclaimed. Currently we’ve got a spectacular production by Adrian Noble, and a gritty new version by Ron Hutchinson, but the critics just haven’t come to the party. It has shaken my faith in my own judgement.

So the Falstaff idea isn’t coming at a great time…

Wednesday 13 February

Greg rang from Oxford. He’s just spoken to Derek Jacobi, who has said no. Not because of other commitments, but because he’s reread it and can’t see himself in the role.

‘So,’ said Greg; ‘I am now officially proposing that you do it.’

After a pause, I said, ‘I’ll think about it, okay?’ Then put the phone down, feeling I’d just had bad news.

Friday 15 February

Greg was appointed to the post of Artistic Director – we call it The Job – in April 2012, but he’s only been fully in charge since September. As he finds his legs, he’s being helped by a formidably good PA, Jane Tassell. She sees it as one of her many duties to ensure that he has proper holidays, and since holidays have always been an important part of our relationship, Jane constantly checks Greg’s work schedule against mine, and marks out possible breaks. She then fiercely monitors Greg’s diary, keeping these periods clear. He’s been very busy recently, and I’ve been opening Köpenick. So, with another substantial gap in my NT performances coming up, we’re grabbing a holiday in Kenya. It’s next week, so there’s not much time to properly consider Falstaff. Despite a career of doing classical theatre, I still find Shakespeare difficult to read. Over the last two days, I’ve been inching through Falstaff’s scenes – just them, not the whole plays – with the aid of the RSC’s excellent new edition (co-edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen), using both the notes at the bottom of each page and the synopsis of scenes at the end.

Some first impressions that surprised me:

•On three occasions in Part I, Falstaff resolves to clean up his act (‘I must give over this life’, ‘I’ll repent suddenly’, ‘I’ll leave sack’), and yet in Part II his biggest, most celebratory speech is a hymn to alcohol (‘If I had a thousand sons, the first principle I would teach them should be to addict themselves to sack!’). I sense the circular rhythms of serious dependency here. Rather than just a jolly old bloke who likes his drink. Could one play him with serious dependency?•His imagination. Whether talking about Bardolph’s nose or Shallow’s nakedness there’s a hugely inventive, colourful mind at work.•His heartlessness. Not just the famous speech about soldiers being ‘food for powder’ (cannon fodder), but he’s a dangerous friend – he’ll rubbish you behind your back without a thought. He does this to Shallow, to Hal, to Poins, and others.•His charm. People like Mistress Quickly know he’s a shit, yet love him.

As well as reading the text, I have a recent performance in mind. Normally, I’d avoid seeing another actor play a part I was considering, but it’s too late this time. I watched the BBC TV series The Hollow Crown last year, with Simon Russell Beale playing Falstaff in the Henries. But I don’t feel intimidated – it was too individualistic an interpretation. Not so much a life force as a death’s head, intensely haunted by his own mortality. Really came into his own in Part II, as did Richard Eyre’s film – a great melancholic picture of England as a sick land. This was so good, that for the first time I wondered if Part II wasn’t the better play.

Reporting back to Greg, I say, ‘Falstaff is not a great part.’

‘What?!’

‘It’s two great parts.’

‘Ah. Right. Is that a yes then?’

‘No. I can’t easily see myself as him. I keep thinking – why me? Just because I’ve put on a bit of weight and I’ve got the title, why should I be the Fat Knight?’

We laugh, but my doubts are serious, and real.

Sunday 17 February

It’s crazy. Today’s Observer published a list of top power couples. Which included Bill and Hillary Clinton, Chairman and Madame Mao, Beyoncé and Jay Z, and us.

‘How on earth did we get on that?’ I asked.

‘They must’ve wanted to tick the gay box,’ Greg replied.

Over lunch at the Almeida Restaurant, we discussed the Falstaff situation. Greg asked me to explain my reservations.

‘Well, there’s “the look”, of course,’ I said.

‘Every Falstaff has to wear a fat suit.’

‘Yes, yes, and anyway it’s my thing. Richard III didn’t just have a prosthetic hump, but big muscular arms and twisted knees too, the young Tamburlaine had to be athletic, the old one was obese, there was Cyrano and his nose, there was…’

‘You can change yourself… you’re a “shape-shifter”.’

‘But it’s not just Falstaff’s shape. There’s something about his spirit. That’s the truly big bit of him.’

‘You could do it.’

‘Then why haven’t I been thought of before? You’ve talked about all sorts of actors. We’ve talked about them together. I’ve never been in the frame. Never – in either of our heads.’

‘And that’s fine,’ said Greg confidently. ‘Happens all the time in casting. The best idea, the person you end up with, wasn’t even on your original list.’

‘Well… there’s something else. And it’s not easy to talk about.’

Greg frowned. This wasn’t like us.

I proceeded slowly: ‘We’re in a funny position. That crazy Observer thing about power couples. I mean, when we met, I was already established, you were starting out… and yet now, in terms of power, you’re much more powerful than me. You know I have no problem with that. You know I rejoice in you having The Job. But with something like this, where I’m a completely left-field idea for the part, and maybe completely wrong… we could be accused of nepotism.’

‘Oh that’s nonsense – you’re a leading classical actor!’

‘You’re not thinking about this properly. Nepotism. I mean it seriously. I’d hate that charge to be made. I’d hate it for you especially. And actually it could be bad for you – this early on in The Job – if you get this wrong.’

‘I’m not getting this wrong.’

Greg was calm. I was not.

He said, ‘And if it’s of any comfort to you, the Board would have to ratify your casting. It comes under a clause called Conflict of Interests. At the next Board meeting, I’d have to step out of the room while they discussed exactly what you’re scared of – the question of nepotism.’ He paused. ‘So how do we proceed?’

‘I need advice from someone who’s outside us… but someone who knows the business. Paul is coming to see Köpenick when we get back from Kenya…’ (Paul Lyon-Maris, my agent) ‘…We’re having dinner. He’ll be good to talk to. He’ll tell me straight.’

‘Right.’

‘And now I think we need to change the subject. Don’t you?’

‘I do.’ Leaning forward, his face alight, he gave a whispered shout: ‘We’re going on holiday!’

Wednesday 20 February

Africa.

There’s nothing like it to clear the mind and refresh the soul. We regularly visit South Africa, my homeland, to see my family, but occasionally we go to East Africa for the real thing. Wild Africa.

We’re in the Maasai Mara on the Serengeti, staying in a tent camp called Cottar’s, which is designed in a colonial 1920s style, the period of big-game hunting – then done with rifles, now with cameras.

Our jeep is open (canvas roof but no sides), thank goodness – you don’t always get these in East Africa – and our guide/ranger is a warm, wise man who asks us to call him G-G. He has a young Maasai tracker with him.

Over the years, we’ve done so many game drives in so many different reserves, that it’s easy to become complacent. But this morning, we had a truly exciting time, with viewings of three of the big five: we rode alongside a pride of lions on the move, complete with big males and cubs of different ages, some very small and cute; a family of elephants, with young too; and a massive herd of buffalo. Also saw giraffe, a huge eland bull, and a cheetah atop a termite hill.

But it isn’t only the animals. More often it’s the place itself. On the dusk drive yesterday, one half of the landscape lay under a biblical spectacle of sun shafts and cloud shadows, while the other had a tranquil, delicate, almost underwater light. It was the most magical vision. I held my breath. Which happened again this afternoon, when we went to the open savannahs, the oceans of yellow-green grass. We stopped for sundowners (the jeeps carry iceboxes with drinks of your choice) on a little rocky island with one tree, an umbrella thorn acacia, and from that standpoint, you could turn three hundred and sixty degrees and see nothing but the rolling plains and the huge, climbing sky. This was the Africa of fantasy, of dreams, of legend. It was like civilisation had never happened.

Laurens van der Post describes it beautifully in this piece, which Greg found in a book of essays: ‘What wilderness does is present us with a blueprint, as it were, of what creation was about in the beginning, when all the plants and trees and animals were magnetic, fresh from the hands of whatever created them. This blueprint is still there, and those of us who see it find an incredible nostalgia rising in us, an impulse to return and discover it again.’

Tuesday 26 February

We’re spending the second half of our trip on the coast just below Mombasa, in a hotel called the Alfajiri Villas.

This is the part where we holiday properly, doing nothing at all. Other than swim, sunbathe, read, eat and drink. We have a pool on the patio of our villa, but we prefer the sea. The best local beach is Congo (where the Congo River flows in), about 3km north, a forty-five-minute walk along the sands. We have to be accompanied by a member of the hotel staff. This is not to protect us from Somali pirates (though we’ve heard some grisly stories), but from what are called the beach boys. These are hawkers who pester tourists with their goods. And will snatch cameras and bags too. They’re pretty relentless. You feel like a wildebeest trying to take a stroll through a pack of hyenas. So we’re grateful for our bodyguard. The other, unaccompanied white visitors on the shoreline, who all seem to be elderly Germans, their skin sunburned to a wrinkled, leathery finish, look rather vulnerable. Anyway, it’s worth it when we get to the other end. The beach is on a slope below some magnificently gross baobabs – the Falstaff of trees! – and the water of the Indian Ocean, on the Equator, is blissful.

Talking of Falstaff, we’re having pre-dinner drinks on our patio this evening, when Greg suddenly says, lightly, tentatively, ‘We haven’t really mentioned the Henries.’

‘No. But I’ve been thinking about it.’

‘And – ?’

‘I just have this image… an awful image… of people laughing at me. For thinking I could play him. For having the chutzpah.’

Greg smiles. ‘You’ve never been short of chutzpah.’

‘It’s the Shakespeare biggies, isn’t it? They’re in a different league, on a different scale. You can’t get it wrong. Well, I mean you can get the playing of them wrong – there are a hundred wrong things you can do in rehearsals, or in the design, or whatever – but what you can’t get wrong is the starting point. Your own certainty that you’re right for the part.’

‘Were you absolutely certain you were right for Macbeth… Leontes… Prospero…?’

‘No, I wasn’t, you know I wasn’t, yet they still felt within reach. But there’s something about Falstaff. He’s just so… iconic.’

Greg sighs. Tries to talk about the other casting. The title role, King Henry IV, is one of the hardest parts to cast in Shakespeare. It needs a leading actor, but leading actors don’t want to play it. Henry is written as a very angry man, and there’s a deadly temptation to just shout your way through every scene.

Greg and I agree that the best Henry we’ve seen was Jeremy Irons in the Hollow Crown series. He was a brooding, haunted man, endlessly fascinating. The part suddenly seemed like a great part. We bumped into Jeremy at a Christmas party a couple of months ago, and complimented him on his performance. He said he could never have done it in the theatre. The camera allowed options – degrees of introspection – that just wouldn’t be available on stage.

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 Voigt1]

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?

Well, why didn’t McKellen or Jacobi do it? They’ve both spent their careers notching up a line of Shakespeares, and they’ve done their Lears now, and there’s nothing left. What was it about Falstaff that they shied away from? Maybe a generational thing. They’re the last group from a theatrical tradition which said that, for the classical actor, certain roles (like Hamlet, Macbeth, etc.) lead to Lear, while others (like Touchstone, Bottom, etc.) lead to Falstaff, and never the twain shall meet.